Well, let me answer you by asking you a couple things, what are you trying to grow? Your post says you are in zone 7, and it can get pretty hot and dry during the summer down there. You mentioned lettuce and cabbage, those are cool season crops. I live in zone 5, and it is just impossible to get my cool season crops like broccoli, cauliflower, radishes, spinach, carrots, and ANY head lettuce to keep it together in the summer. If I want any of those crops I have to do a spring crop that I start very early (January), and a fall crop that I start in mid july/august. Cool season crops won't set the kind of vegetable that you are looking for in the heat, they will "bolt" and try to flower and set seed. Broccoli for instance, once it sets flowers and tries to seed, it tastes very bitter. warm season crops will do better in the summer heat, provided they have an inch of water a week (use a rain gauge on the ground and a good sprinkler to measure). warm season crops are Okra, tomatoes, peppers, corn, beans, cucumber, and mellons. As for your insect friends, some people on the forums are avid organic/no chem gardeners, and they can recommend many good organic solutions, depending on the type of insect problem you have. If you are looking for a chemical solution, Sevin works wonders. It comes in either a liquid spray that you dilute, or as a powder that you sprinkle on the leaves. It breaks down quickly in the environment, and washes off which means you will have to reapply it after a rain. But the answers you are looking for depend on the type of crop you are growing and the type of bug you are dealing with. As for the tangling, make sure you have enough light from directly above, to encourage them to grow upwards. I have never had good results with lettuce in a 72 cell container, mine tangle too, I usually use bigger trays. With direct sunlight, you want to gradually expose them to it. A couple hours on a sunny day, followed by 4-5 hours the next day, should be enough to harden them off. Lastly, with fertilizer, I usually add compost and manure to my garden in the fall, and again in the spring, and if I need more from how the plants look, I will use something like miracle grow every other week, fed as a weak solution (like 1/2 the recommended strength). The answer really depends on what you are growing and what kind of soils you have. Do you have heavy clay that is difficult to manage, or does it have more organic matter with a more rich color like a silt loam?

Hello. You may already know that UVM has an outreach program, they may have some useful contacts: http://www.uvm.edu/mastergardener/?Page=who.html Here are some links to people who may help: http://www.cedarcirclefarm.org/about/education-center http://burlingtonfoodcouncil.org/about-us/our-partners/ http://www.citymarket.coop/membership/community-outreach-partners/vermont-community-garden-network http://nofavt.org/resources It might be too late for this year, but ask your local garden centers about getting year old seed for free. Simply asking for free seeds at various forums might work too. Be sure to deliver pictures of the results. Good luck!

I was a crisis counselor for sexual assault in the past and did children's advocacy in law school. I applied for CASA training through my last employer and a program where they said they were wanting to facilitate community involvement, but when it came time for training, they wouldn't let me take the hours away from work to do it. ??? I always thought I would get back to that after the boys were grown, but I stayed busy volunteering in the schools while they were home. My dad passed at the end of my youngest's senior year in high school and I handled the estate, so I am just now starting to think about whether that is still something I want to do. I recently read that they have an advocate for every child in our county but still want volunteers for future additions, so the need would probably not be high demand. DH is about to go half-time at work and ease into retirement. We talked about possibly doing Habitat when that day came, but we haven't discussed it recently. I like to do wall finishing and painting. Not sure if I would be good at much else, but would be willing to try. I volunteer with an arts support group and will probably get involved in their children's outreach program and possibly ushering at events. Right now I have eased into the scholarship committee which only meets about half the year. I have one director who would like to try to get a fine arts and performing center in our area and has suggested that if I get bored. I know someone who might be able to help corral the right people and she's leaving another position at the end of the year. That would be a major undertaking, but I would love to see it happen. That will at least be a conversation or two to test the waters. As far as working with the elderly, I would second the comment above. You are not likely to be stuck doing things you are not comfortable with and there are many levels of elder care -- from independent senior living to assisted living and memory care. You could pick one of the more independent settings. So many of them just love having someone to talk to.

Not idiotic. No question is if you don't know the answer, but you weren't supposed to know the answer to this one. When you make a recipe like that you feed it up first. Details below. First off, the measurements aren't important for keeping your yeast alive. They become important for using it because you want to know how much flour and water you're putting in. If you don't need a recipe, you don't even need to know that, and can just do it by feel. I.e., until it's wet or dry enough. You can work your way back to knowing your proportions just by feeding for a few more days. If you've been feeding half water and half flour by weight each time, which on second reading, I think is what you were saying, the only issue is how hungry the yeast is, and no biggie. It's still all "100% hydration", i.e., the same weight of water as of flour, so no matter how much you have total, you know how much of each. Re the whole wheat, as I said previously, you don't want to shock the starter. Especially since it's not rising strongly yet. I'd feed for another week with AP just to make it easier, but if you feel like playing it's not wrong. Start by giving it only a bit of whole wheat and the rest white, and work up to all whole wheat, or it may go into a coma. Give it some time even if it's dormant and it might recover, but this early it could give up. Probably won't, but could. If you start with 10g, and work up to the full 50g over a week, it's less likely to protest. Whole wheat doesn't form as strong a gluten because of the bran, and the bran can actually cut the gluten threads as it works and rises. Eventually, it will double, but it make take it awhile to develop "legs". If you can, use whole wheat bread flour, or hard wheat berries rated at 14+% protein (this is a different number from the one in the nutrition info on the bag, which due to rounding isn't precise enough to be meaningful for baking comparisons). I don't think red or white hard wheat matters much. White might be a little easier to work with, but not enough to fret over. Feeding up your starter means increasing the size. So you have 200g in your jar, and your recipe calls for 400g. Put your starter in a bigger jar and give it its own weight in food, but don't discard, so use 100g of water and 100g of flour. Wait your standard 8-12 hours for it to double, pull off your 100g feed and set aside/store, discard 100g and feed the remaining 200g by 100g flour and 100g water. If your starter is old and strong, you can probably just feed without discarding, but while it's young, you need more food. So, when you have a recipe that calls for "1 cup of starter", it's usually talking about a wetter starter, that's more of a thin batter or slurry consistency. For your sanity, if the recipe doesn't say the hydration ratio, or give a starter recipe where you can see the proportions, skip it until you're comfortable baking with your starter. If it is a 300% hydration recipe, for instance--the weight of the flour is always 100% and the proportional weight of the water is measured off that, so 300% means three times as much water by weight as the weight of the flour--so once you've separated out your keeper starter, you can increase the water in your feeding, or you can feed first and add the water right before you use it. If you're baking daily, you can just keep a very wet starter going on the counter. If not, it's harder to maintain healthily. Other recipes often call for just your kind of starter, half water half flour. For one of them, just feed up the starter to the correct volume. There are different ideas about the best time to use the starter. No matter what, the whole point is that the yeast will feed on the carbs and burp making the bread rise. Unless directed otherwise, I use it after it has doubled, but well before the next feeding time. Have fun!