Hi All MG Lovers! I'm a new member to join this forum. It's great to find so many MG enthusiasts out here. Some time back while I was going to a friend's place, I saw this tiny house which was sort of 'lit up' with an unusual shade of blue flowers. It was love at first sight! Just to have a look at those flowers I would often drop into my friend's place. Finally, one day not being able to resist myself I stopped the car right beside that house (with blue flowers) and walked up to the door to ring the bell! I could see the surprise (annoyance?) on the face of the girl who opened the door. I apologized thoroughly but explained that I simply HAD to know the name of the flower (MG plants are not at all common in Kolkata, India)! Her face broke into a smile and she told me those beauties were known as Morning Glories, but she couldn't help me any further with information such as method of propagation etc. WellÂnever mind I thought, since I had a clue I'll find more about the love of my life. I looked up on the net and bingo there it was - tons of information! I hunted quite a bit till I stumbled upon this small, dark shop where I found MG, Heavenly Blue seeds. It's exactly seven days now I had sowed them and four of them have popped up! I'm waiting very eagerly to see them grow and bloom with blue flowers (I fell in love with) on the strip of garden infront of my house! So, please wish me a lots of luck! P.S. I went back to my friend's place a couple of weeks back and on the way saw the MG plants were no longer there in that house and it looked ugly and naked. Hope the owners realize their mistake and let the MG grow back. Even if it attracts a few bugs like me!

Newer version of Annie's Salsa - BWB only Annie's Salsa 8 cups tomatoes, peeled, chopped and drained 2 1/2 cups chopped onion 1 1/2 cups chopped green pepper 3 to 5 chopped jalapenos (for milder leave out seeds and ribs) 6 cloves minced garlic 2 tsp cumin (optional) 2 tsp pepper 1/8 cup canning salt 1/4 c fresh cilantro (optional) 1/3 c sugar (optional) 1 cup cider vinegar (see note on subbing lemon or lime juice option) 16 oz canned tomato sauce (to adjust density) 8-16 oz canned tomato paste (to adjust density) Mix all ingredients, bring to a boil, boil 10 minutes. Pour into hot jars, process pints for 15 minutes in BWB. Makes 6 pints. _________ A lot of changes have been made to this recipe over the years. Some people like lemon or lime juice in place of some or all of the vinegar, that's fine. (Note from Sheila - I like half lemon half lime.) Some people leave out the cilantro, that's fine too. Do not increase! Some people add more hot peppers or fewer onions, fine as long as you keep the same total measurements. (Note this is what NCHFP does in their new Choice Salsa recipe.) Some people leave out the sugar, that's fine. You can scoop out the goo in the middle of the tomatoes with your thumbs when I'm peeling and chopping for a less seedy version, so it's 8 cups of chopped tomatoes without the seeds and goo. Most who make it regularly as well as Annie recommend using a variety of different slicing tomatoes, not paste types, for best flavor and consistency. (Note: use the tomato sauce and paste to adjust the consistency of the final product to a "sloshy" consistency.) According to Annie "My salsa is not as thick as Heinz catsup but it's thicker than taco sauce. If you don't like it quite as thick or sweet, cut down the amount of paste. I would add some, then taste. Reducing that ingredient shouldn't affect the safety of the recipe. I use equal amounts of sauce and paste. You can pull it off the heat at any point and adjust for flavor. Before I cook it I check for salt, sugar, check the consistency. Add more pepper or cumin if I want. When I first started making this salsa, tomato sauce and paste came in 8 and 16 ounce cans. Like everything else, they've now been downsized, so now I have to use partial cans." Does anybody have good versions of the other recipes that have weird symbols in them for measurements?

I don't know what kind of vegetables you are growing, but I often put mulch down and get it right up to the plants, when they are large enough. Many seedlings of weeds are simply smothered. At times I have even taken the bags of raked up leaves that people leave on the roadside and they work fine.My friend uses the large amounts of grass clippings he gets from the large area he mows.

I would like to add an additional clarification and that is that I used the adjective "soft" several times to describe the pseudo-thorns or protuberances... I used the descriptor soft in the sense of 'you can't cause any of them to pierce your skin'. The protuberances do not dry any harder than the regular stem tissue and do not categorically cling to chain-link fencing or any other types of fencing whether the pseudo-thorns are alive or dried after the plant completes it's life cycle. The soft protuberance do help the plants to scramble through grass and brush that the encounter in the wild by very gently creating a small amount of friction and thereby gently 'grasping' the grass stems helping to prevent the vine from slipping downward. The people (including myself) who are interested in the various natural species usually find the soft protuberances (which remain soft upon drying) to be thought provoking and visually interesting. Hoping my additional comments sufficiently clarify that the soft protuberances do not make removing the vine stems any more difficult than vines that do not have the soft protuberances. I would be glad to conceptually assist anyone who may still have any lingering misconceptions regarding the soft (i.e., which remain relatively soft upon drying) type of protuberances that appear on some Ipomoea alba and Ipomoea tricolor strains and are a consistent feature of Ipomoea muricata.