Around these parts, we use a machete to clear small brush and weeds from the fences, or we pull it out... the chainsaws are for actual trees! As we all know, pulling the stuff out by the roots will ensure it doesn't grow back for a while... until the next batch of weed seeds take over! About cocopeat... I noticed three distinct things about it when I used it... 1) it stayed soggy for quite some time... 2) it didn't absorb water evenly... 3) it collapsed fairly fast. Those three things made me rethink it as a bulb medium, and I'm glad I looked around for alternatives. By all means, if it works for you, use it... but for me, it's not conducive to good bulb health. I just can't wait until my seedlings from various crosses are mature enough to bloom! That will be an accomplishment, I think!

I see this all the time while I am filling and capping jars prior to putting a batch in the canner. The most obvious is the way the lid sinks down slightly and the small 'embossed' button in the middle will be sunken (indented) in even slightly more. Thats what makes the ping sound. Its quite easy to see what jar is going under vacuum when you see the whole lid sink in slightly. As to a bottom rack, be sure the jars are up from the bottom by about an inch, and the water covers the the tops of the jars by about 2 inches. If your planning on doing a lot more home canning, it may be wise to look for a bigger pot and lift out rack that can hold the whole batch of jars at once. Even though they are quite heavy once loaded with filled jars, these racks have handles that will allow you to lift out the whole batch at once. There is also the invaluable tongs that grab a single jar just under the glass bead near the tops. Here, my rack is also a bit wide between the wires, so I added a cut down round piece of aluminum. It was bought at Home Depot and comes in a 2'x4' sheet with small triangles punched in it. The small triangular punched holes allow for more heat to move though. The aluminum sheet is thin enough where you can use a good pair of scissors to cut it into a round. Since adding that disk on top of my wire rack, the jars are quite sturdy and will not easily tip. Let the apple rings age a while, and they are great when served as is, or over ice cream, or even as part of a fresh fruit mixed salad. I still have a small jar of brandied cheeries my dad made many years ago. It was canned in a small instant coffee jar with plastic cover. Because of all the brandy and its constant refrigeration, it will never spoil. Might make some ice cream with the cherries and some chocolate chips.

george, thank you so much, that was exactly the info i was looking for! i have 4 angora bunnies (contained) and 1 wild "yard" bunny, and thankfully he hasn't been tempted to sample my garden much this year... and thank you for the warm welcome, seedmama, i'm looking forward to learning alot from you all! :)

Mark, You're welcome. I can't say if the small habanero peppers on your plants are likely to ripen before frost because there's no way to know when your first frost will occur. In the 12 years we've lived in southern OK, our first frost has occurred as early as Sept. 29th (I think that was in either 1999 or 2000) and as late as December 17th or 18th around 2005 or so. However, the first frost is normally in early November for much of the state, so your peppers have a chance of maturing. There are a couple of ways to give the green habs a chance to mature if a frost or freeze is forecast for your area and you are pretty sure your plants are about to die: (1) You can pull up the plants, roots and all, and hang them upside down in a non-freezing location, like in a closet, a tornado shelter or a well-insulated outbuilding like a barn or garage. The plants likely will drop leaves, but the peppers often stay on the plant and color up/finish maturing over a period of several weeks. (This often works with tomato plants that have small bite-sized tomatoes too.) (2) You can harvest all the peppers, placing them in a single layer on a cookie sheet or small cardboard box (like the flat boxes cases of bottled water come in, for example) lined with newspaper. They can be very close to one another but not touching one another to allow good air flow. Place in a cool, dry location where humidity does not fluctuate wildly, and they often will mature and color up over a period of days, but generally won't last as long as peppers on a plant treated as described in item (1) above. (3) You can dig up the plants, place in a pot with a high-quality soilless potting mix and bring them inside the house or place them in a warm sunny location like a patio where they can continue to receive sunlight and heat during the day and can be carried inside at night to avoid freezing weather. With peppers, I've been doing a little experimentation with overwintering them in pots in my insulated but unheated garage to see if I get earlier production from plants that are more than 1 year old. So far, it seems I do. Last year, a potted red sweet bell pepper overwintered successfully despite dropping all its leaves following a night when the lows dropped into the single digits either in late Dec. or early January. It began leafing out again within a few days of the leaf drop, bloomed and had formed small fruit by latest January or earliest February. I began harvesting those red sweet bells beginning in late April, which I think is before I even had my new pepper plants in the ground. All I did was keep it in our large barn-style garage, dragging it out into the sunlight on warm days and leaving it inside the garage on cold days and cold nights. I pretty much took it inside on all nights even if they weren't forecast to drop down into freezing temps because I knew the deer would eat the potted pepper plants if I left them out at night. I have some pepper plants that are now 3 years old in pots and they produce very early harvests----generally producing mature peppers before Memorial Day. So far I've done this with ornamental peppers of all kinds, jalapeno peppers, fish pepper (a variegated hot pepper that's great for a fermented pepper sauce) and several kinds of sweet bell and non-bell peppers. This year I intend to overwinter some habanero peppers if I manage to dig them up and pot them up before our first frost. I am not sure why your habaneros were so slow to produce this year. I planted my orange habanero plants in May (I am sure it was not earlier than May because we had a temp of 39 degrees and patchy frost on May 3, 2010, for about the 3rd or 4th year in a row, so I no longer set out pepper plants before about May 5th thru 10th at the earliest) and was harvesting ripe, orange habaneros in July. I was, in fact, a little shocked that they matured so early, but suspect the beastly heat/drought/heat indices in June pushed them to mature quickly. You know what, as I was typing that I did have a thought on pepper production. Hot peppers are not affected negatively by high heat as sweet peppers often are, but they are negatively affected by high humidity. That could explain late pollination/fertilization/fruit set. If I were you and I wanted habs this year, I'd carefully dig up the plants soon, put them in pots with good soil and put them in a sunny location that stays hot. In my particular case, I'd put them on the concrete apron alongside the south-facing garage wall so they could soak up heat and light not only from the sun but also reflected heat/sunlight from the south-facing wall and the concrete apron. If cold threatens, carry them inside to protect them. Often, you know, we'll have a cold night or two in Oct. or Nov., and then it will be followed by another 4 to 6 weeks of decent gardening weather. You also could leave the plants in the ground and cover them up REALLY well anytime forecast lows are expected to drop below 40 degrees. When I want to cover up a plant under those conditions, I put a 5 gallon or larger bucket over it and then put a big sleeping bag or old comforter over the bucket. You have to remember to uncover them in the morning though, or they can roast in the heat once the sun comes up. Dawn