Hi Leanne, I can relate to your dismay about backyard gardening. Between the birds and the hornworms, it's hard to keep up and easy to be discouraged. Sometimes just going to the Farmer's Markets and letting others deal with the growing seems a good solution. I forgot to mention my one Sophie's Choice also made it through winter but then it's one of the cool weather growers and was in a container and not part of The Experiment. I pulled it up so I would have the large container for a fresh plant. I didn't like the tomatoes, they were not 'crunchy' but a bit mealy. I'm thinking that may have been due to the long hard winter the plant experienced. Currently all three of my raised beds are planted and covered with mosquito netting. We rearranged things since you were here for better shade/pest control. I took up the 'keyhole' garden that was created with staw wattles and added one more 4'x6' raised bed. Here's a pic from two weeks ago, only one bed planted. The tomatillos planted in mid-Feb have started to set fruit so I need to open the covering to get some pollinaiton, hopefully it will not become a bird free-for-all. Thanks for checking in, I wondered that I had not heard from you for a spring order. Take a break, maybe try again next spring.

Black light is also good for finding cat urine.

Cuttings will actually root quite well using many different methods. (Although the cutting in water would do better with some aeration, either from an air or a water pump.) There are a lot of different hydroponic machines sold that will root cuttings, and they use several different methods, depending upon how much money you want to spend. In regard to medium, you could use vermiculite, perlite, hydroton clay pebbles, gravel, moist soil or compost, rockwool, coco coir, or the new white synthetic rockwool called 'sure to grow.' Heck, an old sock or some paper towels would work in theory, as long as you kept it moist. Or you could use no medium at all. You need an air pump, or a small water pump, or a big one, or a really big one for high-pressure aeroponics. Or you could use one of the new ultra sonic foggers. And then of course most of these variables can be mixed and matched. You can also play around with temperature, nutrient solution, hormone or not, and a lot of other little things. The biggest reason to not propagate from cuttings is the risk of spreading disease. Commercially, there is just too much risk to justify it, which is why you don't really see many cloned tomatoes. If you want to pay for an expensive cloning machine, you would do better with something like Japanese Maples, because they are so highly valuable. Trees that do not produce well from seed like the Japanese Maple are typically propagated from cuttings. Personally, grafting is what interests me the most right now. Next year, I think I want to graft everything to eggplant roots. Gardening is a journey for all of us, and I wish you the best in yours.

I ended up with a cherry fort - not a maze. The signif other decided to downsize the whole deal... so I ended up with a 10 X 10 area. We were starting with lawn... So I planted a tomato every 6-8 inches. I know inches... I put in: Gajo De Melon Suncherry red star sungold green doctors zebra cherry black cherry snow white Riesentraube OSU Blue Oh heavens, I'll have to go home and check again... there were others... I got a lot of people who wanted to donate seed, so I took them up on them and added them to the 'fort'. I have to take recent pictures, but this is what it looked like early on. I haven't been gung-ho on documenting this because I didn't want to document a complete failure if it happened... :) Then I went back to the original farm (without my camera) this weekend and they have extended their tomato maze - lots more varieties and much bigger this year... I will bring the camera next time I go. Again they told the kids "come back with your basket and belly full." SO cute and SO gets them excited about gardening. I want that!!! I'll take pictures tonight and post them tonight or tomorrow.