Bless your heart Kasha & eternal gratitude for your advice (as well as alleviating my anxiety about my brug)! O.K. deep breath...ahhhh. A humble thank you (*does curtsy*) for welcoming me to the forum :-D ! It's a pleasure to meet you as well as all the other gardening enthusiasts on here. I'm learning new things & enjoying the camaraderie. Happy day! I'm on Long Island - usually we're classified as being in Zone 6 but some sites have us @ 7. My brug's tag said no direct sunlight but I'm not exactly sure how much is too much so I've been moving it around the patio where it can get filtered sun. Since it bloomed, I discovered mine is a suaveolens, with a deep salmony-pink blush on the ends. When it first opened it was white & then as the night wore on it changed color :). 2 more blooms opened last night & the entire room smelled like lemony roses with a faint honeysuckle. Wasn't too thrilled about the scent initially but I guess it had to develop more as the bloom matured (?). It's esp nice when there's a chorus of blooms open - but I don't need to tell you that ;D. Had to bring it in again last night since we're getting some pretty strong winds & I didn't want to chance leaving it outside in the gales, esp while it's still in its dinky little pot. The numbskulls @ the nursery where I got it said it "really needs to be repotted" & upon examining the bottom of the pot I would concur but unfortunately it's in active blooming right now so repotting/planting will have to wait. Will it die if I don't plant/repot it yet? Since you explained what to do with the brug before winter, I do feel much more confident/comfortable putting it in the ground. TY!!! When I got my brug, it had a lot of damage to its leaves; most of them had tears in them because they had it outside & the wind kept blowing it over. Was apprehensive about getting it to begin with because of all the damage as well as the fact that there were no blooms/markings to indicate its color, genus, etc (yikes) but I was desperate to find one for Mom & out of the 5 plants on display which were white, the nursery owner said it was the only pink one left & if I wanted scent, pink or yellow was the way to go (?). Any idea how long it takes them to adjust to their new environment? Still dealing with the yellowing leaves although it seems to have slowed down a bit since moving it indoors for the day. The immature baby leaves are being affected as well. I'm wondering if it could be a nutrient deficiency (nitrogen or magnesium usually). I noticed where the leaves are turning yellow & dropping that the green stem is turning woody. There's a lot of new growth all over but it's drying up & dropping off too. Been checking for mites - saw a few & sprayed with a castille soap & water mix. So far so good but I know I have to keep @ it every 3-4 days for the next 2-3 wks to keep on top of them. Yucky evil little buggers! TY for the advice about watering too! I watered it 3 days ago & today it feels dry enough again to give it a drink. It's raining today so I might as well fill my watering cans :). Not sure what the nursery put in my brug's soil. Some of it looks like perlite & others look like it could be Osmocote or MiracleGro. Going to do a foliar feed on it & see if that helps improve the leaf yellowing issue. It's perfectly alright that not many folks have responded. I'm just grateful people did :). As a busy gardener myself, I wholeheartedly understand how it is when it's "that time of the season" & all of us are tending to our plants & gardens. I just put my veggie garden in yesterday :). Can't wait for fresh home grown vegetables! I also grow roses, medicinal herbs, & tons of flowers. Had my Plumie for a yr & last yr it bloomed beautifully. This yr it's struggling so I suspect it's got rot somewhere. Going to unpot it & see what's going on. Have a beautiful day! In Love & Light ~ Angharand

I wish that I had known all of this a few weeks ago. I just checked the 2 pumpkins, the small one I can pierce the skin with my fingernail which isn't a surprise, I didn't think it was mature. The other one has a hard skin--yay! Hopefully it will have a good flavor and texture. I had originally intended to let the vining crops stay in that area until they were done, probably sometime in October, but when it seemed like the pumpkins were done so early I figured I could get a crop of winter zucchini out of that space. In my part of San Diego we don't really have defined growing seasons, in summer it gets too hot for cool season crops (except for this past summer which was unusually cool) but some warm weather crops will grow year round. Now I know for next year if I decide to do pumpkins again--I didn't get much return for my efforts or garden space with them. The spaghetti squash in the same area are still doing well. Thank you so much for your advice.

