G Stone

As others have mentioned, growing won't be a problem, but fruiting might be trickier for some plants.  I'm far from an expert and don't have a solar greenhouse, just a metal-frame-and-plastic thing I got on eBay, but I love the challenge of finding out what will actually grow here, and how well.

I've had great success with my potted Improved Meyer Lemon tree, and I get upwards of a dozen fruits a year now. I move it out of the greenhouse once it warms up; the bees and hummingbirds love it, and it fills the yard with its blossoms' sweet fragrance.  This success led me to try oranges, and I have seedlings coming up now.

I also have a ten year old coffee tree that I keep indoors through the winter.  It's growing slowly, but has yet to fruit. I think probably the house doesn't get enough light during the winter.  

Other tropicals that I have growing at the moment include turmeric, ginger, Hawaiian ti plant, plumeria, pineapple (which I actually got to fruit once), avocados, and mangoes.  I started over with the avocados and mangoes last year, as a deep cold snap took out my seven year old specimens of each a couple winters ago.  The little heater in the greenhouse just wasn't up to the task.  

I also have a small stand of ornamental bananas in the ground that have been thriving for a couple of years now.  I'm hoping this winter's prolonged freezes haven't gone too deep and killed it.  I've heard that others have had success with potted papaya and guava trees but I'm unsure about fruiting, and I've never gotten the seeds to germinate myself.

I'm a man, so I don't feel like I have any right to judge a woman's choice of what to do with her body. I certainly wouldn't let it be a determining factor in who I choose to hang out with.

That said, I know that there are plenty of cosmetic products on the market that are perfectly safe and ethically produced, and I would hope that women who choose to adorn themselves would do so in a safe and responsible way.

That's amazing; thanks Roy. I'd heard about the red light thing but never looked into it to see if it had any factual basis.

Thanks, Liz. I'm flattered. I generally have those moments in the fall, and then of course forget about them by next spring.

I'm musing on the direction I want to go with part of my urban container garden.

As you can see from last year's photos, I have several large 30-gallon containers up close to the house, on an east-facing concrete wall. I generally put my tomatoes in there, with lettuce, pepper, and basil plants around them.

What I'm pondering is the most effective treatment of the wall, and I'm looking at three options:

1. Leave it as it is, because the bright white reflects the sunlight and maximizes the light that the tomatoes get from all sides, helping to offset the shady hours of the afternoon.

2. Paint it a darker color, to absorb heat and radiate warmth all shady afternoon and long into the evening. Also, the extra warmth would come in handy early in the spring, especially if I use windows to turn the containers into hot beds.

3. The Middle Way: covering the wall with natural reed fencing to do a little of both? Not too hot, not too cold? Also: more attractive.

Thanks for any insights you may have.

I used the same method on all four jars, and one worked much better than the others. The only variation was the substrate. Science!

Try this, Ben:

http://youtu.be/5Vmhxt_QhqI

I just stuck mine in a dutch oven and baked it at 200° for a couple hours.

The jar lids are loose, just sitting there, and I open them for 10-15 minutes a day for air.

Awww. It looks like a little tribble.

Okay, so here it is twelve days later and I finally have some results to report.

On Feb. 17th, I made a slurry out of several white store-bought buttons in water and used this to further moisten the pasteurized substrates:

1) Sawdust only
2) Equal parts sawdust and compost
3) Equal parts compost and coffee grounds
4) Equal parts sawdust, compost and coffee grounds

Of the four jars, only the coffee/compost one shows positive results. A light mycelial growth throughout the entire jar except the bottom 3/4", where too much moisture collected. I first barely detected it yesterday, and today it's noticeable from several feet away.

There may be some growth in the coffee/compost/duct jar, but it's had to tell. In any case, I think I can rule out the sawdust as a substrate for buttons. Next I'll try it with blue oysters, since they apparently relish fir trees.

I'll be using this substrate to further inoculate a large plastic bin full of coffee/compost, 2:1.

This is a "before" pic. I'll put up some others once the mycelium show up better in photos.