Michael, I am at the beginner stage. I filled up 7 or 8 one gallon milk and similar jugs with water added to the calcium nitrate per your instructions (2 teaspoon per gallon)* about 10 days ago or so. First I tried to use a misting bottle (about two weeks ago) but that wasn't good enough because I could not spray/mist the climbers or some of the very tall HTs like Folklore, Impeartrice Farah, etc. Needless to say before I could follow up with the Rocket sprayer we had a sprinkle (didn't qualify to call it rain) the next night and the blooms of Marechal Niel, cl. Peace Imp. Farah, Elina and you name it balled terribly. (Not that I needed any sprinkle in that thick humid steam bath with regular dews every morning we had for weeks to see almost everything ball). So, last weekend DH sprayed the roses with Bayer+ Response+Avid in the morning and when the roses dried of that treatment, I filled up the Rocket sprayer with the calcium nitrate solution with some dish soap added, and sprayed all roses - only the top third or where I saw buds and yes, even open flowers. I needed to bring a huge bouquet to the garden club on Tuesday and I was curious if some of the already open flowers would hold on from Saturday to Tuesday. They did and they didn't even look tired. I also cut a few blooms for my desk - some were fully opened; I would not bother to cut flowers in that stage to bring in as a rule but I was curious. On Tuesday I cut pristine cl. Peace blooms, Elina, Folklore, Imp. Farah and Buff beauty for the garden club bouquet and I enjoyed seeing Clotilde Soupert, Great Century with perfect, clean blooms. The wide opened Memorial Day bloom I cut Saturday evening lasted till today. The cl. Peace blooms that opened are in sharp contrast with all those that I had no time to deadhead yet and were not sprayed with calcium nitrate prior to Saturday. I didn't check Marechal Niel but looking out my study now I see open, clean blooms; no brown 'mop heads', no red spots, circles or stripes on the newly opened blooms. And the buds of Belindas dream that opened after Saturday are not rotten brown but pink and healthy. I am aware that this is not a long enough experiment to qualify it any way to call it 'scientific' but I was thrilled that I could see unblemished blooms at long last. I didn't do any control this time because I was just sick and tired of seeing only blemished blooms in the last month or so. I know, I know that I should have but I just could not stand seeing any more rotten blooms. Sorry about that. For sake of comparison: DH sprayed 25 gallons of Bayer and al to treat all roses, I sprayed 5 gallons of calcium nitrate, 6 would have been better and enough; because of the drought I do not have that many flowers as I should in mid-October. * I expected that I should use a filter not to clog the sprayer but there was no need for that, the calcium nitrate dissolved perfectly.

Just a suggestion to fellow pepper growers. This applies to anyone planting anything in soil. If you go to your local farm extension they will give you a bag to collect a soil sample that you can send in to get sampled. Upon sampling your soil you get a report back telling you exactly what amendments are needed to make your soil prime for growing your selected crop. Soils can vary alot and problems can show the same symptoms for any number of reasons. Where I live it cost $15 well worth the cost it saves all the guess work out and is well worth the cost. Your farm extension is there to help not just farmers but anyone who needs advice. If you grow in the soil get it tested the learning experience is well worth $15 and the time and guess work is minimized.Unnecessary additives to soil can also cause setbacks and in most cases very difficult to undo . If I limed a flower bed of lime intolerant plants it would be years before they would grow there again. PS Peppers love Lime and it would be hard to overdo it.

digdirt I think gardening should be fun, too, but people gradually come to understand more and more about what they're doing. There's different kinds of folks, and that's good. I have an analytical mind, so to speak, want to know not just that something's happening but WHY it's happening. That's fun to me! And I'm not alone. As far as BER goes, for three years I had it on every single Park's Whopper Tomato I grew. It didn't appear on any of the other varieties I grew those same years. That's when I finally began to wonder if it was the "fault" of different varieties of tomatoes and other veggies that get it under some conditions (did you know that WATERMELONS can develop BER?) and not mine! I'd done everything recommended -- prepared the soil with lime/calcium ahead of time, watered regularly, fertilized just right, waited the season out, ad nauseum. I had to discard at least 80%-90% of those Whopper tomatoes each year. Finally, I stopped growing them and started looking for varieties that didn't develop BER. That's the point -- there are varieties that don't get it, at least not to the extent of no crop produced, and in some cases, perhaps admittedly rare, maybe you can do something about BER and lessen its impact. So, it's a balance between laissez-faire, letting things take their course, and figuring out what's wrong when you put a lot of energy and planning into making your garden grow. I've been gardening for a LONG time, too, and none of the varieties I've grown developed BER except sporadically until I began gardening here in Georgia. It was bad for every gardener I spoke with last summer, all of them trying to buy calcium sprays in the garden centers! The weather must have been part of the problem since everybody has a different system for growing tomatoes. But it was the third year for me with those Whoppers and I'd had enough. And I agree -- there may be newbies for whom gardening is overwhelming, but I think people absorb what they're interested in or need to know at the moment. What that is depends on their prior experience and knowledge. The GardenWeb search function is of great value -- when you're ready with a new question, it's probably already been answered somewhere here.

I've read that the large mealworms may be too big for the babies for the first several days--perhaps add some of the smaller white, soft ones for a few days (momma should know what to do) in order to help the adults get a jump on the feeding. We just got a few mealworms last week--I wanted to experiment with keeping just a few alive for a while before ordering a batch of 2000 for my chickens and wild birds.