Oldryder, The only thing I'd change is the aluminum sulfate. The preferred acidifier is sulfur. Get it in the ground now for next spring. If you use a sulfate, use ammonium, not aluminum. I believe the key to good blueberry production is plenty of organic matter in the soil. Be prepared to mulch heavily once they're planted and keep new plantings well watered. Dry spells can be the death of young blueberries. My favorite mulch is chopped oak leaves--tho many prefer wood chips, pine straw, or sawdust. Brook

The real question is, what kind of soil do you have NOW? Bananas aren't terribly picky about soil but will do best in a soil that well-drained and stays neither too wet nor too dry, and has lots of organic matter in it. Probably the worst is soil that is sandy and/or low in nutrients. I wouldn't recommend trying them in 100% compost but I can't think of any soil--sand, clay, or anything in between--where bananas wouldn't benefit from the addition of lots of organic matter. Maybe a peat bog, but I suspect that's not what you have in Texas! Aside from soil, what bananas need to grow big and fast are lots of sun, lots of water (but NOT waterlogged soil!) and lots of fertilizer, especially nitrogen and potassium.

Sheri, Oh, it is drooling time! I can almost taste the tomatoes now. Sungold, Persimmon, and Cherokee Chocolate: if you get ripe tomatoes from only these three plants, you'll still think it is the best tomato year ever, taste-wise! Dr. Wyche's has always done better for me than Kellogg's Breakfast, but then, I have grown DWY for 5 or 6 years and KB for only 2, so Dr. Wyche's has had more opportunity to excell. Dr. Wyche's is a pretty heavy producer, and quite tasty. It also shows great disease resistance. Black Zebra is a very attractive-looking tomato, but I think Black Pineapple (which isn't really black at all, LOL) tastes much better. I have found that every striped tomato I've ever grown has looked pretty, and tasted no better than average. (sigh) Well, I take that back--the one exception is Indian Stripe. Momotaro is probably better than Carmello, but then, your taste buds and your growing conditions are different from mine, so you might find the opposite to be true. I do not think you'll be disappointed in Momotaro though. I haven't grow Alamo. We love Sweet Million and Black Plum, which is our postal carrier's favorite tomato ever since I started sharing them with her several years ago. You're right--I wasn't wild about Japanese Black Trifele, but lots of people love it, so maybe it was just me. Your Mystery Surprise is probably either a tomato that "lost its label" during the seedling growing process, or is from a new grow-out that DJ is trialing and perhaps hasn't even named yet. (I think mysteries and surprises are fun!) Yellow Platfoot Brandywine is yummy, and so is Black Pear. Brandy Boy is the best. If I could only grow one variety, this might be it. There are a few that taste better, but NONE of them can match BB's heavy production and disease resistance. And, even though there are a few that I think taste better than BB, none of them is loads and loads better, only a little better. I don't think I have grown Black Pearl, but isn't it a smallish tomato, more like Black Cherry? I think it is the Burpee hybrid that is said to taste more like a Concord grape after it has been refrigerated? If it even comes close to tasting like Black Cherry, it will be a real winner. I can tell you are ready to get the plants going. Have fun, but be careful and watch the weather. I feel sure we have another freeze or two to get through before Old Man Winter departs and lets us have Spring. I believe you will have more tomatoes this year than last. Remember that so much of last year.....the excessive rainfall, the continual cloudiness, the cooler-than-usual weather all combined to severely affect tomato production. Conditions like that are beyond our control AND exceptionally rare. This has GOT TO be a better year, right? By the way, my little container-grown Better Bush tomato has now formed a second tomato--it is just about the size of an English pea. I am so worried that a deer or possum will get my first green tomato that I carry this plant inside every single night. (It is a very pampered plant at this point. Today I picked up a lady bug and carried her over to the plant and sat her on a leaf, just so she could cruise around and hunt for any bugs that might be lurking.) I am SO looking forward to the first ripe tomato this year. No matter the size of the tomato, we always make BLT sandwiches out of the first ripe one. I am going to order the world's best bacon from the New Braunsfels Smokehouse just so we'll have it for the first BLT of 2008. (Most of the time we eat healthy and watch our fat intake and cholesterol, but BLT time is special and calls for a total disregard of the healthy eating rules!) Keep me posted on how planting goes. I hope to be out in the garden a lot the next few days if the weather cooperates. We are under all kinds of storm watches today, tonight and tomorrow, but so far everything is going either a couple of counties west of us OR a couple of counties east of us, and that's OK with me. Dawn

I returned this morning from what has become a twice weekly run to rid the yard here at home of organic wastes and prep the soil in a garden a few miles away. Today's haul was 7 5-gallon buckets of green "stuff." I pulled the spent China aster plants out of part of 1 of the beds in the cutting garden, went to work with the shovel, and buried the asters and the green stuff under 8 inches of dirt. Several weeks ago, I was busy doing this in a bed in the little veggie garden where the potatoes had been harvested earlier. That bed is now growing fall crops of mustard greens, bok choy and lettuce. I like doing things like this even if it takes all that shovel work. There's no compost pile to move around - well, there's one at another garden. By digging out only about 25 square feet at a time, I make steady progress without killing myself and all the material is instantly gotten rid of. Eight inches of soil is adequate for any small plant. By the '10 growing season, decomposition will be well underway and any plant will live for quite a good number of weeks in the top of the bed before its roots ever reach the 'o9 organic matter I've been burying. I'll add fertilizer to that top 8 inches in the Spring. Also, by the time I'm done with whatever beds I can finish this year - the garden will have a well-cultivated look going into the snows of Autumn. Steve Here is a link that might be useful: from a few years ago, with a few photo's