E Reimer

We had amazing tomato plants last year with tons of great looking and tasting fruit. We started our tomatoes inside this year. The starts looked awesome and were beetween 6" and a foot tall when we transplanted them to the garden. We gave them a week of acclimation during the day. We transplanted them to a bed that had never had tomatoes before to avoid disease. The bed was layered with llama manure and maple leaves in the fall, which decomposed nicely over winter. We dug wide furrows to keep the decomposing leaves away from the new plants. The tomatoes immediately yellowed after transplanting. I dosed them with some worm compost tea to give them a boost, but they continued to yellow. Now they all look like this picture. What's up?

This is what the solar exposure looks like at the site. The big spike in the horizon is a pine tree that will let some light through.

Druce, could you link to that pump? I'm not finding anything like that on Ebay. The gas powered pump I'm using now is a shore mounted centrifugal pump, so I'm familiar with the benefits of the centrifugal pump. What I'm trying to do is make this a simple as possible. I don't want to store water or electricity. I just want to pump directly into the drip lines using a direct feed without batteries while the sun is up. With a low-flow pump (2-3 gal/min), I can divide my garden into 4 zones, water 1 zone each day all day while the sun is up, and get just the right amount of water I need. The reason I don't want a submersible, is because I have to pull the intake periodically to clear the algae that grows in our pond. That seems like it would be harder to do with a pump on the end (though I could be wrong about that).

This is the pump I'm looking at.
http://north40.com/catalog/product/view/id/3506/
They also have this one which would deliver more water at lower amperage (for more than double the price)
http://north40.com/catalog/product/view/id/3507/
I was originally looking at a submersible pump like this, but it seems like I could accomplish the same thing with half the cost using a surface pump:
http://www.solarpumps.com/solar-water-pumping-systems.html
The centrifugal pumps that could handle the head pressure are considerably more expensive than the diaphragm pumps.

We currently pump from a pond up a hill to our garden to irrigate it. It's 35' of head from the surface of the pond to the garden. I'm looking at switching out our gas-powered pump to a solar setup. I'd like to do a direct feed system with the panels directly driving a 12V pump. The local farm supply store has a diaphragm pump on sale that will deliver 2gpm with the amount of head I have at 13 amps. Can I just wire it straight to a solar panel without a controller so that it pumps whenever the sun is up, or will that burn up the motor as it tries to start in low sunlight? Can anyone recommend a controller? When I search for one, all I come up with are charge controllers for batteries.
I figure 12V x 13 amps = 156 Watts. Will a 160 Watt panel do, or will I need to go higher? If it's cloudy, I won't need as much water anyways. Thanks for the help.

I just noticed it on the property while clearing thistle from that area. I'll keep an eye on it and post pictures of the blossoms and berries when they come. The neighbor thinks it's Oregon Grape as well. Thanks.

Could anybody tell me what type of Holly this is? It's on a West facing slope in a snowberry thicket just outside of Spokane.
Thanks!

Are you familiar with the Catholic Land Movement? A good book that may help you define your goals is "Flee to the Fields". It pushes the philosophy of "distributism" as an alternative to both socialism and capitalism. The newer edition has a good introduction that speculates as to why it failed.

The Inland Northwest Food Network is starting up a local investing program. I have only attended one of their meetings, but they seem to be setting it up as a peer-to-peer lending group that will help build our local food shed. It is in it's early stages so far, but seems to have promise.
http://inwfoodnetwork.org/local-investing/

I know it's native here (Eastern WA). Is this Kinnickinnick (Bearberry)?