Yes - I use the 5:1:1 soil mix for tomatoes, other veggies, and most flowery/foliage display containers - all the short term stuff. For tomatoes: I fertilized last year with regular recommended dosages of 9-3-6 until the plants were well established. I then cut way back on the dosage and added ProTeKt to the solution. I rather like to envision that I used the added K (and got the benefit of the added silicon) to change the fertilizer ratio to 3:1:3 from a 3:1:2. This allowed me to considerably reduce the overall dosage strength, the primary purpose of which was to reduce the supply of N, to slow vegetative growth, while still supplying adequate P and K. It worked the way I wanted it to, but I had a less than stellar tomato year last year. Our nights were absolutely chilly for most of late June, July, and August. I remember JaG over in the frozen northland of Wisconsin complaining (ok then - mentioning) he had the same weather obstacle last year. I had lots of fruit set, but it just would NOT ripen. Al

I think this is a very tough issue. We chose to live on conservation b/c of the wildlife that we might see. We have lived in our home for over 4 years and I've never seen a 'coon or 'possum in our yard. We did have an armadillo issue for which we hired a trapper to catch and relocate to his acreage (he said that's what he would do and I hope he did). Other then that, I have never had a problem with any animal eating/stealing/destroying anything I have grown. I have a 40-mile roundtrip commute to my office each day. Every day, I see so many poor animals that have been run over. At the rate I am seeing roadkill, I truly question that there are more of them than there are of us. Look at the amount of habitat loss! I also blame some, certainly not all, of the animals that get hit on people not paying attention to the road and/or speeding. One of the main roads leading to where we live is a very dark, narrow, 2-lane road. Because I have seen deer, rabbits, 'coons, etc., I know to drive as slow as I can and pay extra attention to my surroundings. But that is my soapbox for another thread. Personally, I cannot justify killing these animals, unless like Nicki said, it's for food or the animal is suffering. Call me a bleeding heart, but I personally do not think it is right to kill or harm these animals because they eat our veggies. Like Marcia and others have said, my philosophy in my yard is to live and let live. I have enough space and grow enough stuff to be able to share with the wildlife that live around me.

Thanks Girls, I sure hope the rehabbers return my emails. I don't know what the parents where thinking have babies this late. (I'm in NY zone 5 and winters are harsh). And so close to my house and cats. Keeping the cats inside is not an option here. :( they are what they are...cats. I usually don't intervene when it comes to nature, but this was also my fault. Here's the whole story. I had a cute bird house on top of a whiskey barrel planter. It was on an 8' pressure treated landscaping tie. This thing is very close to my house, well a pair of blue birds moved in. I thought they were just looking for a winter shelter or something. Any way my cat climbed the post and stuck her arm in the bird house. I chased her away and that was almost a week ago. so on friday late afternoon, I noticed the post was leaning so I pushed on it to straighten it and it broke! It was about 15yrs old. Now I had not see the birds any where near the house since the cat attacked and assumed they just left. But when the post broke I looked in the broken bird house just to be sure, and there it was. One baby bird. I got a flash light and search the area where it landed, in a thick hosta bed and couldn't find any other babies. I had to bring it inside, it was getting dark. So it survived the night and in the morning I fixed the bird house, hung it up on an arbor about 5' from its original spot. After feeding the baby one last time we put it in the bird house and waited. Not a single siting so that night we brought it back in the house. I was hoping the parents would come back but I have to assume the cat got them. I feel terrible about the whole thing but most of all for starving and already neglected baby bird. I'm shocked how long it can live without food. I'm not an inside bird person at all!!!, but this little thing is worming its way on me. lol Lisa, thanks for the sialis site. That was very informative. I had no idea they can't eat earth worm. Thank goodness I didn't feed it that. I have lots of the bugs, like grasshoppers to get it healthy though. Wendy, it is kinda sweet taking care of this little bird, but I'm really not sure I can do it justice. In fact I know I can't. I doubt it will be strong enough to survive the winter. I'll just keep it healthy as I can til the rehabbers take it. I'm in for a fun filled day of catching bugs :) yuck! Reminds me of my youth. :) Laura