Marquisa, My husband, myself and our two kids opened up a roadside stand last year for the first time. We took over by grandmother's 2 acre garden and took advantage of the good location and opened a stand on the edge of the road during the summer and stayed open until Halloween. We were open weekends and then in the fall we were open full time for 3 weeks during fall harvest. We used a big metal mailbox attached to a 12 foot wood table for when we were gone (as we don't live there but a few miles away. We left produce out with and signs for pricing and the honour system was kept. Our phone # is listed on a sign so people could contact us right away if needed. We would check it everyday and restock produce during the week and be open on Saturday and Sunday 8:00 to 5:00. I also sold vegetables directly to friends, members at my sister's health club, co-workers....all because of word of mouth and letting people know what I had. I ran off a produce list and made posters up and posted them on every bulletin board I could find. I listed all the varieties of vege's we had and when they were available. Our stand consisted of the big tent(awning)I purchased from WalMart for $30 that we placed two table under and then placed various other tables and other containers around the awning. You need some kind of protection from the sun as some vegetables will wilt and shrink quickly if left out. We thought we would sell more vegetables than we did...late July was slow at the stand but I sold a lot to my other buyers. My neighbor daughter runs a mexican restaurant and she purchased the majority of my peppers and onions after I gave her a flat of various vege's to use. Some of my best customers were the ones I gave them a new variety of squash or vegetable to try and they would come back out and bring a friend or family member. Summer crops that sold include red and white potatoes....red being the top seller. We sold by the pound and had the small potatoes already bagged. We sold white, purple and yellow onions 3 for $1.00 or a flat crate of them for $3.00. Tomatoes were late this year and so the majority of our crop we started selling late in August. I sold so many to my coworkers and neighbors I usually didn't have a large supply on hand. Top seller was Celebrity and the cherry or Sweet 100 varieties. The zucchini were tricky and had to be protected from the sun after they were picked. Tip:The eightball variety gets too large very quickly so you need to keep this picked everyday. Come fall we had 9 varieties of squash and around 17 variety of pumpkins and we sold around 800 pumpkins and 450 squash in our stand. I also sold broomcorn, field sorghum, indian corn, popcorn and ornamental gourds. The broomcorn was a huge hit with the local ladies for fall decoration and was so easy to grow....I would sell it for either $3.00 or $5.00, depending on how big of bundle they wanted. We sold out broomcorn in early November. It was very profitable and we had lots of fun running the stand and meeting new people. As to your questions, I can help with a few suggestions... " Is there a formula or "best guess" as to how much of which vegetable we should produce for our potential customer base? Vegetables can be tricky,in the sense of knowing what will sell and what won't. We grew cucumbers, zucchini (both Fordham and Eight-Ball varieties), tomatoes(14 different varieties), onions, squash, peppers (bell peppers, jalapeno, chili, and hot peppers). The cucumbers and zucchini has to be sold more quickly and protected by the sun. I would pickle or freeze the extra or leftovers. Grow varieties of vegetables you will enjoy to eat or can process and keep for later time. Don't go overboard on peppers or tomatoes until you know you can get rid of them. For you if you have limited space look for bush varieties of vegetables to plant. You can interplant some varieties...find a new farmer's almanac and it will help you figure out what varieties of vegetables can be grown with each other or with flower varieties. "What proportion of your garden would you dedicate to cut flowers and how much to vegetables?" We were going to have cut flowers at our stand and we planted large zinnias, cosmos , sunflowers and marigold on the edge of the vegetable garden...we went to the farmer's market and found that their was lots of competition. We sold some flowers at our stand on weekends in August... we placed big vases or buckets full of different flowers and sold then for $3 or $4 per bundle. It was a pain and not our main seller...once we started selling broom corn I gave up on selling fresh flowers. Plant what you can grow easily, know you can rid of(sell, give away, freeze, or can) and grow what you will make the most profit on. Our best and most profitable was small ornamental gourds. I had wagons full of them and sold them for 5 for a dollar. I planted 4 packets of mixed ornamental gourds and ran them up fences to save space. We sold a large supply of potatoes and squash in the fall. Many varieties of squash come in bush variety so they don't vine out as much. " When is the peak time for sales? In the morning or evening when people are coming home from work?" Saturday mornings were always good and late Sunday mornings(after church would let out) we got quite a few regulars back. I always opened up at 8:00 in the morning and my regulars would rely on it. On weekdays I would check the lock box and work in garden for a couple