dogmom4

good idea! That could be a money saver. I had a tomato plant I left on the west side of my house survive until February...it produced tomatos until the end of November...we used some for Thanksgiving. It was finally killed off during a hard freeze. I was hoping it would survive because i wanted to see how hardy it would be the following year.

Originally Posted By: Skagitgal Tree tea oil is a FANTASTIC way to cure the ITCH / Pain of Shingles. Wet a cotton ball with TTO, hold in place with a bandaid. AHHHHHHHHHH. Apply 3 times daily. Skagital, thanks! I brought my mom some tea tree oil this morning. She's been dealing with flareups of shingles for quite some time and the meds the doctors gave her weren't a lot of help. She did the cottonball thing on a bad spot on her face, fell asleep and woke up a few hours later and said it's working!

Originally Posted By: Andrea sparkysarah, I made a couple of Earthboxes for my dad, since he has limited mobility. They work out well for him, especially since we've raised them up on sawhorses. For myself, I was too lazy. I just used a bunch of 18gal totes, drilled LOTS of drainage holes, put in two inches of gravel in the bottom, and then filled them with planting mix and peat moss. They've been great. Not only do I grow the jerusalem artichokes in them, but I have several more that are currently planted with chard and spinach. I'm going to start converting some of them over to tomatoes and one will have two little sugar pumkins in it, which I'll grow up a trellis onto the roof of a shed. I can't say that they are all that pretty (check out the haybale pics!) but they are highly functional and I've had great luck with them. I think I'm going to try the 18 gallon tote idea...as the trees get taller I'm losing sunny areas. I have myself on the waiting list for our community gardens cuz i want to put up as much as i can this year. And i second what Cookie said...thanks for all the great insight into what you are doing.

Thanks Trish for the drip system idea. Sometimes it's right there in your face and you don't see it til someone else says it.

Here is a picture of my first box..kind of hard to see but, the tomato is already trying to turn itself up towards the sun after 2 days... And I cilantro seeds on the top... 1031-Multimedbucket.jpg

Trish, cookie's not talkin'. She's been taped to the WALL!

Mto3b...this is something I have seen that could work in a small space... http://www.gardeners.com/-/5192%2Cdefault%...tml?SC=LNA7009A I'm going to try and make one of these on my own... it's a fabric nursery pot... http://www.gardeners.com/Potato+Bag/36-629,default,pd.html I have some landscape fabric and I am going to use chicken wire to reinforce..that way the water can go through and the wire will keep it from falling apart. I really want to be able to grow potatoes!

Andrea, thanks for such a wonderful post! I have a half dozen containers of strawberries that went dormant over the winter but have been taking off with the weather warming up. Only one of lettuce that basically overwintered and survived the freeze we had. Last year I tried the upside down tomato with little success. Not because it won't necessarily work, but, we had a pretty long stretch of over 100 degree days, I got sick and they all died for lack of watering. Plus, it was necessary to get on a ladder to water them because they were hung on the edges of the roof (flat roof). No one else but me wanted to get on the ladder 2 times a day to water. So, this year I plan to figure out a way to hang them from the roof but using a chain so they can be raised and lowered to be watered or hang lower to be watered from the ground. I also am planning to try watermelon again this year with the hope that they can spread out on the roof of my house, thus providing shade for the roof and a space to spread out. I just need to figure out what kind of soil I'm going to use and how often I need to fertilize. I also love the path to freedom site, but my first inspiration was from years ago...when reading Mother Earth news and seeing an article about the Integral Urban House. http://www.motherearthnews.com/Green-Homes...rban-House.aspx

Time to add some more examples... Food security, strengthened community, self-sufficiency, nutrition... from neglected land in our cities - what a concept! Peak Moment 33: This Vancouver, B.C. neighborhood is building community while transforming an abandoned lot in a crack neighborhood into a flourishing community garden. Join MOBY-lizer Jason O'Brien and folks of all ages for cob clay-stomping fun accompanied by music in an inner-city urban garden below the elevated skytrain. (the first 3 to 4 minutes have some political stuff so you might want to fast forward) Peak Moment 6: Small acreages can produce a lot! Janet Brisson shows the home-canned and dried vegetables, fruit, and beans she cultivates along with chickens and bees. Renee Wade talks about practices that suit the land: her drier property is better suited to raising goats.

