This is the vegetable garden out back. It doesn't look like much yet but everything is planted including 20 tomato plants and brocolli seedlings, for seeds coming up: nasturtium, dill, carrot, sweet corn, cucumber, pole beans, potatos, tomatillos, two kinds of onions, garlic, and jalapeno pepper plants. Several more things to go in yet. Two herb beds out front have Greek oregano, rosemary, sage, chives, pinapple salvia, thyme, and other various things. I am in the process of moving the herbs to plant around the dog rose in the middle bed to make a knot garden and will convert the old herb beds for more vegetables. I have lots of flowers planted in the beds along the fence behind, as well as elsewhere. Thank goodness for free mulch! This is very much still a garden section that is in progress. Blueberries, almond, red buds, dogwood, and peach all planted around the garden. Going to add a bench and rose arbor to the back right behind the center knot garden later. The larger raised beds shown here are 6 feet wide by 30 feet long, double dug deeply and much amended as Georgia red clay isn't much to garden in.

Linda, the rock was a handme-down from a neighbor so I tried to use it. Longterm I'd like to replace it with a more gentle gravel like the rest of the paths. I wasn't aware that it may alter my soil, that is indeed good reason to remove it quickly. Take a seat here Lynne: Or here: Or here(if you're not afraid of Costco chairs!): I prefer to rest up here. The breeze tends to blow the hammock around more and it puts you much closer to the birds and chipmunks. It was a necessary place too for birdhouses and food that my mole-hunter can't reach. -Will

Jo when you started with hostas and put the "67" after your name, it was a mere blip in time, how long did that last, maybe one week? and you were headed for 100 if I recall correctly. And that may work for you. You have an active life, but you are also compulsive about maintaining your hosta records. Am I right or not? HA,.....I thought so. Now I'm trying to break that hierarchical habit I've had all my life, especially when I was a librarian before I discovered boats and computers. So I like KEY WORDS or TAGS which is so simple a term even the youte of today can understand it. And I am trying to have my files this year posted on Flickr with tags before they upload, but all on my computer or CLOUD are organized by camera file name, by date, and with all sorts of tags--except the ones I need to search with like "gold" or "Solberg" or whatever lets me find it in response to someone's question on this forum. In the end, we all have to know WHICH hosta fulfill certain attributes. I don't rely on an outside service (like Flickr) to be a forever solution to my photos. OH no. I went through Webshots folding up and turning into an observer site only, lost my photos from there. Then I had an external harddrive fail on me. So I'm pretty concerned about keeping the pictures themselves. It's a fun thing for me. I can sit here and immerse myself in viewing the pictures I took, refresh the mental notes I made to myself about who was who when they had missing names. I'd check the past photos. It works for me. And that is one reason I take pictures with more than one hosta in them. If I lose the nametag, and I know who it's neighbor is, then I look for the picture of the known neighbor, and voila, I see who the would-be NOID is. That is also why I try to identify all the hosta in the photo too. Does anyone else watch their photos as a full screen slideshow? Do you say the names of the hosta before the slide changes? And for those you missed, do you go look at them next day to see who they are? Well, I do that. Seems to me you could put it on a manual slideshow, so you can play NAME THE HOSTA at your next club gathering, or your family gathering if everyone is into the garden thing. I'd play it. Lose, probably. Except where my own personal garden comes in. I'm getting much better. I think watching the slideshow helps a lot. Okay, now that really wasn't off topic was it? It simply says how I use my indexing. ;)

eOld 1900's greenhouse /field nursery cleanliness operating procedures required bleaching pots/tools/accessories with dilute bleach ( 10% or less solutions) to kill any pathogenic bacteria/soilborne fungi that would quickly attack plant roots. With that background our family has done this since opening the family greenhouse in the 1920's and the nursery business subsequent. My mother began bleaching hosta divisions when that was the only way to propagate them (before tc) and had very good success with overall plant disease control. I have done the same since.. After dividing, using cool water to dilute, leave roots in diluted bleach solution up to one hour or until the root tissues smell of bleach when you remove them. Remove and air dry then replant. Avoid bleach solution temps getting warm, leaving them to soak in the sun or letting them soak too long so the tissue as the root issue will get soft.