I use a spiral bound notebook, with a pen attached with a length of cord. The information is written in my own code/shorthand, along with planting maps of individual beds (garden is a collection of raised beds). The date goes left of the margin. I record any gardening activity I may wish to remember, what is planted where, rainfall, unusual weather trends, and nature observations of interest (e.g., "first Japanese beetles arrive.") I do a "note to self" section each year, which I keep on the last pages of the notebook. Here I record action points that I want to remember next season, e.g., grow more or less of this or that, this variety was terrible and that variety was spectacular, start the eggplants sooner, etc. I find it very helpful to distill these points out from the main narrative pages and record them separately as the season progresses and while I am thinking of them - then I have the "lessons" of that season compiled in a neat list, without having to wade through the main pages searching for them. In my experience my note taking is much more reliable and complete if the notebook is always in a special spot in the garden (once we start growing outside, of course). Currently that means my notebook lives in the glove box of my golf cart, since I always take the golf cart to the garden (being far from the house). In gardens past it has meant leaving it in a special spot in the garden shed, or in one garden with no building, installing a mailbox in the garden to keep the journal in.

I try to write pretty precisely. I wrote "the posts I have seen in the past on the 'hydraulics' of drainage in pots" intentionally, to get away from the specific article you referenced as I didn't have time or inclination to go through it right then. The posts I refer to were related in topic and on Gardenweb but in another forum (I forget which). They invoked a zone of saturation perched in the finer soil just above the bottom coarser material. That made no sense to me hydrologically. I (back then) briefly looked at what professional soils hydrology (soils physics) literature had to say about it and saw that it was not in fact any true perching of saturation, especially not likely long enough to do any harm to roots, but was merely a delay in the downward passage of the pressure wave (relates to percentage of saturation). And if I recall correctly (it's been a while), the only time you got saturation at all above the textural boundary is when the finer soil is very fine and is capable of holding saturation there by capillary tension. Clays or fine silts are not what we want as potting soil in any event. The possible definitional problem I referred to was the probability of horticulturists defining perching or an elevated zone of saturation differently than a soils physicists would, even if both were agronomists. A ground water hydrologist would look at it still differently. A soils physicist would tend to look at perching as saturation in a steady state (stable except for evapotranspiration); a horticulturist or orchardist or farmer would look at it as perched if it stayed there long enough to do some harm (or good); a ground water hydrologist would not pay much attention to it unless it lasted for months or years (except possibly in terms of inducing lateral flow in recharge events). Here, I again refer to those earlier posts: I think the notion that coarser material at the bottom of a pot is in any way harmful in terms of drainage IS a horticultural myth. The point may be well taken that the older notion of its necessity may be a myth too.

From what I've read, the "typical" fluorescent bulb has a wattage of about 10 watts per foot. So, 4-foot shop light uses 40-watt bulbs, and a 2-foot shop light uses 20 (or 18) watt bulbs. The ends of the bulbs, nearest the ballasts, aren't as efficient as the middle, even when the bulb is new. So, for a 4-foot shop light, the last 4-6 inches aren't receiving as much light as the center (I try to compensate for this by switching the flats around every few days). This also makes the shorter fixtures less effective in delivering light to your plants--if the last 6-inches of the each end is weaker light, a large chunk of your 2-foot fixture is less effective, compared to a 4-foot fixture. Speaking of which, I'm off to buy more shop lights, since several died on me last spring (guess I should try to be more careful and not spill so much water on the darn things!!) Emily in FRIGID Fairbanks

Thanks, Ted :) That is one sturdy trellis! I followed your link and enjoyed what you wrote about your soil, etc. Kind of sounds like we are gardening similarly. I LOOSELY follow the SF thing. Meaning I plant closer than recommended but I find the SF technique to be too complicated. I have 3- 3 X 12 foot beds with cinder blocks stacked two high. I used regular dirt that I purchased from a yard (24 cubic yards so far - but the last bit is piled up and waiting for me to finish my beds. Most of the first load went into a retaining wall.) and added manure and compost. It's just one big crap shoot for me right now but I'm having fun experimenting. Loved seeing your pics. Thank you for sharing. Tammy