For a couple of years I had a garden spot away from my house, with no water supply available so if I wanted to supplement rainfall I had to haul gallon jugs of water. To make my watering efficient, when I planted my peppers & tomatoes in the spring, I dug down and buried empty gallon plastic jugs, one between each plant. I had poked 4-5 holes in the bottom of each, of course, and left the caps on until later in the summer. Once the weather warmed, and after a good soaking rain, I mulched the beds 4-6" deep with chopped leaves, being sure to cover the tops of the (so far empty and still capped) bottles to protect them from the sun since I had found that the plastic degrades and becomes brittle when exposed to the sun. (In previous years, just cultivating around the bottles inevitably resulted in my breaking the tops off by midsummer.) When the weather reached a point where I actually needed to water, I cleared the mulch away for the moment and poured a gallon of water into each buried bottle. I set the cap loosely back atop each bottle to keep the leaf debris from falling in and clogging the exit holes in the bottom, then pulled the mulch back up to protect the plastic. I did not care about how long it took for the bottle to empty-- it seemed like a gallon or two a week per plant was sufficient, and the best part is that by burying the bottles the water went right down to the root zone where it was most effective. As for using wall-o-waters, since I had gotten some free from a friend, I tried them last year with 3 really early tomato plants I started specifically to experiment with. While they survived a good bit of frosty weather, in the end the plants I had started weeks later and planted out a month after the first ones when the weather had warmed quickly caught up to the wall-o-water ones and all the tomatoes pretty much bloomed & set fruit at the same time & rate. So my conclusion is that it was satisfying to my eager gardener's soul to be out planting early, but it really made no difference in overall plant performance. I have found the same to be true with early plantings of such things as peas and salad crops, too. Early plantings may survive, but later plantings quickly catch up and may even surpass earlier ones that have been stressed by the weather.

I have to agree a lot with christopherh. Our Company, PJs Hearth and Home Heating, sells only the best of the best in heating products. We carry pellet stoves ad premium plus Barefoot pellets, Monessen, Heil, Airease, DS Machine, Town and Country, Firemagic, R.H. Peterson, Bis, Archgard, and Hearthsense to name a few. We proudly boast Jotul as our cast iron stove recommendation, and Pacific Energy as our steel recommendation. What will be the main use of the stove? Looks or utility? Both brands boast different qualities. Jotul is a company located in Norway that is located between a shipyard and a railroad manufacturer. So to make a Jotul stove, they take the scrap steel and melt it down to make cast iron stoves. They are beautiful stoves that come in many varieties and colors. They boast grates and larger log sizes (some have front and side or top doors for loading). They boast the "Family Heirloom" factor also. Pacific Energy is a company located in British Columbia that carries steel stoves. They boast firebrick, limited lifetime warranties, and have "clean burn" technology which burns excess gasses before they go up the chimney. These stoves are somewhat plain, but you have the option to upgrade certain styles with colors, and door and leg options also. They are also less expensive. If for any reason the firebox cracks in a Pacific Energy, their warranty is to replace it, whatever the reason for cracking. Any stove that may interest you, make sure that you get all of your facts. Ask questions! Make sure to ask the salesperson about people that you could talk to about the stove that they purchased! Ask about warranties! Ask questons! Make sure that you can get replacement parts for what you are buying! Make sure that where you purchase your stove has a service department! Don't get stuck with a product that no one will fix or can't fix for you!! Compare prices! Ask questions!!! Something elso to consider is the quality of your flue and/or liner. Sure you could get a cheap one that might do the trick. Or you could get a great liner or flue and have the satisfaction of knowing your family is safe with your choice. Make sure to ask what the differences are and ask about warranties. You get what you pay for when it comes to liners and flues. Some brands actually say that they must be replaced every season. So is cheaper really better? And last but not least, there is always the firewood discussion. The moisture content of firewood determines how it burns and how much heat is released. Unseasoned (green) wood moisture content varies by the species, green wood may weigh 70 to 100 percent more than seasoned wood due to water content. Typically, seasoned (dry) wood has between 25% to 20% moisture content. If you are using unseasoned wood, it will seem like your stove might not be working. You are actually using heat and energy to dry your wood while you are trying to burn it, therefore losing most of the heating potential. Just think, all that work chopping wood for nothing! Watch out for people promising the sale of seasoned wood. Check it before you buy it with a moisture meter (here at PJs Hearth and Home Heating we give one with every stove sale). If you don't have one, you can actually get a decent one for less than $50. And if you are chopping your own wood, you should be cutting wood NOW for burning NEXT year. Make sure to stack your firewood in a dry area. Everyone Here at PJs Hearth and Home Heating, located at 2447 Quaker Valley Road, New Paris, Pennsylvania 15554 , is willing to answer any question that you may have Mon- Friday 7:30 AM - 6 PM at 814-839-0074. Check us out on the web at www.pjshearthandhome.com !

If you want to cut straight lines and do it quickly, an angle grinder would be best on hard materials like granite, marble, or stucco. If you want to put holes in sheet rock for things like receptacle boxes, a RotoZip would work (as would a $5 sheetrock saw). If you want to cut big pieces of sheet rock to size, a box cutter and a straight edge would work best. If you want to drill holes in granite or marble, a drill or RotoZiip would work; however, you would need to practice with the RotoZip because it would be easy to skate across the surface when you first started drilling with it. Also, RotoZip bits are relatively short compared to standard drill bits so you need to factor how deep you want to go into the equation. Finally, You need to understand through experience how these tools work. Just because a tool will do a certain job doesn't mean it's the best or easiest way to do it.

All common commercial white lights are pretty broad spectrum. There is blue, and there is red. That what makes it white. Sunlight is broad spectrum too. There is red light in it, and there is blue light. In a broad spectrum light, like the sun, an incandescent, or a "daylight" CFL or LED bulb, you get it all. All the colors that are absorbed by the different pigments used in photosynthesis. That's the "action spectrum". Don't overthink this, though specialty lamp vendors (like the poster here) who want to sell you their special stuff desperately want you to. It's not easy or cheap to "precisely pick" the spectrum of commercial LED bulbs, so don't waste your time trying to do so. When you put a plant out in sunlight, you aren't buying a special spectrum. Yes, there are visible light wavelengths (mostly yellow-green) that plants don't use much, but you're going to spend a lot more on bulbs that are finely tuned to the active spectrum than the amount of money you'll waste by having broad spectrum bulbs. Use economical broad spectrum bulbs, and go bright. Actually, FWIW, "white daylight" LEDs are a somewhat better match than "white daylight" fluorescents to the action spectrum. So if you have a choice of big-box lighting products for growing plants, go LED. LED phosphors are better matched to the photosynthesis action spectrum than fluorescents. Fluorescents are maybe half as efficient for this as a similarly luminous LED. But purchase of fluorescents is much cheaper, for a given intensity.