Celeste, I do know the Four O'Clocks make tubers but I have never dug and saved them. Mine just reseed in various places around the garden. I do really like four oclocks so I am glad that they reseed. Tomato season is in full gear here. Honestly, tomatoes have been just fabulous this year. Lots and lots of cucumbers also. My beans that I put in pots I definately plan to have back in ground next year in order to have a much bigger harvest. They do fine in the pots but I know they produce like crazy in ground as I used to grow them. I think I will just save the pots for growing peas. The peas seem to do great in the pots. Peppers were eaten up by slugs this spring, hope to do better next year. And my melons I think I planted too late and am really worried if I have enough time left for the melons to produce. I am sure I would love your dads garden. And bless him still gardening at 89. You must come from strong stock LOL! Please do take some pics next time you visit :-))

Don't forget to pack that laptop for the stay. We'll keep you in more stitches than Dr.Richard! ***** HA!!!!! No laptop here so I'll be going thru withdrawl from online reading and posting and the various e-mails I get. More than that I'll be missing the Rome, Italy tennis OPen but I will be home in time to see the French Open, tennis nit that I am. I do have my priorities. ( smile) And nope, I won't be tip toeing thru the tomatoes in the near future, if ever again. One of the four quad muscles I tore never came back to function after the repair so that knee buckles all the time, besides which I'll probably have to have surgery sometime for my severe spinal stenosis, but I don't even want to go there. LOL So it looks as though I'll be using this walker for the near future, whatever that means. So I'll just have to enjoy being kept in online stiches after I get home again and can read here and there. Of course Richard will have me in stiches, and I mean more than sutures, b'c he has a wicked sense of humor. LOL Off topic as can be but I'll give you one example. After the left new hip went in last June I lost both bowel and bladder function which has been attributred to my being diabetic and sensitivity to Morphine and similar. When I told him that it took five people to catheterize me, which I'm sure he already knew, he calmly ASAP said: consecutively or simultaneously. LOL Richard is a Master of repartee and I gave him a book on same. One in that book that I remember well was when someone asked Ghandi what he thought of Western Civilization he said he thought it would be a good idea. LOL And so it goes and I'm off now to take a last drive to look at the wildflowers I can see from the car. I know the coltsfoot and Hepatica are out and I have Bloodroot here at home that's out, but I was hoping to see some early Trilliums and possibly some wild Columbine, the latter of which I also have here at home but here it's not out yet. And then to start packing since tomorrow looks very busy indeed. Sigh. Carolyn

No offense intended but I think you will find that "companion planting" isn't a widely popular approach. It is considered a very minor school of thought, a fad, by most experienced gardeners. So if you are interested in learning about it, by all means do so, but please understand that you won't find it frequently discussed on general gardening forums. That is why they have their own forums and info sites. In my personal opinion, based on some 40+ years of gardening, the problem with your broccoli is that while it can leach some nitrogen from your tomato plant's soil it is minimal and can be easily replaced. Your broccoli was simply planted far too late in your zone. In our zone, when the time comes to plant tomato plants the broccoli should be almost ready to harvest +/- a couple of weeks. So when proper planting times are used, they pose no problems for each other. At this late date it is too hot for it to form a head anyway so you might as well pull it. The marigolds are a whole other problem as they attract aphids and whiteflies which then infect your tomato plants. That has been discussed here and a search of this particular forum using 'marigolds' will pull up the discussions about all the problems they cause. But if you want to practice companion planting then your best source of info will be their forum and their info sites. Dave Here is a link that might be useful: Companion Planting forum

I'm not sure that coffee grounds are really acidic. Certainly not after they've been brewed. The roasted beans are acidic, but the acid is water soluble, so most of the acid ends up in the coffee. If you want to acidify a bed, you're probably better off pouring coffee on the bed rather than using grounds. My understanding is that the grounds are actually abut 2% N. Not bad. So in a compost pile they work like "greens" even though they are brown. I have heard (I can't remember where) that uncomposted coffee grounds actually stunt growth, if used in large quantities (as in, 25% of mix). So although they have nitrogen, uncomposted coffree grounds don't release it in a very usable form. So if you use uncomposted coffee grounds as a soil amendment, don't use too much. If you have a source for a lot of coffee grounds, get yourself a compost pile! I routinely use coffee grounds in my compost pile.