On St. Patty's day I planted peas, lettuce, spinach, swiss chard, beets and radishes direct from seed in my NEW! raised beds. Most have popped all ready (except beets and lettuce?) and survived last night under a quilt. Indoors in early March I started tomatoes (5 varieties), peppers (2), eggplant, cauliflower and cabbage. They are really picking up too! This past Sunday my Walla Walla onion sets arrived and I set those in the raised beds as well. I had too many for my small area so I decided to use some as "spring onions" or scallions and planted them 16 to a square (sqft gardening spacing). Hope everyone covered up last night with that cold snap! At least I know my homemade pea trellis is strong since it survived all the wind we had here!

I am the same zone (Western Maryland). Last year, I WS'd my tomato seed the first week of March. They sprouted around April 19th. All of my containers sprouted: Posted Pictures of last years sprouted tomato plants In 2012, I WS'd tomato seed in mid-January. They did not germinate as well that year so I waited. This year, I started WSing tomato seed on February 23rd and finished March 1st. I do save all of my own tomato seed which also has made a difference in germination rates. Here is a link that might be useful: DW's Blog This post was edited by midmented on Wed, Mar 5, 14 at 15:25

Most years someone comes by and asks us if they can pick up the black walnuts out of our yard and we let them. In years that they don't, I pick them up and put them in a big flower pot under the shed and the squirrels get them out for food when they want them. However, I don't want the squirrels on my bird feeder because they can empty it in one day. At first I had some plastic tube feeders and they would eat big holes in them or chew the perches off so the birds couldn't sit and eat. I finally found a big heavy duty feeder which makes them 'eat like a bird' out of the tray. It hangs on a heavy metal shepherd's hook and I have to move it far enough from a tree that they can't jump on it. I had one squirrel that would climb this little metal pole on the shepherd's hook. One day I mixed hot, hot pepper in some Crisco and coated this post and waited. Here came the squirrel and tried to jump up to the first branch of the hook. He started sliding down the pole. He would try again and slide again. Finally he realized that he had something slick on his feet and it must have been burning a little because he would stand upright and shake both front paws in the air like he was trying to shake it off. Then he decided to wash his paws, and starting to shake his head to get the heat out of his mouth. I laughed till I cried. I'm not sure if it kept that one for coming back but it was sure entertaining. There were so many more to take the place of it that scaring one off didn't make much difference. In the last few years we haven't had as many so someone is probably giving them more that spicy feet. There are so many walnut trees in our neighborhood that they have plenty of food and my neighbor keeps corn out for them. Also, they aren't as bad about getting into attics here because there are so many huge trees. In southern Oklahoma they drove us crazy by getting into the attic. My biggest problem with them is digging up all the walnut trees they plant.

""planting shorter grown varieties..." Yeah, but what's the point? ;)" EBs are a novelty item. They were designed commercially for two determinate tomato plants and work well for that. That was the original purpose/point, to get more tomatoes and not fall down, and then to mass market this through a sales network. The point was not to grow indeterminates, but that won't stop us lol. Not sure I know the EB stakes (or CityGarden, which sounds like another EB "clone"). Is that the trellis EB stake to the sides with netting you want to stick on the CityGarden? Didn't think it was 5 feet tall. If you have that trellis design already and aren't buying new stuff, and it secures well, just use a combination by strapping a couple of bamboo poles to the horizontal support tube. Still 2D unless you bury them in opposite bottom edges making an X from a side view, but you'd have height and more stability. But JMO and I'm not really sure about the attachment of the EB stuff you mentioned to the CityGarden thing. Best PC