thanks digdirt, before I replied Amy, following digdirt's post I did a search under the username you used for the OP, as although I have great respect for digdirt I alway's check before adding and then actually didn't add until I saw Curt's but having read through your post's, I found his comment funny. under your OP name all on container gardening forum, you posted June 27 09 "what soil mix to use in container gardening" July 8 09 "soil mix to use in container gardening", and March 3rd 10 "need 'soil' recipy for container garden" on the 3rd of July 09 SQ foot garden forum "what type of soil in a square foot box" in less than 9 months, 4 almost identical questions out of only 100 (and you do it on other subjects), either you are on the wind up, you can't be bothered to look up you old replies, or you are suffering from Short term memory loss, (So if you are genuine, start using the search or google search which is better), if you want I will post your search list's for you too see, or you can go away quietly and let us enjoy our knowledge (or lack of in my case) finding and helping. If it hadn't been someone of Digdirt's expertise and long standing going off at you, I would have possibly not even investigated, as it is I did....and believe me Amy, I am not perfect, I have been an arse on here!(big time!) but the frequent advisers on here are forgiving and patient beyond belief, given that they do it, in their own time, to help us idiot's, trying to learn, and asking the same question's day in day out, because as much as you search your question isn't quite asked... Sorry I was getting ranty! but if you are genuine, do a search before asking! especially under your own name! actually I am feeling generous, here's you search list, obviously I haven't access to your e-mail. I mean seriously! 2 turnip spacing questions?? in less than 2 weeks, the gig is up! you had a long run, well done, clap, clap, no encore thanks. Here is a link that might be useful: your post's all five pages, look at the main themes

We plant potatoes as the 1st crop on new garden soil where previously was edge of forest since we're in a clearing in the woods. In full sun locations potatoes would produce more. We deal with our location and climate the best we can. Our rocky clay soil is broken up by the potatoes & mulching, so the next crop grows much better! We have a long, cool wet spring in WA state mostly in 40s & 50s until June-ish and in our shady location the soil stays cool until late June or early July. You would think it would be prime potato growing conditions apart from the dappled shade from tall fir trees. We have a larger harvest when we -- --rotate plant families on a 4 year schedule (remove all volunteer tomatoes or potatoes) --don't lime or manure, but do spread complete organic fertilizer according to the bag or box at planting plus some cured homemade compost --use small (M-L hen's egg sized) certified seed potatoes --chit or presprout potatoes inside --mulch well & often with a mix of straw, dried grass clippings from our lawn with no chemicals, coffee grounds, or shredded paper --set up soaker or sprinkler hoses on top of mulch --patrol for slugs and spread iron phosphate bait Less potatoes when we -- --save seed from previous year --plant in containers (large garbage can with holes, composter, 5 gal black pots, smaller cardboard boxes) --don't supplemental water during any 5 day dry span in spring (our summer drought is a given starting 4th of July, so must water then) Nothing beats a homegrown chemical free potato. We just dug the last of them last week. Hope that helps, Corrine

I, too, had issues with dogs using my hydrangea as a personal urinal. Now I put rocks around them in such a way it makes it uncomfortable for them to stand close enough to do their business. They do still lift and go but I think it keeps it far enough away from the root ball, however. Not sure if you remember my post about "the comeback kid" last year about one hydrangea. Now I can't offer much advice but I tend to agree that location is important. I have an Anabelle, Bella Anna, a paniculata who's name escapes me and 2 Endless summers. Both ES were in an unsheltered spot and are barely coming back from the root ball (since moved one). My Bella Anna and paniculata are both somewhat sheltered are starting to leaf out. Unfortunately the Anabelle was defoliated by a 4 legged slug mid Sept and it isn't showing any life yet (neither are the 3 dogwoods and maple tree that were hit) The other thing I did wrong last year was I fertilized them with a product like osomocote that provides nutrition all summer. After doing that I only got 2 blooms on one plant. I heard not to fertilize them much if at all but thought I knew better :) Since I am an odd person I will also agree that things are better planted odd. SCG

