Mylu- "You stated you wanted to wet the soil first. That would draw your worms up to the surface only to get cooked?" Certainly don't want to cook the worms, I was reading up on solar sterilization & they wrote "Solarization is effective only if done in wet soil. The field must therefore be irrigated until a depth of 50 to 60 cm is at field capacity before mulching." http://agri3.huji.ac.il/~katan/applic1.html I assumed this was to spread the heat through the soil & would therefore be adaptable to the closed greenhouse thermal sterilization we are considering. Do you think worms would head south again when it got too hot? 'We start with premixed "steril" mix but we grow container stock. You're out of my area of expertise. But I think nature will take care of itself on replacing the benificials.' Good news, maybe a good amount of natural fertalizer each bed. 'Still don't think running the heater would have much effect other then maybe at night.' We'll try it at night & let you know, sun during the day. 'What really needs to happen is for you to ID the issue you have now so you know what direction to take. ' Agreed. We sampled before when our plant disease problem first occured but the plants didn't test positive for anything, another tissue sample is at Cornell now. Since we have the downtime, we want to get the greenhouse in shape. SB- I haven't come across a fan setup like it either, just looking online but still, it just doesn't make sense. I think it was a case of the farmer we bought the house from had tomatoes growning with that setup so don't mess with what works? Another explanation I heard was to reduce the cooling the plants experience in the winter, our latitude heat is definitely the minor problem (USUALLY) compared to cold - since the outside air must be pulled in / mixed with the warm air at the top of the house, the plants don't get chilled? cactus- great point about the planks, I'll go out & check if they are PT right after this. Very interesting about your garden. Could you tell if the car parts had been dumped with fluids inside etc? Tin cans & china should be fairly benign, but maybe high lead levels in the china? In the car parts - they used to use lead for collision repair. Shudder. FYI our tomatoes appeared & tasted great until the very rapid disease onset, I don't think there is a dump underneath as most of the soil in the house area was turned prior to it installation. Charlie

Hi Cole. After talking with several people, that have used the black poly pipes for hoops, they said they did not have problems with them getting too hot. As far as your observation on my evaporative cooling system goes, I think you are not familiar with how an evaporative cooling system works. It is strictly a pass through system. It is not like a recirculatory refrigerated cooling system where you are trying to seal a place up as tight as possible, and the same inside air is recirculated through the cooler over and over again. You must have constant air flowing in and out of a house for an evaporative cooling system to work. Here in the south everyone used to use evaporative coolers to stay cool in the summer. I used one for years myself. The way my cooling system is designed to work is basic science. The exhaust fans will exhaust the hot air which is rising to the top of the GH and this will cause a vacuum which will pull air in from any available hole. I have sealed every hole possible other then the evaporative panels, so the large majority of air will entering through them. The air that will enter through the evaporative panels will be a lot cooler then the air inside the GH and will naturally fall (hot air rises, cold air falls). This cooler air will settle along the ground of the GH keeping the plants cooler. As this air heats up it will rise to the top and be replaced by the cooler air coming in through the panels. You see, the exhaust fans will never be exhausting cool air, this defies the laws of physics. The object here is not to create a uniform temperature inside the GH from top to bottom, but only to keep the lower few feet cooler. When I say cooler, I do not mean 50 degrees here, I mean less then 100 degrees (hopefully around 90 degrees). In the end, I will end up with a temperature difference inside the GH. The upper air will be hotter then the lower air. There is no question here that there will be a temperature difference. The question is, how much of a difference it will be. Will it be 5 degrees or 30 degrees. There are too many variables involved to calculate this now, so I will just have to wait and see how it goes and report back here with the readings when I get them. Unfortunately, this will have to wait until next summer. If in the end, my system proves to be ineffective at keeping the lower part of the GH cooler, I will go back to the drawing board.

