I am a first time gardener with 5 kinds of dill seeds to trade. (I am trying to perfect dill bread) I would be happy to trade some of each for a few PRINCIPE BORGHESE, and a few HOMESTEAD. I just recently moved to Florida and am having trouble with the hot climate. Please let me know. Dill I have is Elephant, Mammoth, Hera, Fernleaf. and Bouquet. Thank You.

Seakrits, You could also go to a website that sells plants and look at the pictures to find the ones that came with your house. I am really bad at remembering names of things, so I use plant markers and I label everything I plant so that I can remember later what it is. You can buy metal markers at the store (like in the Garden section of Walmart), or you can also cut up old mini-blinds and write on them and stick them in the ground. Can you ask Grandma what kind of bulbs she gave the kids? As for mulching, in general you just put it on top of the dirt, being careful not to cover over plants you already have. You can buy "living mulch" that is a combination of mulch and compost, and it will help your soil. Eventually (in theory), worms will come up from the soil into the compost and mix it all together for you. For added weed prevention, you can also put down a thick layer of newspaper (or cardboard) under the mulch. Most weeds/grasses won't be able to grow up through it, and that will cut down on your weeding in the future. Then, to plant plants in that area, you just dig down through the mulch/compost and tear through the newspaper for each hole for each plant, so its roots can get to the soil. If you have a large area you're working on, it'll be cheaper to buy your mulch and/or compost in bulk. There are garden centers that will sell you mulch by the cubic yard for about $30-40 (more if they deliver to your house). A small pickup truck can carry a cubic yard no problem, and you can usually spread it out in one morning. As an example, I can mulch my front flowerbeds, which run the length of my house, so about 60' long by 2' wide, with a cubic yard of mulch (although I actually use the mulch/compost mix). Another good way to make new beds is a method called "lasagna gardening." You can search it on this website (or just google it), and learn a lot. I wouldn't even bother with a vegetable garden if you're wanting to sell the house next year. Too much work for one year's bounty. You could grow a couple of tomato plants in with your flowers, though, and it would work out fine. Here is a link that might be useful: Source to look up what plants you already have

Totally keep the halides! Most of us only dream about that kind of lighting! =) Of course you will need fans to take the heat away from those babies, and don't bother replacing the actinic (as already mentionned), or even the VHOs, since the halides will be plenty. If possible, you could run only one halide. This would enable you to put extremely high light plants on the side with the halide, and normal high light plants on the other side. You could also try raising the light hood above the tank several inches (this would also help keep the heat down). The spectrum is just about perfect (10,000 K). If you find it to be too white of a light for your tastes, you could try adding a normal 'warm white' fluo (the really cheap ones at Home Depot and similar stores) to balance the colour out a bit, but that would only be for aesthetics, not valuable to the plants at all. And of course you can't put a normal fluo. in a VHO fixture, as you'd blow the bulb. =) For plants, forget moss. I think that is way too strong of lighing for moss. You could try 'spanish moss', which is actually a tillandsia, and being one of the silvery ones, it would probably like the higher light. Think full, blazing sun plants. If your tank was big enough, you could grow vanda orchids! Speaking of that, you may think of getting a bigger tank eventually. You could have a very tall tank, and you'd be all set with the lighting. If you build the tank yourself from plywood and scrap glass, it becomes even cheaper! =) But anyways, back to plants. . . you could try cacti and succulents, as gary said. You'd need some really good fans going to keep the humidity down though, especially in Florida. Perhaps alpines? Or tomatoes, so you can have them year-round? The possiblities are nearly endless! But you really would burn broms, most orchids, and mosses to a crisp unless you hang the fixture from the ceiling, about 3 feet above the tank. That, of course, may be a possibility, but then you may as well just not use the tank and set up a growing area for more plants! I think you need a bigger tank. . . =)

I have to say it looks like they definitely got the shelter requirement down. As someone else pointed out, that's got to be an expensive kennel and it's bigger than a lot of the back yards around here. It looks like they went through extra effort with the tarp and the igloo. And it looks like part, if not all of the kennel is covered too. Maybe you can use some binoculars to check to see if there's food and water in there and there is something you can do to see if someone has been there if there's a gate to get inside of the property. Take a kleenex and pry off one of the plies so it is now a very thin tissue. Cut a small half inch by 3" piece off the tissue with scissors and tape one end of the strip to the gate and the other end to the gate post and that way if the gate is opened, the tissue strip will tear. Use masking tape and put the strip lower down so it's not in plain sight. Of course if it rains it's gone but it should give you an idea if someone is going there at least once a day. All you have to do to tell if someone has been there is look and see if the strip is torn. And remember there are a lot of dog owners that have their dogs in their own yard and might only visit them once or twice a day for food and thats it. Not saying that's right but that's unfortunately the way a lot of people are. Oh, and if the strip isn't torn, that would be the time to call animal control. If the strip is torn in the morning you might put another one there to see if the person comes back in the evening and if not then that's when to call animal control to check for food and water if you can't see it from the street or sidewalk.