I don't think I have any "secret" tips but I'll throw out a few tidbits about raising each crop. CUCUMBERS: I grow two kinds--slicers and picklers. I like to grow all of them either on a fence, a trellis or a cage because the cukes are easier to find that way. It is amazing how hard it can be to find a green cucumber in all those green leaves if you let the plants run along on the ground. Sometimes I plant a bush variety like Picklebush because bush pickles give maximum productivity in minimal space. You can even grow Picklebush in containers. I don't plant cucumber seeds until the soil temps are at least 60 degrees because they don't germinate well in cold soil. Adequate watering is essential or cucumber growth will stall, so I water well and mulch heavily. I like to pick cucumbers while they are smallish--esp. for pickling. And, be sure to keep the plants well-piecked. If you leave even one cucumber on the plant too long, the whole plant slows down and stops producing. If you only have room for one type, but you want to have both picklers and slicers, plant a picking type and harvest some for slicing too. However, using a slicer as a pickler doesn't usually work. If you want to grow an unusual type, Lemon Cucumber is a great heirloom type that is lemon-yellow at the picking stage, or orangey-yellow if you leave it on the vine too long. CANTALOUPE: Most of the melons we call "cantaloupe" in the USA are actually muskmelons. I grow all my melons (cantaloupe, muskmelon, and all the minor melons) the same way I grow cucumbers--vertically, usually inside tomato cages. You can put a lot more plants in your garden that way and the melons are less likely to rot or have insect damage if they are not lying on the ground. With heavier melons, I make a sling or support for them using either cheesecloth, or knee-high nylon hose. With melons, overwatering and overfeeding can dilute the flavor, so I take care not to overwater, especially once fruitset is occurring. If the plants are overwatered after melons have formed and are ripening, the flavor can be awful (as in, there is no flavor) and the texure will be poor. So, water 'em while the plants are growing and flowering, and then be really careful not to water too much. I don't feed mine at all--just improve the soil by adding organic matter every year and let the soil feed the plants. Often, people think their fruit is poorly flavored because their melons cross with cukes or other cucurbits, but that is not what happens--it is the overwatering/overfeeding. Melons perform best on loose, friable, sandy loam or silty loam although they perform well for me in highly improved clay, esp. in raised beds. I prefer the flavor of heirloom melons, but grow both heirlooms and hybrids in order to have a nice variety. If you are buying plants or seed, any of the Hale's, Hale's Best, Hale's Best Jumbo, etc. are great. For heirloom melons, you can buy seed of many. Some of my favorites are Collective Farm Woman, Canoe Creek Colossal, Piel de Sapo, Charentais, Eden's Gem, Pike (best performer in clay soil that I've ever seen), Nutmeg, Prescott Fond Blanc, Early Frame Prescott, and Golden Jenny. Honestly, though, I've never tasted an heirloom melon I didn't like. SQUASH: Lots of people overplant squash. I usually plant only 1 or 2 yellow crookneck plants and 1 or 2 zucchini plants at a time, although I will succession plant new plants later in the summer as the original plants play out. I tend to plant these at the edge of the corn bed because they are huge monsters and can get quite large. The key to good production is to check the plants daily and harvest promptly. Failure to do so can leave you with very large, tough crookneck or straightneck squash or very large, often watery zucchinis were poor texture. People who grow for "size" often don't get the best flavor. I usually plant squash only after the cold nights are over. Squash plants like a lot of water too, but are prone to foliar disease, so soaker hoses or drip lines or watering by hand at the ground level and keeping water off the foliage works best. Winter squash, including pumpkins, like really warm soil and I don't plant them until the soil temperature has been at least 70 degrees for three days in a row. Most winter squash and pumpkins take up a lot of space, so mine go on the edges of the corn bed where they can ramble and roam to their heart's content. There are a very limited number of bush types of winter squash and pumpkins, or mini-pumpkins, if you have space issues. These plants get foliar diseases like powdery mildew very easily, so I won't plant them until June if April and May are very rainy, and that often helps