Just wanted to update my List of Wants thanks everyone Seeds I'm looking for: Juane Flamme Tomato Rainbow Chard Tromboncino Squash Baby Butternut Biker Billy Jalapeno Bush Delicata Ambrosia Cantaloupe

Reed, For me it is a choice about health. I'd rather have blemished food any day of the week than food sprayed with chemicals. And, like Helen, I have plentiful wildlife and don't want to do anything that will harm it. My dad used all kinds of chemicals in the 1960s and 1970s but by the 1990s had mostly given them up and, if anything, his garden's health was better after he almost totally eliminated pesticide usage than it was before. He still kept a bag of Sevin dust in his shed and might have used it occasionally, though I don't remember him using it in the 1990s and beyond. I kind of think he held on to it as a sort of security blanket just in case he might need it again. I have found that if I treat my garden as an ecosystem, it is chock-full of all sorts of living creatures, both good and bad, but about 75% of the time the good bugs and other creatures keep the bad bugs under control. The remainder of the time I try to ignore the pest damage as much as possible, and then use eco-friendly methods like hand-picking the bugs to gain some control over them. I'm in a wild rural area surrounded by thousands of acres of rangeland in its natural state so it would be impossible to wipe out all the garden pests even if I tried, and I don't try. I practically live in my garden, at least until the worst heat arrives, and I don't want to be in a chemical-treated garden. Different strokes for different folks, though, and I know some people are perfectly happy using synthetic pesticides in their gardens and yards. Helen, One of the great joys of being out in the garden is my enjoyment of all the little creatures out there with me. Sometimes the skinks do startle me in early spring, but I'd rather have them in the garden than have the venomous snakes. Turtles provide a surprising amount of pest control too, though turtles are less common in my garden than frogs and toads, which are simply everywhere. Every year we do have a turtle or two live in the garden and eat potato bugs. It is the easiest method of Colorado Potato Beetle control I've ever used. Susan, I haven't seen one in several years, so I am hoping that horrible summer was an aberration. Neighbors within a mile of us saw some last year, but they are significantly closer to the river so they always have more wildlife than we do. Venomous snakes also haven't been as bad in 2011 and 2012 as they were prior to that. I still see them, but mostly I've seen the water moccasins move into the lily pond after the local native creeks and ponds dry up, and haven't seen as many copperheads as usual. The timber rattler population seems unchanged, but I only encounter them maybe 4 or 5 times a year. I hate having the venomous snakes around, but suspect we'll have just as many 20 years from now as we have now. Actually, out here in the rural areas we need snakes and lots of them or we'd be totally overrun by field mice, voles, pocket gophers, etc. It is just that I don't want the venomous snakes in the yard or garden where they might bite a person or domestic pet. They can roam roughly 13 acres of our property however, whenever or wherever they please, but if the venomous snakes are found on the acre or acre and a half nearest the house, we shoot them. Dawn

@tsheets - I posted a few months ago on a couple of the different hab/fatali recipes we were fooling around with, including some cookies. Here's a link to that post: http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load/pepper/msg0913133225559.html The recipes in that post use habs, but we mostly use fatalis in our desert dishes now, when we have them available. The absolute best thing we ever made with fatalis or habs were fatali-almond caramels. I haven't poste pics or recipes for that, but I will one of these days. We can only have them 2 or 3 times a year, because we eat all of them until they are gone, as soon as they're done, and that isn't good for the waistline.

I would suggest adding Gypsy peppers for the sweet. I will not go without planting them. This will be year 3 I plant them in my garden. They handle the heat better than the bells do for me. They out produced bell by a rate of 10 to 1 both years I planted them. They stay pretty compact for the most part. I had one that grew tall that I tied to the side of a tomato cage. (Note I buy the transplants from Bonnie. Every one of them gave me my $3.58 worth, and then some.) I only do seeds for the ones I can not get transplants for to save space in my germinating area. For a mild hot MexiBell did great for me last year. It was highly productive. Some fruits were a bit small in the worst of the heat of summer. Unlike the sweet bell they ripened well with the still glossy skin, and nice crunch when biting into them. When the heat stunted them they were a bit bigger than golf balls. When the heat broke they got up to tennis ball size. (Another from Bonnie.) The only sweet I am planting from seed this year is California Wonder. It did ok for the start of the season. Once the heat wave broke it gave me 14 nice sized bell peppers that were so tasty. They were great stuffed with rice, ground pork, bacon crumbles, and cheese.