Hi Sheepie! Lots of rain has been falling north and northwest of us--has it been raining at your place the last couple of days? Hank, I've never used dental floss, but then I cage my tomatoes and don't generally have to tie anything. I just poke the ends of the branches back inside the cages when they try to "escape". I use various types of material in the garden to tie plants to fences, stakes or other supports, including jute twine, cotton twine, green velcro ties bought in a roll at the garden center, and old panty hose. I am a little concerned that something as thin as dental floss might cut little grooves into tender green plant tissue, though. Sheri, I think I will do another post on bugs in the garden in general, but let me say a couple of things quickly here. 1) Spiders are the absolute best thing to have in the garden because they are there for one reason and one reason alone and that is to eat insects. The spiders are your friend! Well, one year I had black widows in the garden, and I had to get rid of them, but other harmless spiders took their place and that was fine. 2) If you have a lot of pest bugs in the garden, you need more bugs and not less. Are you seeing any lady bugs or green lacewings? If so, that is great. Like spiders, the lady bugs and green lacewings are there to eat pest bugs. I bought those little bags or cartons of lady bugs at nurseries several years in a row and released them into my garden. I now have a healthy population of ladybugs and no longer have to buy any. The ladybugs and the green lacewings (I only had to release them one year to build a good population) leep most pests under control. 3) Most ants in general are good for the garden. They scavenge and remove dead bugs, bug eggs, etc. Some of our tiny native ants prey upon imported fire ants. I have two harvester ant beds right outside my garden and they are a huge help to me. I do treat with Safer organic fire ant bait for fire ants in the garden. Try to think of ants as an important part of the natural pest control system. 4) If your tomatoes have obvious insect bites on them, I would look for green tomato hornworms (I have had one monster-sized one strip an entire plant bare this week, including eating most of 4 tomatoes that were the size of tennis balls) or for stinkbugs. It is just about stinkbug time here. 5) Crickets and grasshoppers are a very complicated problem. I'll go into them on a separate post specifically about them, so it will be easy for someone to find later on if they are doing a 'search' of this forum. 6) Flies are a nuisance. I have never worried about them or tried to get rid of them, but then I am in horse and cattle ranch country where the flies outnumber the humans about a billion to one. 7) Caterpillars are complicated. The easy way to deal with them organically is to use Bt, a bacteria that kills any caterpillar, moth or butterfly that comes into contact with it. Bt is an organic product and is often found in products labeled 'Caterpillar Killer'. Because I love the butterflies and moths, I quit using Bt several years ago. Whether to use BT or not is an individual choice and I respect anyone's right to use it to rid their landscape of caterpillars. I prefer to not use it on our property, though, and just handpick caterpillars that have become a problem. It is easy to see bugs in the garden and get panicky and want to get rid of them all. I understand that. I have been there myself. When I was a young child, my dad sprayed DDT and other poisons to rid his garden of bugs. When I was a teenager, my dad sprayed religiously with Kelthane to get rid of the spider mites on his tomatoes. When I was a young woman in my 20s, with a family, home and garden of my own, my dad used Sevin dust as a multi-purpose bug killer. I tried his methods when I was in my mid- to late-20s and found they really didn't work. I started looking for a better way. It took me a few years, but I finally got it right. I'll describe it in the post I write in a few minutes about bugs. I'm not saying my way is the best way, but it is the best way for me and for all the critters who share this piece of land my family calls home. Dawn

OK - I thought the PH reading might have been quite too far acidic based on how well other things have done in the same soil (different location in the yard) and the meter was well, crappy. I have not done a legit soil sample (I'm lazy, yeah) however... I did still have a jar of soil in water I used to gauge the soil particle consistency. (Laziness might have paid off) I saw it sitting around after these responses and decided to try this out. I shook the jar, which has been sealed since I took the dirt out, and divided the portions equally in two containers. You might guess what happened next. Baking Soda into one - Vinegar into the other. Neither of the samples reacted before or after agitation, except for the ghost of a pop in the cup with vinegar added, but certainly no vigorous reaction. In the spirit of bad science, I added a little of the opposite to each, and got the expected fizz. This can't possibly mean that my soil is close to PH neutral, can it? I figure I'm missing something here. I will certainly try and educate myself on legitimate fertilization as well. I hadn't really thought about the hard water we have here, and though i was planning on doing the gradual timing as mentioned, looks like i still have quite a bit to research. As far as the stink bugs... they just take bites from everything, leaving puckers on the fruit, which is lame. I think that the large part of my infestation last year was my own fault from bad practice, but that's been amended. The foil sheets are more for bugs that do ground egg-laying. May be an old wives tale, but i've seen chatter that it can help prevent bugs from laying eggs in the roots. but who knows. Either way, I've been using nematodes as well, and that seemed to help. All i have to do now is handle the first wave of cucumber beetle invasion without losing all of my cucurbits again.

Ok, looks like you got a lot of room. My yard is really weird shaped, hard to draw it up but I have strawberries & giant pumpkins at the south, then corn, then peppers separate the corn from tomatoes, and most of my tomato beds run N-S instead of E-W. Kinda like a capital "J" with the top east-west. Top of pic is South. Also on the driveway the last few years not in the pic but about where the park bench is & below it, are 2 more rows of tomatoes, running N-S. Corn earworm/tomato fruitworm can be a problem but I've never had either here, maybe 1 in a tomato about 6 years ago. where are you abouts in NY? If you already planted everything, then there's no changing it now. What type of corn are you growing? Different colors or types (su, se, ss/sh2) should be separated or started a few weeks apart or use widely different maturity dates. Last year I started my corn on the driveway in 3 different increments, one was an extra early, the next was an sh2/ss, and the last was a triplesweet. I grew the varieties in blocks--3 rows/columns of 5 north-south, the next was I think 5 N-S columns of 5, and the last was 4 E-W rows of 7. This year I'm growing strawberries in the corn bed on the driveway and will start Honey Select to the west of the bed, then harvest the June strawberries, then plant How Sweet It Is, a white supersweet. Winds are predominantly from the W-SW so the yellow pollen will be dead by the time the white plants silk. The white corn is later and taller so will be no problems. You must also take into account sunlight, shade/shadows, height, wind direction, etc. As long as your older plants are farther North you shouldn't have a problem--the sun is always south of overhead except later in the day it's more westerly. You may get less sun later in the day on the corn if the tomatoes are tall.

I gave them a Thorough looking over last night... they are Healthy.. i finally am ahead of my Fungus attack from last month.. and they have grown because there were branches sticking out of the cages. they are a Bit of a Lighter green on some of them not the Dark Pretty Green that i would like to see... we had 2 inches of rain last night and none expected till next week after today and tomorrow morning... i am going to fight watering them till next week.. it will be in the 90-98 range till past sunday... so i think that we should see some progress soon... HOPEFULLY! Thank you all for your Input and help! i did pull up one of the smaller ones and the roots were nice an healthy