Well I have 25 pounds of Kosher Dills doing their thing in 2 different stone crocks slowly fermenting away. I am fixing to start making cucumber relish some sweet and some spicy. ajsmama thanx for the link,looks like it will be an interesting read. Dave I saw most of those recipes and they weren't what I was looking for. I never even heard of the NCHFP. But than I am new to gardening and even newer to canning so that shouldn't be much of a surprise. I thank you for that link and I have bookmarked it for future use. akRoach I have also bookmarked your link for future use also thank you for it. Carol your link has also been saved so that I can explore it later on. I want to thank all of you for your replies and links, I am slowly learning there is much MUCH more for me to learn and I appreciate any and all help that is passed on to me on that road. As I tell people all the time "I know just enough to be dangerous to myself".

Justine, healthy plants makes it easier for the plant to shrug off and overcome pests and disease. Baby tomato plants can't shrug it off so easy, and some pests just like to go for the good stuff ... i.e. the new leaf growth or blooms. No blooms means no fruit. As your property becomes more organic, you can have more and more beneficial insects come in. However, your close neighbors can have a negative impact on that. As you noted, I think you are right that your passion vine death was from herbicide. Your pole beans, what type/variety? Has the temperature really dropped enough down south for your variety? The little green worm is the larvae stage of some moth. I'm not sure which. Control is (1) picking (2) spray - BT & Spinosad (3) sticky traps. Hopefully Silvia will come along and help me out, because I don't know all that much. Here is what I do, I tour my garden every morning, starting with the baby tomatoes. I'm looking for curled up leaves and sticky stuff sticking leaves and stems together. Sometimes you can see frass (poo-poo) around, and sometimes you can barely see little bitty strands of web stuff gluing the leaf curl. Ideally, I just pick off everything sticky. If the plant is too small, I carefully open up the leaves and stuck together stuff and try to rub off the bad stuff. As the morning progress and the sweat starts rolling on my glasses my ability to see closeup deteriorates. This is when I just start picking. Anything I pick gets taken to the pavement and squished. PS - Nice blog! Hope this wall'o'text helps you. Lessons on Picassa another day. That is where your blogger photos are stored. If you can make your way into Picassa we can probably show you how to get your photos on here. ~dianne

Looks like a caterpillar to me....a mature pickleworm, to be exact. They infest cucurbits of all kinds, into the fruits and stems, even the leaves. The young caterpillars are green with black dots; perhaps that's what you saw earlier?

Glad you found them! Just be careful because, as I learned last year, they will take over very quick. Once you start getting fruit, check it DAILY. they will destroy stuff quick. The way I handled them last year was by paper bagging the fruit. I put a paper bag over one of my cantaloupes as soon as it got pollinated and I was able to save it from them. I also found that if you catch the worm early, you can take a hose and put it over the hole and wash them out. I would only do that though if I knew they weren't very far in the fruit. I don't know if you can do this now that they have started, but my plan this year is to cover my cukes and melons every night to prevent the moths from laying eggs. It will be aggravating and get old quick, but it beats what happened to me last year. Yes, im still a bit bitter from last year ;)