naturegirl - thanks! but a lot of times all the data can be overwhelming and can get me into analysis paralysis! Being an engineer by profession I feel its my diligence to at least produce some chart or graph or data table that at least pretends to show me some sort of useful data. Its taking the data and then turning it into something useful thats the real skill. By the time I am ready to make that step on a project usually some other bright shiny object rolls by and I'm 'on to the next one'! In a lot of ways, I could have just walked out into the hoophouse and said "yep, that water's frozen!" and gotten the same results as what I have now lol!

Len- I grew potatoes in some last year with success. I started with a little soil and filled it in as the plants grew. They dry out QUICKLY so keep an eye on them. This year we are using them for some squash and dwarf corn. I’m a fan of them but I’ve learned that it’s important to have a growing media that holds onto water. The ones I’ve been using are basically recycled plastic that’s been felted into a sort of fabric.

Cindy - some how I missed your post about Dwarf Firebird Sweet. Those fruit are bigger than any on my dwarfs. The striping looks a lot like Girl Girl's Weird Thing. Do you have it growing in a container or in the garden? So far I've saved seed from 10 tomato varieties this year. I finished off cleaning 6 of them last night. Dwarf Mr. Snow, Dwarf Beauty King, Dwarf Tasmanian Chocolate, Pink Ping Pong, Jaune Flamme, Pruden's Purple, Girl Girl's Weird Thing, Kellogg's Breakfast potato leaf, Brandywine Suddeth, and Black from Tula. I still want to save seeds from Wes, German Johnson, Rebel Yell, NAR, Pineapple, and Livingston Yellow Oxheart. I might save some from the other dwarfs as well just in case someone wants some even if I don't plan to grow them again any time soon.

Richard, Great news on the rain and slightly lower temps. Good luck on the Spokane opportunity. Keep us posted. Weather would be much more friendly in Spokane. I discovered this mess in my melon patch yesterday. It appears I had a hungry visitor in the garden overnight. In other sad news, I saw a mouse in my compost bin yesterday too. I don’t believe the mouse did the damage to the melon. The bites thrown aside behind the ‘loupe are too big.