Lalamtx24869 WROTE: >> I am looking for other alternative of miracle grow plant food. Is there anything else out there that is natural as a plant food? If I don't have to buy and pay for it that would be better. Thanks. Here is the deep dark secret and the mystery of compost and compost tea revealed. This might not be common knowledge because no one has figured out how to make a buck out of it yet. Please, for goodness sakes, tell as many people as possible. Its simple, its straightforward, its proven and it actually works on ANY plants, whether they are vegetables or shrubs. If you or someone in your family cuts the grass on your lawn, you can make your own COMPOST and COMPOST TEA to use both as plant food. Apply the compost and "tea" straight out of a watering can every seven to ten days. Obviously, don't try drinking the stuff. To make COMPOST, pile old grass cuttings (clippings) into a pile and as you build up the pile every six or so inches, VERY LIGHTLY sprinkle some water over the top. You want slightly moist, NOT wet. Use some chicken wire to make a cylinder about two feet across to pile the grass cuttings in. Use a garden fork or a pitch fork to turn the entire pile every 7 to 10 days and re-pile it into to chicken wire cylinder. Don't forget to LIGHTLY sprinkle water on every five or six inches over the top of the pile as you re-build it up. The idea is to work the OUTSIDE brown edges into the center of the pile. If you have some egg shells, crush them up into a powder and throw them on top of the pile also. CALCIUM. Its good composting stuff. You will probably notice after a few days the pile may likely give off steam from the heat inside. That is a GOOD THING. If you follow the above instructions, the pile will not smell. After 35 to 40 or so days, at the very bottom of the pile, you'll find rich dark COMPOST. Remove it and using the garden fork, turn the remaining part of the pile and add some new cuttings to it if you want, then re-pile it and also re-sprinkle the rest of the grass cuttings pile. From the compost you have collected, spoon about a fist-full or two of it into an old knee high NON-DYED nylon sock. Tie a string to the sock and suspend it above the bottom in a small two or three gallon pail that is full of ordinary room temperature tap water. Use a small aquarium pump (from Walmart) and a five inch air-stone (from Walmart) to bubble the mixture in the suspended sock for about 12 hours and then remove the sock and toss the mixture in it on the garden soil around your plants. In the brownish liquid that remains in the pail, leave the bubbler air-stone running for another 24 hours. Use clean coffee filters to pour the resultant COMPOST TEA through to filter and apply a couple of ounces of this "tea" directly to the soil around each plant. Its plant food ! Thoroughly clean the bucket, air-stone(s), socks and clear plastic air-hoses in hydrogen peroxide and rinse them in tap water to ready them for the next time around. That is all there is too it. Please don't mystify this simple process. Just tell as many people as possible. Compost tea works.

I was at a grocery store, one of the somewhat pricey ones, and a pear fell to the floor, bounced few times, and rolled to a stop. I picked it up, and handed it to the produce man that was stocking items. He just put it back on the display. I was dumbfounded. Germs aside, that pear was not worth selling after bouncing so many times, but he didn't seem to care. I guess fruits and onions, anything that's stacked, is likely to fall on the floor a few times. And I didn't even think about the germs the pear picked up. Of course, I always wash my produce before eating it, anyway. It never occurred to me we may need to wash our bread wrappers, too. I quit buying commercial bread a long time ago, anyway. When the expiration date is a few weeks in the future, I figure that I don't want to eat whatever they put into the bread that makes it last that long. The preservatives scare me more than the germs on the wrapper. Sally

Thanks for reminding me to put grits on my shopping list. I've been out and have been substituting polenta, but I'm almost out of that as well. Fried Spam with grits sounds okay to me! I kind of like Spam, but I never buy it because of the sodium, as Eileen mentioned, and DB won't eat it. It's on the menu at the Hawaiian restaurant by Scott's apartment, however. I used to keep it as earthquake survival food, but I've abandoned that practice. Now I keep canned salmon instead, but I really don't like that so much either. I do have a lot of canned fava beans, in case of disaster, however. Spam with anything sweet would be horrible IMO. I also hate pineapple on pizza, and I'm not really fond of Hawaiian cuisine, nor Philippine for that matter, as they tend to be too sweet. Lars

The recurring theme here is that people call the non-emergency line and then are surprised when the fire department shows up with all their trucks anyway. But there is a good reason for this: People are frequently embarrassed to call the fire department and tend to minimize the problem when reporting it ("Oh, it's just a small fire on my stove that I can't quite get to go out; no real problem other than I can't breath right now"). By the time the fire truck rolls in a few minutes later, it turns out this was in fact a real problem and needed all the gear and tools that the firefighters have access to on their trucks. If the caller only reports the smell of smoke, it's quite possible there is nothing much to worry about. There also is the possibility that the moment somebody investigates and opens the door to where the fire has been smoldering for hours, air rushes in an a major fire starts within seconds. At that point, you really don't want to wait another 10 minutes for the trucks to roll in. You need them right then and there. I don't know about all jurisdictions. But in most cases that I am familiar with, the fire department will happily come out to you and investigate, even if it turns out to be "nothing". And you shouldn't get charged for it. But there always could be exceptions. Also, if they subsequently call an ambulance, that's when you might see charges.