Hubs and I each have a Kindle, and we both love them! We are both avid readers, so our Kindles get a lot of use. When we travel, we always take books with us, and the books that Hubs reads are generally hard-bound, so bringing three or four of his books along makes for a heavy and bulky carry-on bag. But our Kindles will hold at least 1,500 books (each) in a nifty device that weighs about 8 ounces. It's so easy and convenient to have the Kindle with you at all times. If you have to wait at the doctor's office, you aren't stuck reading really old magazines that aren't of any interest to you (sorry, but Field and Stream isn't on my "must read" list); if you're stuck waiting for the bridge (in Sacramento, we have the Tower Bridge, which goes up/down, and the I Street Bridge, which turns) to allow river boats to pass, you've got something with you to read to pass the time (waiting for the I Street Bridge is at least a 15-minute wait), etc. When you're reading a book, and you turn off the Kindle, when you turn it back on again, you're right where you left off. If you leave that book and go to another, when you return to the first book, you're right where you left off. You can add your own notes/annotations. You can subscribe to magazines and/or newspapers, and they'll be automatically downloaded to your Kindle. You get a free 14-day subscription to the newspapers and magazines, to see if you want to continue with a paid subscription. (You can even get international newspapers!) Now, I'd like to respond to a few things that were written above: "Yes, books cost the same as in store. if the book is available in paperback- paperback price."" Not exactly correct. To tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, the cost of Kindle books can vary widely. Some books actually do cost a little more in the Kindle edition than they do in a print version. But that's relatively rare. Most books are significantly less expensive in the Kindle version, and most of those are less expensive in the Kindle version than in the paperback version. There are a huge number of Kindle books that are $9.99, there are a lot that are more than that - depending on the cost of the print edition; and there are a whole lot that are less than that. Some Kindle books are free (all of the old classics are, but many new ones are, too); some are $1 or $2, some are in the $4 to $7 range, etc. I recently purchased the following: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo - $6.77 The Girl who Played with Fire - $7.59 The Girl who Kicked the Hornet's Nest - $9.99 By the way, those prices are the same for the Barnes & Noble Nook. "You can share books/magazines with up to 6 other Kindles or PC's. PC app is included." Yes, you can "share" books/magazines with up to 6 other Kindles or computers, but only if those other Kindles are registered to the same account. My husband and I each have a Kindle, but mine is registered to my Amazon account and my husband's is registered to his Amazon account. We cannot share books/magazines between our Kindles. The PC app isn't exactly "included" when you get a Kindle. You can download - for free - the Kindle application for your computer/laptop, BlackBerry, MAC, Android, iPad/iPhone; but, again, your content will only show up in your account so you can't transfer it to a Kindle registered to another account. But, I can take our laptop and read anything of my husband's just by going to his stuff on it. :-) If you read a few pages of any book on, say, your BlackBerry, then you go to the Kindle, the Kindle will be automatically set to where you left off reading on the BlackBerry. "Back-lit for easy reading, even in direct sunlight -- only reader with this feature." Yes, the Kindle can very easily be read in direct sunlight. Absolutely not correct that it is backlit. If you want to read your Kindle in the dark, you will need an accessory light for it. Regarding text-to-speech on the Kindle -- it is not available on all Kindle books. But, when you look at the description for any of Kindle books, it will tell you if the text-to-speech is enabled. So, if you have a book with the text-to-speech feature and you want to use it, you simply press the Aa key (this is the one you use when you want to change the font size). You will then get a window which, in addition to allowing you to change the font size as well as the screen orientation (portrait to landscape), allows you to turn the text-to-speech ON, and you can also select whether you want to use the default male voice, or the female voice. You can also accept the default speed, or make it faster or slower. There are little speakers built in (look at the bottom of the back of the Kindle), or you can plug headphones in (port is on the top). You can adjust the volume level by a toggle switch on the upper right side of the Kindle. When you are using the text-to-speech feature, the "pages" of the book are automatically turned. You can also load MP3 songs on your Kindle and listen to them, but I haven't done that because if I want to listen to music, I'll use my MP3 player...

Jannie, are you close enough to another county to check that library system? That might be the way to go. As someone who tends to be a critical reader, I find it useful to check the negative reviews on Amazon. If they say the book is badly in need of an editor (or assorted other complaints), I know I won't enjoy it. The positive reviews could be sincere, or they could be written by friends of the author. That sort of thing is done all the time.