Hi all! Happy first day of Spring - especially for we northerners!!! Record snowfalls, record days below zero, that's what we had here in CT. I'm anxious about my saucer garden, but still optimistic. I took the last pix yesterday - the last day of winter. I can't yet get any closer than that pix shows but from what I can see, it's only the Blue Star Creeper that looks iffy to me. The three pix below are from Jan 21, Feb 14, and Mar 19, 2014. I still have a frozen stream along the path. In anticipation of success for this saucer experiment, let me add a few notes and tips that I forgot to include above. On my second try I used a lot of local dirt over the base of potting soil. Seems happier - potting soil not earthy enough? This sled is made of aluminum. I don't know about plastic - might its chemicals leach into the dirt over time? Maybe a year or two would be okay? I don't know - anybody else? Since last summer I water (drizzle) with rain water only, and only when needed, concentrating on the drier perimeter, letting it soak to the center. All that said, I'll probably finish this thread with one more pix in early summer - with critters. As for the rest of my time in here - I'm still learning from everyone else - with very little expertise. Onward and upward for us all - flowers included! -- K

Thank you stonesriver and everyone else for the kind welcome. Yes, I think I may have been a bit bitten by the "gardening" germ. Granted, I am nowhere close to where most people on this forum probably are. I am mainly a "decorator" who feels that a house without any indoor plants is sad, dry and too much of a sign of our rushed times. So I decided I HAVE TO get some reasonably elegant indoors plants established. The only thing close to caring for a plant I've done before were some geraniums. They did OK, I managed not to kill them and they bloomed quite a bit over the winter even if they did get leggy. Oh, well. Now I took them outside and I decided that they will go in the basemenent for wintering when times comes. I will no longer keep them in the house because they are not really elegant, gracious plants. I like their bright colors outside in the summer but that's that for now. So I decided it was time for something finer and elegant to go with our classic/traditional living room as well as my busy schedule. I also knew this was going to be harder than a geranium which are quite hard to kill anyway. So off I went to Pikes and I grabbed some plants I had heard were not hard to care for and would do well on our Eastern bay window. A Peace Lily, four AV-s and two yellow begonias. (I did kill a begonia last year but later, after more reading, I realized I was making mistakes with it). A real gardener I will never be - not with a full-time academic career and two small children; but By God, these few plants must stay alive, do well, and even bloom nicely - this is all I hope for. I don't plan to do any complicated wick watering (at least it sounds complicated to me) or much propagation or anything - I just want to keep my living room looking as pretty as it is now, with lots of healthy blooms, if this is not too much to ask. Since I've heard so much about how important the soil is, I think I am going to change the soil the plants came in pretty soon; at least for the AV-s, I don't know whether I should do the same thing for the begonias, but probably should. Having a month between waterings sounds like a lot to me. These are small pots (4" I believe) and I think all moisture would evaporate altogether from such a small pot well before the 1 month mark; especially if I change the soil to something more airy. I did fertilize the AV-s when I watered them the first time - with some 5-7 drops of liquid fertilizer from MIracle-Gro, as indicated on the package. I am a super novice so I just did the novice thing. I guess changing the soil will also change the present routine. Some of the flowers on my AV-s are starting to fade now- they are starting to have little burnt patches on the petals, but I assume this is the natural cycle of the flower - as I bought them with quite a few blooms from the nursery and it might just be their time to go. I am just hoping they will continue to bloom for a while. Thank you again for the kind welcome, I wil certainly be around because I have been clearly "bitten". :-)

Glad morz8 could help, I'm just not that experienced, have only PCd a few times. One thing Dave and others here have told people to do was to run a few test batches with colored water to check your stove's settings and see how to adjust to avoid siphoning. I did that, but still had some siphoning with the tomato sauce. I think the Presto person was wrong to tell you to turn heat up and down, Dave told me to just keep it steady or adjust in TINY increments. With the weight set you shouldn't have to worry about adjusting, just try to get it venting, put the weight on, and leave it alone - it's not like a dial gauge where you have to watch and make sure it doesn't go over so it's not overprocessed. If you're doing something like fish that takes a really long time the recipe says to start with more water so the canner doesn't run dry. Buy new lids and use those older ones for something like jam or jelly. "well, i've had my first messy case of PC siphoning with my 4th, and thickest, load of NCHFP's spaghetti sauce in my new presto . every qt. siphoned, but just one failed to seal. i've had 1 or more seal failures in the other 3 loads, too." I don't know, maybe siphoning is more a problem with thicker/denser foods? I think it is with starchier foods. Did you have siphoning with the thinner batches, or just an occasional seal failure (which could be the lids)? Or maybe you just adjusted the burner more on this batch after talking to the Presot rep? Store the jars without the rings someplace where you can see them (and some place easy to clean if one does start to ferment or something), I don't think you need to check daily, but occasionally (maybe daily at first). I really don't know when you can stop checking, but since you want to really eat it within a year for best quality, and mine kept a year even with siphoning, I'd say just check it often this winter, maybe again when spring/summer come around if your storage area might start to warm up. I'd wash the gasket if I had siphoning - I didn't after just running test batches of water. Sorry I can't be more help - I'm still learning myself. Here is a link that might be useful: NCHFP siphoning troubleshooting

It's a siphon - put the straight end into the water, push the bulb at the top to force the air out of the tube, which is then replaced with water from the bottom. The water exits the flexible tube, into a container. Pretty simple! But I have to agree with errant - if you have enough standing water under your pots to worry about mosquitoes, you're watering way too much.