You can do it, but it depends on your growing season. It takes X number of days for a plant to start producing. If you sow it in the ground, you count from the sowing date. If you start your warm-weather plants like tomatoes indoors early, you count from the date you transplant them into the garden. I live in the Pacific NW, and it stays too cold for too long here for me to do anything other than start tomatoes (etc) indoors about two months ahead. If I waited until warm weather actually arrived, the plants would probably just start to produce fruit when the first frost cut them down. If you have a long growing season, you might be able to do it, but you're not going to win any races for early production. For tropicals (tomatoes, peppers), if you plant outdoors too early, they may end up rotting before they get a chance to sprout For more info on sowing early, go over to the GW Winter Sowing forum for more info.

We are buying an old house with an old one-car garage that is basically crumbling. The wood is very decayed and the whole thing is leaning. I would like to replace it with a little workshop/art studio, but the garage is in violation of the setbacks so the only way to rebuild it is to call it a "conservative restoration" and basically rebuild it from the inside out without ever tearing it completely down to the foundation. Has anyone else ever done this? If so, can you give me a sense of the major steps and expenses? Thanks! -Melissa

We have a similar garage, near the lot line. Its been there since the house was built in 1938, but it does not comply with current zoning requirements. Our garage needs foundation work on one side, where fill was added to the yard, resulting in about 8 inches of dirt piled against the wooden side of the garage. One way to straighten out a listing garage is to jack it upright, and then nail 1/2 inch plywood on the inside walls. The plywood is loaded in shear, and keeps the structure from sagging back to its former configuration.

I had a feeling I would get comments on the shingles :) The roof is high on the list, I promise! I agree that the house would probably look best with the porch re-opened, but my house is tiny (1150 sq ft), and for now the porch serves as the cat's room (a place for her to get away from the dog.) Also, I live just off of the main street in my little town (minden, nv), which gets quite a bit of traffic, including trucks passing through. The traffic can be loud, so it's nice to have the porch windows as a buffer to the noise. Functionally speaking, I would like to have at least a couple of windows that open, but they do not all need to open. Light and the view are not really big issues. I still have the original (pink!) honeycomb shades that came with the house when I bought it. Even though they are 3/4 drawn I still have plenty of light. With the new windows I plan to replace the shades with something lighter, so I think regardless of the new window layout I'll have more light. Sorry I wasn't clear on the photos. The first two are the current windows, and the following are photoshopped ideas. And I have no idea what the style of my house is...don't know if it really has a style. It's very plain (no fancy molding details), it's shaped like a shoe box, it's pretty old for this area (1930), and I love it!