keep disease to a minimum. Squash bugs are a common pest. I try to keep these to a minimum by checking the backs of leaves for eggs and removing and destroying those eggs if found, and by hand-picking and drowning any squash bugs I see. Squash vine borers are your plants' number one enemy and covering the plants with floating row covers (and pollinating flowers by hand since pollinators cannot get inside the row covers) helps keep their damage to a minimum. JALAPENOS: Peppers are grown pretty much the same as tomatoes, to which they are related. I always start with transplants. If direct-seeded, peppers won't produce until late summer or fall. I set out my peppers about two to three weeks after tomatoes, or about the first couple of weeks in May since cool temperatures can permanently stunt them. Peppers set best when nightimes are above 60 degrees and daytimes are below 80, so May really is their perfect month for growing, flowering and setting fruit. If you are getting lots of blooms by the end of May or even in the first couple of weeks in June before the true summer heat arrives you'll have a great yield. Hot peppers set fruit better all summer long than sweet peppers, but both will set well in the fall. Pepper plants are brittle and break easily, so I either stake them to 2'-3' tall stakes, or use the small, cheap tomato cages you buy at the store, to support them. Even just a heavy load of ripening peppers can snap the plants in half, and support helps prevent that. Pepper fruits themselves get sunscald easily, so I often plant them where they get full sun from sunup until about 1 or 2 p.m., then shade until about 4 or 5 p.m., and then a little sun late in the day and they produce just fine, with less sunscald too. Sweet peppers are often harvested green, but I like to let them turn their mature color before I harvest--it takes a couple of weeks more, but the flavor is 1000% better. I usually grow sweet peppers that mature to red, orange, yellow, purple and chocolate. Peppers are water guzzlers and will sulk if you let them get too dry, so I like to water deeply and never let the peppers wilt. If they wilt, they do not bounce back as well as other plants do after wilting. By the way, hot weather seems to make peppers hotter, so the hotter your summer weather, the hotter and better your pepper flavor. WATERMELONS: These take up a lot of space. A whole lot. So, I tend to go with smaller space saver types. The best melon I've ever grown and eaten are Blacktail Mountain, bred by Glenn Drowns, who owns Sandhill Preservation Center. The seed is available from Sandhill and from other sources too like Seed Savers Exchange and Baker Creek. They are small melons with dark red flesh and dark green rinds and superb flavor. Other small bush-type melons that I grow in my garden include Sugar Baby, Bush Sugar Baby and Yellow Doll. Like cantaloupe and muskmelons, too much water ruins the flavor and too much fertilizer, especially nitrogen, causes white heart--which is white spots with no flavor in the middle of the melon. So, avoid chemical fertilizers and don't overwater. Melons put out their vegetative growth first but you ought to see flowers appearing about 8 to 10 weeks after the plants are transplanted, or after the seeds sprout. If you use transplants instead of seeds, and you set them out at the right time (soil temps should be at least 70 degrees), you'll get blooms and melons about 2 weeks earlier from transplants than from direct-seeding. PEAS: I don't know if you mean cool-season peas like green peas, sugar snap peas or snow peas, or if you mean southern peas like black-eyed peas, crowder peas or cream peas, so let me know which ones you're growing. OKRA: Okra is one of the true heat lovers and goes best if planted fairly late. Okra sprouts quickly if direct-seeded in warm (75-90 degree) soil. Generally one planting is all you need (unless deer get into the garden and eat your plants down to the ground) and the plants produce all summer long. Keep the okra picked or production shuts down. I pick when the pods they are 3", 4" or maybe 5" long. If you let them get longer, they'll be very tough. Once okra is producing, I pick every day or every other day. It only takes about 4 to 7 days for okra to go from the flower stage to being ready-to-pick. I think okra is a gorgeous plant and like to plant it in my mixed border along with flowers and herbs--especially when planting the ones with red pods. If space is an issue (the plants can get 6' to 8' to 10' tall), you can grow the dwarf ones like "Baby Bubba" or "Little Lucy". Both look wonderful in flower beds or pots as well as in the veggie garden. In deer country, it is almost impossible to grow okra unless it is protected by a fence. Dawn