Nice test but at best your results will be inconclusive. Your sample size is far to small to be able to make any sort of accurate statistical conclusion. You need at least 9 plants (3 of each) for your results to be statistically meaningful. With a sample that small you cannot rule out the possibility of random chance. It will be interesting to see which does better, but all you can conclude is that you need to test further. Now if you can find more people to join you in this test then you will be in business! I think it is wonderful to experiment with gardening concepts. However, I don't want you to think can stick it to Al based on the results of the test as you have it laid out now. I know of Al but I have not read his work. I can promise you that no amount of holes will speed the draining process of the pot. The reason is because of the capillary action of the soil that holds water in. Water will only drain from a pot where there is enough water for the gravitational force to overpower capillary action. Once you reach that equilibrium point the soil will stop draining. What the wick does is uses capillary action to your favor and pulls more water than gravity alone can out of the pot. I am sure Al knows this and he has great science backing his claims. But again it is always important to question scientific claims, because science wouldn't be science if the results weren't reproducible.

Yes - they are part of the Sweet William group. I didn't notice until after I posted that it was the wrong direction. Still, a great looking plant that I highly recommend and a true perennial (unlike many Sweet Williams).

Nice pics of a variety of brooms. Even with tiny brooms, it seems like the communal thing to do to: 1. share scion wood with other broomers 2. leave the existing broom in the tree where it is available for others on future scion-quests also, so it has the chance to set more cones in future years. Is collecting the whole broom analogous to killing the chicken to get the egg, or perhaps the goose to get the golden egg? ....not to mention leaving evidence for future researchers. Brooming is great sport, isn't it? If you do decide to get a haircut, please don't cut off your whole head. Cheers, Charley

Mary, Last week my tomato plants looked fairly good, all things considered, and I was pleased that the Daconil had more or less kept the foliar diseases from getting worse. Then, this week after the rain had gone away and the heat set in, some plants went downhill really fast. Now I have plants heavily loaded with fruit (which is, finally, breaking color more quickly in the heat and sunshine) but with foliage that looks like it is on its last legs. And, spider mites popped up by the billions. I'm already at the point where I'm just biding my time and harvesting fruit and counting the days until I can start yanking out the most awful looking plants. I spent yesterday stripping sick foliage off of the tomato plants. What was most interesting was that in some cases, the diseases seem to run by variety. For example, both Vorlon and True Black Brandywine only had grey mold and nothing else. Nebraska Wedding tended to have powdery mildew and alternaria. Many of the hybrids types have either Early Blight or Alternaria. A few heirloom types have gray leaf spot. I guess I should be happy that every variety doesn't have all of the diseases at once considering how prolonged the wet period was when I couldn't keep their foliage dry for anything. Pepper plants growing right beside all of them are fine. Most other plants in the garden are fine, though tons of trees outside the garden have all kinds of fungal issues on their foliage, and weeds outside the garden have powdery mildew. Virtually every leaf on every tomato plant has spider mites. They went from a pretty small amount on the tomatoes (though the bush beans had tons) to huge populations overnight. Many of the organic things I might spray for spider mites cannot be sprayed in high heat, meaning at temperatures of 90 or above, and we're already there. Usually, if the plants are healthy, they can largely outlast the spider mite infestation which will peak in July most years and decline, but I don't think tomato plants with the gamut of foliar diseases will outlast the spider mites. I guess I'll find out. Last year, the plants did recover from the spider mite infestation after a few weeks of it. I have new tomato plants started for fall too and just in the nick of time! While standing and looking at the plants last evening, I ruefully said to myself "and THIS is why we plant fresh tomato plants for fall", because sometimes I forget how quickly plants can go downhill at this time of the year. I am not complaining. If all the fruit on the plants now ripen and no other fruits form, we'll have far more tomatoes than we ever could eat fresh and probably more than I want to can, freeze or dehydrate. It isn't that our harvest is destroyed by these issues. It is just that the plants don't look so great any more. I can kinda relate. I bet I don't look too great when I drag myself in from the hot garden after being out there for a few hours. I've already worked outside for a couple of hours and came in to cool off. You shouldn't have to come indoors to cool off at 9:15 a.m., should you? It seems too early in the summer for the heat to feel so awful so early. If this keeps up, I'll spend July hibernating indoors. Last night I was out shortly before sunset putting the chickens up for the night and had just walked down the gravel driveway about 3 minutes before Tim drove up it. He stopped, paused, backed up, pulled forward again.....trying to run over a copperhead and kill it. There's a talent involved in killing a venomous snake by running over it because you have to brake hard and stop right on it, or it can survive having the car just roll over it. Usually he nails them, but this one didn't die and got away. We'll never know if that copperhead was there 3 minutes earlier as I walked by, but it is scary to me to think it might have been...and I was watching too. I even had a flashlight though I didn't really need one yet. It just makes it easier to see the snakes in the fading twilight. It was near the giant driveway puddle that has been like a small lake ever since all that rain fell. Well, today the puddle should dry up, so maybe that area will be less attractive then to snakes. Amy, I've hardly watered at all this year, but I am going to have to start watering the containers. I really got spoiled last year when the rain lasted through the first week of July and I didn't have to start watering them until summer was half over. I saw wilted leaves at the top of a cucumber plant this morning and my first thought was that it couldn't be too dry. Maybe it was too wet? Then, I came to my senses and realized I was looking at the first symptom of bacterial wilt. Since there is no cure for BW on cucumbers, and because cucumber beetles spread it from plant to plant, those three wilting leaves probably are the beginning of the end for these cucumber plants. I'm not happy about it, but it is fairly common here, so I always just grow them for as long as they last and then plant a succession crop as far away as possible, but not until all the BW-affected plants are pulled and composting and buried under a layer of something else on the compost pile. I grow County Fair pickling cukes because they are tolerant of bacterial wilt, but they are not completely resistant to it. So, maybe it won't spread quickly, but it inevitably will spread. When that happens, I'll be okay with it. I already have Sugar Baby watermelons growing nearby so that they can spread and climb the trellis after the cucumbers are done. It is funny. All through May and earliest June it didn't feel like summer was close at all, and then, BAM! The rain ended, the sun came out, the heat arrived, the air quality alerts began for some metro areas, and the summer pests and diseases mushroomed. We never really catch a break in summer here. It's just a matter of how early the summer issues begin and how bad they get. Oh, and it is mosquito city here. They are waiting for me every morning when I come out the exterior door. I hate them. Dawn