Hal, I think that where you are missing the picture on several points. One is that roots can serve several functions. One of them, above and beyond anchorage, absorption, and conduction, is storage. ATP can be stored in the roots. ATP as you well know, as a biology oriented person, consists of adenine, the sugar ribose, amd three phosphate groups. The three phosphate groups have a very strong negative bond to each other and breaking these bonds releases a large quantity of energy. The salient point is that each ATP molecule has three of these bonds that can be broken and doing so releases a rather significant amount of energy. Secondly, in order for these bonds to be broken, an enzyme or multitude of enzymes are called into play. Enzymes are temperature dependent. As was pointed out in the information that you provided, the rate of root growth decreases with decreasing soil temperature. This is due to the decreased soil temperatures causing a decrease in enzyme activity in the root zone of the plant. Therefore, a plant will not deplete its energy reserves because as the ambient temperatures decrease, the enzyme activity will decrease therefore root growth will stop or become so slow that it is imperceptible--this is commonly referred to as a temperature or enzyme regulating step or feedback loop. In those areas where the air temps never go below freezing, the foliage won't drop off so photosynthesis will continue (since photosynthesis is enzyme driven) albeit at a much slower rate and root development will continue. In those areas where the air temps drop and frost occurs and the foliage is removed as a result, the soil temps will eventually drop to a point where enzyme activity drops off and therefore root growth will cease or slow to an imperceptible point. I don't think that anyone ever said that in all zones that root growth will continue indefinitely. I think that what was attempted to be pointed out was that fall fertilization can lead to root growth because there is a lag in the time that air temperatures drop and when the soil temperatures reach a point that root growth is slowed to a crawl due to decreased enzyme activity.

Mia, Yes , I think it will work. Interplanting tomatoes with other crops is something I do all the time. I often grow smaller plants like lettuce and carrots underneath and between tomato plants, essentially using them as a living mulch beneath the taller tomato plants. I also mix all kinds of herbs into the tomato beds as well, and think those herbs help explain how I grow so many tomato plants and yet only rarely see even a single tomato hornworm or fruit worm. You sometimes will get less yield per plant when you interplant multiple kinds of crops together using close spacing, but since you have a lot more plants occupying the soil, you still get a good harvest . The best carrot crop I ever had was a result of me broadcast sowing lettuce and carrot seed randomly into the tomato bed after the tomato plants already had been transplanted into the ground. My garden was smaller then and I had run out of space, so was packing as much into each bed as I possibly could. I just thinned carrots and lettuce after they sprouted. When I grow onions with tomato plants, normally I hammer a stake into the ground where each tomato plant will be planted later, and leave a small unplanted spot there as I plant the onions. When it it time to transplant the tomato plants into the ground, I put one tomato plant next to each stake. If I have to pull up a couple of onions to make room for a tomato transplant, it isn't a big deal . We eat those onions as scallions. I started interplanting multiple types of plants together long ago, after reading John Jeavon's book "How To Grow More Vegetables...." book. It is amazing how much you can pack into even a small space when you interplant. Even when I grow tomato plants in molasses feed tubs, I generally have pepper plants, herbs and flowers mixed into each container with the tomato plants. Look at how Mother Nature mixes everything up together. On the eastern edge of our woodland, for example, we have native pecan and oak trees growing as the dominant plants, but underneath them we have wild cherries, American persimmons, possumhaw hollies, and redbuds, and beneath those understory trees we have American beautyberry bushes, native blackberries, inland sea oats and brushy bluestem, peppervines and several native wildflowers which ebb and flow with the seasons. All of them happily co-exist. Why can't our gardens be the same way? To garden bio-intensively in this manner, you need to pay careful attention to soil fertility and irrigation (if adequate rainfall is not being received). Obviously when you interplant several types of edible crops together, the plants will be competing with one another. I get smaller onions in interplanted beds than I get from onions grown in a monoculture with recommended spacing, but still get tons of onions. We still have several dozen onions from last year's crop, though now they are starting to sprout. There pretty much is nothing grown in our veggie garden that isn't interplanted with several other things. If I ever were to plant even one single monoculture bed, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't like the way it looked and would be out there trying to fix the bed by adding more stuff to it. In fact, I do have my onions planted as monoculture beds right now, but that is because they are the only thing I've put into the ground so far this year. The onions will not be alone in those beds for long. Hope this helps , Dawn

