First thing you should do is get a soil test done. Sounds like the soil is the problem - the organic matter is probably exhausted. The health and consistancy of the soil is the most important thing - if the soil is poor and/or compacted then the roots won't go far or deep. The plants won't get enough water, or be able to draw enough nutrients. You have already seen the results - poor yields, and early setting of seed. Lots of nutrient deficiencies are caused by not enough water to transport the nutrients. In that case, adding extra fertilizer is just going to be a stop-gap effort, and isn't going to help much in the long run. What you do obviously depends on how much time and money you have available for this plot of land. Some things you should look into are: Green Manures. A green manure crop is usually something like soybeans, clover, peas or vetch - these are all legumes and add nitrogen to the soil as well as biomass. Other crops such as millet, alfalfa or buckwheat bring other benefits and are also commonly used. The crop is tilled in or mowed down usually just after flowering. The best way to use a green manure this far north probably is to divide your land into quarters and use only three of the quarters for your food crops. The fourth quarter would be used for the green manure. You would rotate the parcels every year. Many people further south will plant their green manure as a winter cover crop, and use the land the rest of the year. Living mulch. This is a cover crop that is planted in amongst your planned veggies. Vetch or clover is commonly used for this. This helps fix nitrogen, and reduce soil erosion and water loss by creating a layer of living matter over the soil. It also helps supress weeds. This is then tilled in or mowed down after harvesting. You should ask at a local farmers co-op, university agriculture department, feed store, or whatever you have nearby to find out if there are any good green manures, living mulches or cover crops for your area. If they don't know, they'll probably know where you can get the information. The different plants have different requirements, benefits and drawbacks, and aren't ideal everywhere. The best thing you could do for next year would be to have a good layer of organic matter added in the form of manure or compost. Make sure the manure is already aged if you're going to apply it just before planting. I assume that with two acres, you have some way of tilling it in, otherwise you'll have to rent or hire something/someone to do this for you. If you decide not to go with a living mulch, you should still mulch since watering is obviously an issue. Evaporaton of water over a couple of acres is quite substantial, so you want to minimize that loss - the plants need the water badly! Plants that don't get enough water don't produce well. Whatever you use for mulch can be tilled in at the end of the year to add more bio-mass to the soil (or it can be left to decompose on the top of the soil and the worms will eventually bring it down where it's needed). If you've got the time you can jury rig up some kind of drip irrigation too (PVC pipe with holes drilled in it connected up to a rain barrel that you fill with water (and perhaps some sort of soluable fertilizer when needed))- if you've got the money, there are lots of systems out there to buy. A couple of acres is actually quite a lot of land for one person to cultivate! If you are able to improve the soil enough you might be able to focus your attention on a much smaller bit of land and still get enough veggies for your family. BP

Just another opinion. MW windows are certainly the largest supplier of windows in my area of NC. In fact, I've had 3 houses - 2 built in 1993 and ours built in 2009 - and all 3 were MW. Yes they are "no-name" but they are used on million dollar homes and are a decent window. On the 1993 houses - we sold both in 2009. There was one broken seal on a arched window - which seems to happen a lot (there were some marginal seals but all on arched windows). There was 1 rotten sash on each house. One we replaced for $50 - easily ordered from Lowes. The other we didn't. Both were all wood. The rotten sashes - one was very high and not painted regularly I'm sure. The other was in an area of the house that had a moisture issue in multiple areas. You'll find some complaints but my wife's and mine experience were very positive. And replacement cost was so cheap that even if we had more than a few sashed - it wouldn't break the bank. We owned the houses for a combined 14 years. We have 3 casements, something like 40 windows - all pretty big with transoms on some - like all the downstairs windows. 7 exterior doors (4 glass and not including the front in budget or count) - 3 were 8 foot. All wood windows with SDL in front. They are low e and argon filled. I think our total was $16k. Sure, they'll need paint. We had a difficult color requirement and wood was really our only reasonable option. Our door air blower test showed infiltration less than 50% of Energy Star standard. Anyway - just to give another option that is sure to be in budget.

Suero, unfortunately my glass fabricator has no idea what to do in this case. He said he's never seen a setup quite like this (which doesn't surprise me - I wouldn't have thought it possible or known how to do it without Tom's help). I think the bracket I linked to above will work fine if I get some decorative screws/nuts to go through the glass. However, if anyone has any helpful suggestions, please let me know!

Any standard penetrating sealer will do it. What he's talking about is a topcoat sealer. Tell him you want a penetrating sealer-- like Miracle's 511 Impregnator or Stone Tech's Impregnator Pro. You DON'T want Tile Lab's products from HD. They're Junk. Same with the ones from Lowes (can't remember the name off hand, but it's the only sealer they sell) If you can't find either of them locally (usually at a tile showroom), the Stone Tech products can be ordered through John Bridge's website.