hours and be available at stand and we got quite a few people to stop on their way home from work. Best advice I can give you is.. Have a nice and full looking display. Clean your vegetables, have sacks and hand them out or have large supply of them(I used old grocery sacks or bought small brown sacks at Walmart). Keep your product display full and and colorful. Also know your product..the more you know about variety, ways to cook it or process the better...I kept my favorite recipes on a recipe run off sheet and would hand them out to regulars. Use signs on the side of the road and tie balloons to your mailbox or to fence posts on weekends. Many people would see balloons and think our stand was a garage sale and would slow down long enough to catch interest to what we were selling. I wish you the best of luck .... we had a wonderful time with our stand and look for forward to this upcoming summer and fall. email me if you have any other questions.... Sue from Hawk Valley Garden Dickens, Iowa

* Some people have success growing in small pots, and some don't. If you spend a couple of hours searching and reading you will find many personal accounts of both. (so dont bother, I did it for you 2 years ago!) Do what you can do this year, and see how it works for you. You will have to water more, and will get fewer tomatoes, but with 69 plants I think youÂll have enough? If you have time and resources, try a couple of plants in 5-gallon buckets and see if you like the difference. Some topsoil in a pot is fine, it depends on the "lightness" and drainage of the rest of the mix. If thereÂs a lot of vermiculite or wood chunks, the drainage should be good. Pots usually dry out very fast, and if yours seem to stay soggy an inch or so under the surface, (even if youÂve held off on watering) thatÂs bad for your roots. If you canÂt repot with vermiculite mixed in (and I would be very disinclined to do so), adding more drainage holes (theyÂll need to be about ¼ inch) will help with drainage. Is this the same soil mix you used last year? If your pepper plants were ok then, I wouldnÂt worry too much. Since all your containers are black, and the soil is black, I don't think there's any difference in "blackness" between the bushels w/black bags and the pots. There is more soil, so maybe thatÂs why you noticed a difference last year. It could be drying out slower than in the smaller pots (and apparently being a good thing, as opposed to perpetually soggy soil). With all your plants, a little experimentation seems fine. Take notes! * Tomatoes want to grow. They want to make tomatoes. Even with small pots and whatever is imperfect about your soil, as long as you water some, fertilize some, and they're growing in some sun, you will get tomatoes! Even if those bad looking leaves are disease that will spread all over your plants, your plants are going to make a few tomatoes for you. Of course, we want gorgeous huge plants and early perfect tomatoes and we want to be the people who grew an 8' plant with 453 tomatoes on it, weighing 1,005.23 pounds. Most of us wonÂt get thatÂI wonÂt! With 4 hours of sunlight, you wonÂt see many tomatoes on those plants. You should see some, though. The 8-hour plants should be a lot better. * To try to get those 453 tomatoes: Is your soil clay? (itÂs very grey, thatÂs why I'm guessing clay) How much did you loosen it, and how loose is it still? Those plants that were planted shallowly are going to be okÂthey are making more roots. If you have unlimited time, then dig up the shallow plants and put them in more deeply. But the plant can fix the root thing on its own. (I really donÂt think you should be digging up your garden at this date) If you can, you should avoid compacting your soil any more, as you are walking right where the roots want to grow. Stepping stones will distribute your weight, and youÂll have fewer areas compacted. I donÂt think you should try to loosen anything at this point, as roots are probably growing there now. For next year, add everything to your soil that you can. This autumn, grow a cover crop or pile on fresh manure (or get aged manure in the spring). Make a lot of compost, or buy it. This year, when you planted, did you add manure, and a dry fertilizer, like Espoma? If not, feed all the plants with fish emulsion periodically. (If you did, you can still do some emulsion, or you should add more Espoma periodically) If you have sandy soil, maybe do the emulsion every 2 weeksÂit just washes away. With clay soil, do it less often, but if you havenÂt done it lately, do it at fruit set, which will be soon, right? You really should get mulch down soon. Disease can be transmitted to the plant by the splashing up of dirt. (and that is probably why you have spotty yellow leaves) You can spray preventatively with Serenade or with compost tea, and Serenade is supposed to be able to cure disease after itÂs established, but I havenÂt tested it. You can use grass clippings as mulch, but only if you know there was no broadleaf weedkiller applied to it. Another way to try a lot of different varieties is to double or triple plant: each hole gets 2 or 3 varieties. No plant grows as big or full as it could, but you get to try more types of tomatoes. I hope some of this rambling helps. Whatever you have the time, energy, money and inclination to do, do it, but with what you have right now, youÂre going to get tomatoes. Just keep fertilizing. (But not too much! :) )