I like to put Thai basil in the back of my flower border and let it go to flower. Unlike regular sweet basil I don't find that Thai basil gets bitter if if flowers. I pinch it back early in the summer so that it gets bushy then let the light purple flower stalks go and just harvest leaves from the bottom as needed. It makes a nice vertical filler in the border and attracts tons of bees and butterflies. I also plant purple royalty bush beans throughout the front of my flower beds. They are nice small plants with pretty lavender flowers and then I get handfuls of purple beans too. I like to think they are improving the soil in my beds too. Last summer I really enjoyed growing pepperoncini (sp?) peppers which made nice bushes covered in white flowers. I was also thinking of sneaking them into my flower borders this year. They were really prolific and seemed to love the hot steamy weather here in Virginia. Now I just have to perfect my pickling method. My neighbor had Black Pearl peppers in her front yard and the dark leaves were really dramatic.

In my area, (central New York), the critter that lays the eggs on the zukes, stops laying eggs after June 17th, (or so I've read). I plant my zuke seeds around June 10th and don't seem to have this problem anymore. Ummm, I don't know about that... I killed two SVB moths last week... and a third one flew off after being blasted by a hard stream from the pump sprayer... all 3 were within about 15 minutes timeframe. If I sit in a chair in front of my garage, maybe 10ft from my pumpkin plant, I usually see one land somewhere between noon and 2pm. I have the pump sprayer ready. I sneak up on them, getting as closer as I can, blast them, they fly off to another leaf, blast them, try to knock them out, then find a way thru all the 2ft tall leaves & vines and look for them before they gain their senses and step on them and grind them into the ground...phew, sorry for being so violently decriptive! lol. ...but I've had some still moving after stepping on them in grass & weeds... you really need to give that "firmly planted ball of the foot twisting motion", 3 or 4 times! lol. You can also whack them with a flyswatter, but be prepared to do it more than once! Mark

Thanks for the great recipes! We planted heirloom zucchini seeds this year and they are coming in strong. We will have tons in no time. I so glad to be able to add some recipes to bag of tricks. I have a great recipe for zucchini bread. I have tried many zucchini bread recipes in the past and this is the very best bread! It is very moist. I'm sure you will love it! Zucchini Bread 1 c zucchini 3/4 c nuts (optional) 1 c any dried fruit (optional) 1 1/4 c flour 3/4 c sugar 1 tsp baking powder 1 tsp salt 1/2 tsp baking soda 1/2 tsp cinnamon 1/2 tsp nutmeg 2 eggs 1/2 c melted butter 1/2 c vanilla yogurt 1 tsp vanilla 1 tsp citrus zest Pre heat oven to 350â¢. Grate zucchini, dry and set aside in small bowl. Combine flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, baking soda, cinnamon and nutmeg in large bowl and set aside. In medium bowl whisk eggs, melted butter, yogurt, vanilla and zest. Fold into bowl of dry ingredients. Mix well. Add zucchini, nuts and dried fruit. Place in prepared 9X5 pan. This recipe can be easily double. Enjoy! ~Tina~

Shelley, Simply trellis your rattlesnake beans alongside the fence and grown them wherever you want. I grow beans on my woven wire fences all the time with little space between them and the shorter plants growing in the ground alongside them. You'll be amazed how happily other, shorter plants grow with trellised beans (and cucumbers, icebox melons, muskmelons, winter squash, gourds, etc.) growing right beside them or behind them. I trellis everything that is remotely vining in nature. Your dwarf tomato plants from The Dwarf Project ought to coexist peacefully with trellised beans growing on the fence behind them. The Dwarf Project tomato plants only get 2.5 to 4' tall, more or less, and are stocky and sturdy and won't mind having trellised beans (or anything else) growing behind them. Obviously taller indeterminate tomato varieties wouldn't be as tolerant of beans growing on the fence behind them. Scout your beds regularly because the bean plants will want to climb onto the tomato plants and cages to grow. When the vining plants do that, I just remove them from whatever cage or plant they're trying to latch onto and work that errant grown back through its trellis. Then I lecture it about not trying to take over the world. Luckily pole beans climb fast, so your bean plants should grow fast enough that the dwarf tomato plants cannot shade them out while they are small, and once the dwarf tomato plants are tall enough and wide enough that they might shade them out, the beans will be growing taller than the tomato plants. You also can grow Ha'ogen on a trellis. In the beginning, when I first trellised cantaloupes and muskmelons, I used knee-high stockings tied to the trellises to serve as slings or supports to hold the melons. I was afraid the weight of the melons would pull down the vines or that the weight would cause the melons to fall off the vines prematurely. I did that every year with great results, and then in one bad fire year, I didn't have time to tend the garden, and the melons grew fine without any sort of sling or support to keep the vine or fruit from falling off the trellis. Because I mulch heavily, I don't even worry about the muskmelons falling off the vines when they are mature. Usually, I can see and smell them and know when they are maturing and just pull them when they are forming the abscission layer and preparing to fall, but even if I miss one and it falls to the ground, it lands on that nice cushy 4-6" layer of mulch and doesn't crack. Once I knew the stocking slings or supports weren't necessary, I stopped wasting my time. To some extent you can control how your beans, squash and melons interact by planting the beans first and then waiting another month or six weeks before your plant the squash and melons. That gives the beans time to grow and gain some height before you plant the melons and squash. In my garden, all the trellised plants that are growing close together tend to run all together into one big massive wall of green, and I don't mind it at all. They still produce loads more than we can eat fresh, leaving plenty to be preserved for future meals. Sometimes it is fun to watch them slug it out to see who wins. (In my garden, so far, Seminole pumpkin outgrows and outlasts everything else, so it is the queen of my garden.) Don't be afraid to try trellising one plant behind another. You never will know what will work for you, in your soil and growing condtions and with your set-up, until you try it. Some of my most favorite growing methods and plant combinations were nothing but experiments the first time I tried them. One year my beloved pink eye purple hull southern peas decided they wanted to be tomatoes. They outgrew their bed, reached across the 2' -wide garden pathway, and climbed the tomato cages all the way to the top....then cascaded back down again. Was it a problem? Well, it was a problem as far as using the pathway was concerned, but it wasn't a problem in terms of growth and production. We had huge yields of tomatoes and huge yields of PEPH peas. You would have thought the tomatoes wouldn't have liked having pea vines climbing all over their cages and partially shading them, but they didn't seem to mind at all. Since sunscald sometimes is a problem on tomatoes in the hottest part of the summer, maybe I should routinely add one PEPH plant to each tomato cage. (grin) I now grow all the southern peas in the back garden since it has sandier soil, and I don't grow a lot of tomatoes back there, but in the year they shared those tomato cages, it wasn't a problem. Clearly, it isn't a planting combination I ever would have thought of or planted on my own. I like little garden surprises like that, although they don't always end well. It is just that this particular garden combination worked. If you're already running out of space with your 2' wide beds, are we going to see 3' wide or 4' wide beds next year? Lawn grass? Who needs a lawn? Dawn