As said in U-Pick world can't have u-pick without strawberries. I enter in class in 2003 Hydroponic's I can't remember town but was north of Kissimee fla. on U.S. 301 thats not much help but all have part training was 2 field trips one orange grower with U-Pick orange and strawberries. They where hot houses 2 large ones stacks where 9 high on pole top 3 or 4 boxes did real well water and fertlizer mix seem to run low in 5 6 7 boxes and almost no fertlizer going to stack 8 & 9 in all pole stacks. Sunlite was problem because shaded side hand turning was done once day. So school of coarse sold 5 stack for home use I jump on kit pump brackets pots purlite fill pots fertlizer like mircalgro timer so set number and time day wet roots. I got 550 gallon agri tank put in shead to stop alga from growing out sunlite. Now still have timer and 550 tank one day while I was away squrriel blowed transformer fuse I lost lower 2 pots plants lack water stunned top 3 pots. There was 35 pots total on 7 poles and planted 4 plug plants per pot 140 plants if don't run water alot to wet bottom plants roots want out bottom pot and hole plants in perlite if tops plants real bushy wind from thunder storm pull plants out pots water does have holding effect on roots if medium get dry on top it blow out top pots to much fruit at one time pull out pots. prunning a constont in Hydroponics ever morning just after fruit set. In this School was day trip to Disney World behind seen college students were doing there internship with hydroponics 6 months duty. Hot house and people there were very interesting but growing one fruit per plant I only like yellow sqaush not other types. You need backup generator system with hydroponics one day no power you lose crop bondful part stawberry fields do in area I was in on black plastic. House houses with color flowers do better with some landscaping cement items ferns for may weddings lol. I saw lady sell million dollars flowers in one day one customer at time some buy small cargo trailer full at time I went there that morning for tomato plants it was full people had go back to get more plants that afternoon got there 3 pm wait until 6 pm to get waited on when you have upick provide large buckets and big carts lol.

A recent update from the person who received the yucca is that it is green and doing well. The transplanted cholla are doing well, of course, but it will be a while before I know if any sacaton survived. We have been making progress but not as quickly as we hoped. (No surprise there! ;-) ) We have the foundation blocks for the outside beds in place up to ground level and filled with dirt. Pavers have been placed, but not yet leveled, between the existing shed and the north edge of the foundation. We have the water and electrical stubbed in. We have the SHCS tubes in place for the outside beds of the east greenhouse and hope to start filling that section soon with the removed dirt. We have removed all planned use of poured concrete from our plans and have made this planned structure possible to remove easily while still unlikely to be blown away. (Mostly due to bolting the foundation via J-bolts to rebar under bond beam cement blocks.) DH will be checking to see what type of permits/inspections we will need for electrical, water, and structures. I suspect that it will be just water and electric. We won't fill in any more until we find out. It is getting hot already so we will be putting in the outside structure and shade cloth before the central shed and greenhouses. That way we can work in the shade. :-)

I had a couple of pink flamingos in my yard for awhile. I named them 'Tongue' and 'Cheek'. They finally died. I think of,embarrassment.

This year I'm trying a new thing - no mulch around the beans. The voles love the mulch, and they avoid open areas. So far so good, but it's hard to know what the pressure is this year. It feels very wrong not to have mulch and makes watering and weeding frustrating, but at least the plants are living. I have also used small water bottles with the bottoms cut off and slit up the side to cover over the bottom of the vines (worked reasonably well, but sometimes they would just snip off the top above the water bottle). I string natural twine for the beans to climb up and use bicycle spokes as garden stakes for them, but it doesn't seem to matter to the voles to have the stakes in the ground. I think that was because they just travelled under the mulch, above the soil. When I use traps I always catch at least one unwanted creature - even with traps right in tunnels and covered. There's a brown wren around here that really likes to go into tunnels and it makes me so sad to trap one that I have stopped trapping. Sometimes if I get the timing right, during a winter thaw the tunnels are very visible and I can trap some voles then - they are more desperate for the bait in the traps in winter, as well. But I'm not sure how much good winter trapping does, since more probably just move in during springtime. One last thing I tried - pile up deer netting all around the base of the plants, like a huge tangle. It seemed to make the voles reconsider entering the area.