Good evenin' folks. I've finally found this wonderful GardenWeb, and thought I should wave a trowel and say hi. I'm looking forward to you advice and fellowship.

I was so glad to see an "accessible gardening" forum here. Sometimes I feel kinda invisable...

This year, I'm planning a very ambitious garden, front, back, porch, and hangin' off the house; vegetables, herbs, flowers and shrubs. It's basically a race to see if I can get things in the ground before they commit me!

I've been blessed with wonderful land, and have, far too often, had to forgo nurturing it because of the achies. This year, with all the miserable snow and extreme snow (and seemingly eternal winter) in the northeast, I had to turn to the seed catalogs for relief. I don't sleep much and i spent many hours in bed drooling over those catalogs, and I do believe they were instrumental in bringing me through the winter. While the pipes in the kitchen were freezing, I planned row upon row of beautiful sun-kissed tomatoes. When they exploded, my mind planted a few more rows. When the plumber had to keep turning the heat off to replace part upon part, pipe upon pipe, I just kep planting those fun-lovin'crops. Soon, I was up to corn and watermelon.

We have a large porch and 26 looooong windows with their old shutter hardware still attached. Hmnm...baskets filled with cascaades of bloooms would look lovely on the side of each wimdow...and think of all the money I'll save not having to buy hardware to affix them to the house! Look! A L. Leonard has hanging *bags* for only 81 cents each! You can fit a dozen cascading things in each and save a fortune in not having to by baskets!

The house was feeling warmer, and, as the garden grew bigger, we were practically *making* money by my shrewd planning. After all, I'd do these hundreds of plants all from seed. No wasting money on buying plants in flats from Franks when I could *make* a hundred of them for only 95 cents. Oh, and, yes, well, some jiffy pellets and pots and soil mix for medium transplanting, and trays and domes and lights and heat mats, and just a few more odds and ends. B ut after all, you can re-use so many of those things for *years* so if you amortize it out over time, in 20 years it will be mere pennies a day.

Good thing my mind has been feeling better, 'cause my body has just been realizing what's up. Yikes!

I have acheies like anyone else: inflammatory arthritis over most of my body, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, an unhappy right shoulder rotator cuff, and equally unhappy left knee torn meniscus, an ankle that loves to sprain itself, asthma, and chronic daily headache. The headache is often migraine, but not always. It's there 24/7, so I'm glad it's not always migraine! The migraine part is here plenty, tho, and often for weeks at a time. Then I just pop into the hospital for a week or so and they break it for me :-). Oh, and I have wicked severe sleep apnea too, so I tend to fall alseep at any given second. I mean, really, all the time. It's embarrassing. Esp. as tend to fall down too. (That tends to get bruisy as well as embarrassing.)

So...I could use all the helop youy can give me as to how I am going to manage my garden this year! I have an areea fenced off in the back that is 40' by 60' for the veggies (and flowers thrown in tastefully.) I know I can't plant it all, so I plan on putting part of it in as cover crop, maybe red clover or some such thing.

I'm going to try drip irrigation. I think, once I have it laid out, it will save me a lot of work and bending and reaching and stuff. I want to drip irrigate the hanging baskets/bags ans the porch planters too.

Is this true, or am I fooling myself?

Should I till like I usually do, or smother with newpapers and mulch? (Oh, I like to be organic too. ok, so I give the houseplant and im[atiens and things like that some MIracle Grow)

I'm thinking of gettin one of those things that look like smqll WALKER WITH A PADDED SEAT ATTACHED...sorry...becomes a kneeler or a bench. Good idea?

Gee, if you've lived through all this, God bless you. And pleaase help me.....!

Donna in Westchester