I LOVE Virginia. Although, I'm not anywhere near the ocean, which is the only thing I really miss. We moved down here when my husband's company was doing a move & offered him a job. Hubby has a serious commute (approx. 1-1/2 hours), but if he had to go the same distance in NY it would be worse. Taxes are a minute fraction of what they are in NY. House prices? I'm the proud owner of 21 gorgeous acres for less than $200,000. Just think about what THAT would cost on Long Island - lol!!! The house is a fixer-upper, but not the kind of fixer-upper that would make you run away. Very, very habitable while we work on it. I couldn't be happier with the move & would do it again in a - how do they say it? - a "New York minute" - lol!!!

Saschja, I just now saw this comment from you in July......never got a notice in e-mail. So sorry to have not responded. You can e-mail me directly at free2bebrian and the @ and then gmail.com. My name is Jan. We still have walking sticks, but have managed to keep them limited. Takes a lot of plucking. The best remedy I found is watering the plants and watching for them moving out of the wet zone. They don't like water. Then I grab them and either kill them, which I hate doing, or put them in the yard waste bin. The problem with not killing them is the risk that they just get put somewhere else via the yard waste recycling. Mostly I suck up my buddhist impulses and kill them. But its hard. Write to me and we can talk directly. The brown and green are the same, just adjusted to the different color plant part they are on usually. So sorry you have a major infestation. Not a good sign for PG. Jan

Put them back if you want them to live. If you don't mind them dying, keep them. They need to be in the pool in which they were laid.

I wouldn't worry if the soil is compact. You can grow tomatoes in clay if you really want to (and there are both pros and cons to this). If your area is arid, you might not have problems with fungal diseases from mud splashing on your leaves, either. With all that ground cover from the grass around, I'm guessing you wouldn't need to worry about that as much, though. That said, however, if you have really loose soil atop clay, tomatoes may hesitate to venture into the clay, and just fill up the loose soil. I've seen this happen in a container with about half clay (on the bottom) and half potting soil (on the top). The clay was almost untouched, by comparison. One thing you can do is grow your tomatoes out bigger before you plant them outdoors (give them more light indoors for faster, stronger growth). You don't need a special grow light (CFLs will work, even if they're not 6500k, but higher color temperatures are better for leaf growth; lower ones are better for flowering and protecting your seedlings from damping off disease, but they'll help leaf growth, too). Then, you can use a post hole digger to dig a narrow, but deep hole, and plant the plant. Because it'll be deep, competing with weeds shouldn't be much of a problem insofar as nutrient competition goes, unless the grass or weeds have deep roots or are parasitic. Tomatoes will also grow roots all along the buried stem. Normally, tomatoes don't need to be planted particularly deep, but it does help them get more water and nutrients. More nutrients doesn't necessarily mean bigger tomatoes. You have to keep in mind that the nutrient balance also matters (not just the pure amount of a certain one). Deep tomatoes seem to be easier to dry farm. However deep you plant them, though, make sure there's lots of foliage up top, still. If you plant them super deep but only leave a few leaves up top, they might take a long time to grow big, but if you have plenty of leaves up top, they should grow fast. If you want big tomatoes (since I brought it up) get a variety that gets big in your climate and conditions, and make sure it gets enough potassium, phosphorus and magnesium. Not all tomatoes are the same, and many have different requirements. Where do you live? I recommend saving your seeds every year (from tomatoes with the traits you like the most) and regrowing them, because it should help whatever variety you're growing to adapt better to your conditions. Landracing could be even better, but you might not have room for that. :) As someone mentioned earlier, container gardening can also be great. I know someone who said she got about 100lbs of tomatoes from one Early Girl tomato plant in a container with nothing but Miracle Gro potting soil. She may have fertilized with Miracle Gro, too, but I think the only fertilizer was that which the soil came fertilized with. The problem with containers is that they can dry out fast in at least some climates. Having a narrow opening at the top may decrease evaporation (but unless your soil drains well, it may make watering take longer).