No bunnies here even though we have clover. Years ago our cat used to catch the babies and leave them at the back door .... that was sad. Also no coyotes in the last few years. There are woodchucks and mice/rats along the river but probably better hunting elsewhere. I do see the Sweat green bees like the one you photographed, Jane, among all the others in the gardens. And sadly, we also have the dreaded Greenhead flies. Those monsters are making it difficult to work in the garden, especially in the afternoon, without long pants and sleeves. Many mornings a Black-crowned Night-Heron comes to fish for breakfast along the river. The one from yesterday looked particularly "blue". He'll stand a long time at the edge of the dock waiting for the glimmer of fish. He fishes from the edge of the river. I love to watch him "creep" along the bank towards the best spot. The white plume coming off the top of his head.... Finally... a dove nestled into the top of the garden shed roof .... between the Black Mulberry tree behind him and the feeders below.

Jim, the money supply can go up but if velocity is down, it doesn't drive inflation. I've linked below to an article on this. And how much is the money supply going up, really? The Fed is trying to drive up money supply, but the private sector is pulling it down. You can find charts of money supply, here is one: http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/money-supply-charts Money supply has declined quite significantly in the past couple years. dcarch, no question the rapid growth of China and India is adding to demand. However, that growth is coming from a very low level. The consumption of goods and services by the average person in China or India is far, far less than the consumption of the average person in the US, Europe and Japan. Use GDP per capita as a rough proxy for consumption. India is about $3,500, China about $7,000 vs US about $46,000, Western Europe and Japan about $35,000. China's population is 1.3bn, India's 1.2bn, US 311mm, Western Europe 500mm (use the EU), Japan 127mm. So we can get the GDP of each region. Suppose China and India's GDP grows 60% in the next 5 years, which is 10% per year (about the current rate) while the US, Western Europe and Japan's GDP only grows 10% over the period or 2% per year (unfortunately, also about the current rate if not better). The result would be the combined GDP grows 24% over the period or 4% per year. (approximate, I don't have a spreadsheet here, just an iPhone and a pencil). (We could use other proxies for consumption, like energy consumption per capita. Which is why I did the above as a per capita calculation, instead of simply starting with country GDP.) Can the world supply 4% more ''stuff'' per year without driving inflation to very high levels? Overall, sure. There is plenty of production capacity in electronics and plastic molding and LCD screens to supply (far more than) 4% growth in iPhones and similar. There is plenty of assembly and component manufacturing capacity to supply (more than) 4% growth in automobiles. Similar for concrete to make housing, fiberboard to make furniture, etc. 4% will not stress global capacity, especially after a deep recession as we've just had. We'll see periods of volatility in some prices, as supply and demand adjust. Pork, rice, cotton, etc. This volatility will be upwards and downwards, but the price rises will get more media attention. Remember a couple of years ago, when rice was skyrocketing in price, countries were hoarding, everyone was talking about rice shortages? Rice soared to $22. Then it fell to $12, that didn't get much news. Rose to $16. Fell to $10. Rose to $14. Yet during the period 2008 to present, as rice price were cut in half, China and India have continued to grow and consume more of everything - and they eat a lot of rice. The commodities that are soaring today will collapse the same way. Commodities are more volatile today, their prices moving more than fundamental demand-supply would suggest, because more investors are playing those markets, and financial money flows are huge compared to the relatively small commodities markets. In the end, fundamentals still control. Here is a link that might be useful: Article