We have two sliding glass doors..both which have the "stick in the door" to keep them secure..or maybe not so secure. This could be used instead... http://www.goodbarsecurity.com/Products/Patio_Door_Bars.asp http://www.acehardware.com/sm-patio-door--...81.1255035.html

http://www.hometips.com/cs-protected/guide...r_security.html Snip... Keeping would-be intruders outside is an important concern for most homeowners. Though hinged doors are relatively easy to protect with proper latches and deadbolts, windows and sliding glass doors are not as simple to secure. Windows and doors that slide can be forced open or lifted off their tracks, and glazing can be broken. In addition to installing locking devices, you can enhance security by replacing all ordinary glass with tempered, laminated, or wire-reinforced glass or with plastic, as well as by installing perimeter alarm systems. Several ready-made devices are available to make prying open a window and/or removing a sliding glass door from its track more difficult. The right locking device to choose will depend on whether you need to secure a sliding window or door, or a double-hung window. To keep a panel from sliding, use track grips, tightened by a thumbscrew or key, or metal stops that straddle the lower track and are secured with a lever or thumbscrew that clamps them in place. Or use a spring bolt, which is screwed to the sill or base track and has a pin that snaps through a hole drilled into the edge of the lower track and bottom of the sash. Even more secure is a bar that screws to the doorjamb and swings up into a saddle on the edge of the door to lock it in place; an advantage of this type of bar is that it can be adjusted to allow the door to be partially open.The easiest way to keep an inside panel from sliding is to drop a dowel or a piece of tubing into the empty portion of the lower track. Cut it 1/4 inch shorter than the distance between the panel and the jamb. Double-hung windows can be locked with wedge locks, key-operated latches, or locking pins that go through one sash and into the next. (At the bottom of the article it show pictures of different window locking devices.)

http://solarcooking.org/recipes/bread.htm

All is well with the world...westies back!

Is this what you're talking about Trish? http://www.shop.com/Manual_Corn_Wheat_Flou...376455-p!.shtml The corn I ended up getting came from my local food coop..so I know it is organic and is clean. It was a little more expensive than feed store corn but I get a 10% discount for buying it in bulk and a 16% discount on top of that for doing volunteer hours in the store.

I have whole dried corn...now I need to know what to use to grind it with...I have the Back to Basics from this site... http://waltonfeed.com/hand.html. In the description it says it easily mills corn but at the bottom of the page it says...Note from web page author: This grinder will not grind large seed like corn or coffee beans. So, I'm guessing I can't use it for corn. Plus, I thought I saw somewhere that people don't use the same grinder for wheat and corn because corn gums up the blades? So what does everyone do if they want to grind a variety of grains?

Ewww! Now that's nasty!

Ok, mich@el. You can eat snails too. We have plenty in our area...Got a recipe?

Not sure if I exactly remember why...I took a workshop at the local UC a couple years ago on this...I think too much citrus makes it too acidic and the worms don't like it.

Yes, I do. I have a couple of bins going continuously. I keep one bin in the kitchen because it's easy to toss scraps in. I keep the lid on and never notice any smells...also no ant issues either. It gets really hot during the summer here too. If you keep the bins outside I would think they would be ok in a shaded place or you might need to keep the lid propped open to allow for air circulation. Otherwise, keep them inside.

These are good sites on vericomposting.... http://www.franklincountywastedistrict.org...composting.html http://www.howtocompost.org/worm_composting.asp And a video to watch... http://videos.howstuffworks.com/podtech-ne...enges-video.htm Yesterday was a beautiful day here...so I was working outside. I harvested a bunch of worm castings and added new worms to a new bin. Here is a link to making your own bins... http://www.ext.vt.edu/pubs/bse/442-005/442-005.html#L5 I make mine a little simpler. Take an 18 gal tote, punch holes along the rim about 2 inches down about 3-4 inches apart. Some people put holes in the bottom, but, I don't. Just don't put anything liquid in. Fill bin with shredded newspapers and worms. The worms are not the kind you find out in the yard. They are red wrigglers. You can order them online. I keep the bin in the kitchen and add food wastes...just don't add a lot of citrus or any meat or dairy. Keep the lid on and you don't have any smell. Also, add shredded newspapers on top of the food wastes every now and then. The worm castings you get after a few months are great fertilizer for for container plants. I also grab a small handful of worms and put them in my outdoor bins and in each of my big containers

Thanks CG. I'll call our local feed store to see if they have it. More questions...does field corn have any chemicals put in it? And, if I'm going to store this can it just be put into the 5 gal buckets or do I need to do something to it?

So where do you get field corn from?

Is this the same thing as cracked corn like I've seen at feed stores or is it whole corn like popcorn?

So what do you do with field corn?