Quiltgo, I get what you're saying but take exception to 'putting off a number of jobs'. That would be in the context of ME, not the context of 'Mom'. I'm the one that puts off things. If my mother put off any job at all, it was learning how to teach the kids what she knew. She was too busy trying to stretch a penny into copper wire. She did EVERYTHING. From meals to cleaning to painting to making jam, growing tomatoes and making velvet Christmas dresses. What she didn't do was clean out our drawers, under our beds or in our closets. She didn't spend much time teaching us how to do it,or supervising it and the truth be told, we really weren't interested in knowing what she knew how to do. She didn't have cooperative children. WE didn't want to work. We were stubborn rocks in her road. She'd complain, we'd ignore her. Literally. Until she couldn't stand it anymore and we found the contents of drawers on top of our beds and would be forced to do it if we wanted to go to sleep that night. And all of us severely regret our attitudes. The woman could balance an almost non-existant budget, feed a family on a can of spam, and her home was painted and functional, and kids were mended, clean, ironed and neat. ("Soap is cheap" is her motto.) She's 75 and the only difference is that she sleeps later now. And the only time I've ever seen a 'mess' in her house is if she's moving things to paint. She could have made a mint teaching classes in what she could do. Fish, hunt, make sausage, butcher your own meat, darn a sock, change out a zipper, replace plumbing. I wish that I could download her brain! She did teach me how to fish, grow tomatoes, iron, cook a few things, replace a pane of glass, change a tire, pull a toilet, add oil to my car, make strawberry jam and to write a thank you note. And the description of her is one of the reasons why I irrationally rejected her life. I didn't want to work THAT hard. Work? Fine? Fingers to the bone, whaddya get, boney fingers. I wanted to do more than scrub and paint with my life. Because she didn't know how to teach, *I* don't know how to teach that stuff to my own kids. Through osmosis somehow, I absorbed the lesson that if I can't do it myself, I suck. She NEVER said that. I doubt that she ever thought that except in the context of herself. But I got the lesson anyway. Probably had something to do with the stories of her being a military wife. Dad overseas? What the hey, she moved across country pregnant with two small kids, bought a house, moved in and gave birth. He showed up a few months later and probably asked "whats' for dinner?' While she did his laundry and used a mangle to iron his uniforms. And that is why I kill myself doing it alone. I know how to scrub a toilet. But I need to learn how to KEEP it up, versus quitting behind being overwhelmed/bored/frustrated. For me it's all about management, not necessarily the 'doing'. I know how to do it the hard way. I'd like it all not to be 'hard'. I agree with doing as you go will do it. Getting past the feelings of always being a 'human doing' and not a 'human being' is my biggest challenge. Intellectually I know that I have conveniences that she didn't have. She didn't have frozen dinners or take out. Until the end, she didn't even have polyester or a dryer. (That's a memory, hanging towels on the line...) Hell, we didn't have a color television until about 1974. But she also didn't have 'playdates', or even 1/10th the amount of STUFF that we have. Owning means finding a place to put it, cleaning it, maintaining it, and making sure that it goes back to it's 'place'. Kids played outside. Owned a handful of toys and didn't need constant supervision. Didn't have the peer pressure of owning stuff. You want to see a movie? Scratch together a buck and go on a Saturday with friends. There were no rentals, Nintendo, Netflix, or conversations wiht a kid as to whether or not they 'neeeed' a cell phone. @@ No parent spent a moment worry about a kid's self-esteem or if Johnny is getting enough intellectual stimulation. Bring home the grades kid and don't break curfew! It was a less convenient but definitely simpler time. Women started making babies in their early 20s. My first child was at 35. My second, at 40. She thinks that's nuts...and I really get now why earlier is 'better'. By 45 her youngest was 15. My 45th birthday is next spring. My youngest will still be four. If I had to vote in some cosmic poll, I would say 'younger is better'. My biggest issues with this are inside of my own head. Being willing to embrace the whole package and learn the logistics of maintenance. And to get rid of the residual fears of ending up having my life be entirely about being the home maintenance man. Because THAT is really why I quit.