Thanks for sharing! Nice "Gollum" cup tips! And welcome, by the way. There's a ton of great information here. Yes, you'll want to change the soil mix. A good fast draining, gritty, mix is what these plants want. Get a bag of cactus and succulent soil (with as little peat as possible), and add 30 - 40 percent Perlite. You could add pumice, fire clay, small gravel, too. Just make sure that water drains well so that the roots don't rot. But you probably know this, since you have such a nice plant. Josh

CROP ROTATION: There is no problem with planting brassicas after tomatoes. In fact, if you work on keeping your soil healthy by adding organic matter annually, I think that in a home garden, crop rotation tends to be over-rated, especially in our climate. The exception would be if your soil becomes infected with diseases specific to a certain family of crops--like the solanacea family--in which case it would be more important to rotate crops. In some parts of the country where broccoli diseases persist in soils, they have to rotate or they have trouble with those persistent diseases, but I've never heard of those brassica diseases becoming an issue in Oklahoma home gardens. We are more likely to get some solanacea family diseses established in our soils, but usually are high temperatures help keep them in check for most of our growing season. I add lots of organic matter to may soil every year and that does make a difference, so I don't even attempt crop rotation unless I had a specific problem in one area of the garden in the current year. Then, if I did, I rotate that specific vegetable to a different place. About the only crop I deliberately rotate to a new area is summer squash and I do rotate it to a new area whether my garden got hit by SVBs or not. I try to plant summer squash on a 4-year rotation starting from the south side in year 1, then moving to the north side in year 2, the west side in year 3 and the east side in year 4. Everything else gets planted wherever it gets planted. BEANS: You can plant beans wherever and however it pleases you. You do realize that in order for them to be effective as a soil improver the bean plants need to be rototilled into the soil and allowed to decompose there? That's how they put the nitrogen back into the soil as the plants decay. PESTS: Even if insects had found your garden this summer, this is the time of year that the pest populations are dropping anyway. At our house, the spider mites, grasshoppers and blister beetles in the gardening areas have peaked and are dropping. I'm also seeing more and more beneficials like green lacewings, which means they've been rebounding pretty good after having low levels earlier this season. I'm still seeing tons of grasshoppers migrating in to the pastures, but the wild birds hang around the garden a lot (because I put some bird seed there) and they've been doing a pretty good job lately of eating grasshoppers in the garden at least. DIRECT-SOWING: Most things can be direct-sown anytime and they will sprout. There is no technical problem with direct-seeding brassicas in the spring or fall. In much of the country, that's how it is done, but in much of the country they only get one broccoli crop a year---direct sown in spring or early summer and harvested in summer or fall. We are different here and can plant two separate seasons of brassica crops, but have to work around the weather to get a harvest from them. The reason that OSU recommends starting from plants is that we have to work around the early arrival of heat in spring and the chance arrival of early hard frosts in autumn. Brassicas grown from transplants in spring have the best chance of producing a harvest before the heat arrives and makes the plants bolt. In the fall, OSU recommends starting with plants because it gives you the greatest chance of getting a harvest before temperatures drop into the mid-20s and freeze damages the plants, perhaps ruining your chance of getting a harvest. It isn't that seeds won't sprout or that you cannot grow brassicas from direct-sown seed--it is that with seeds direct-sown in August, the odds are lower than you'll harvest your brassicas before it gets too cold for them. (Some years it never really gets too cold for them if you cover them up any rare night we're going below the mid-20s. Other years, cold weather arrives early and stays.) Harvesting success from brassica plants direct-sown from seed for fall is highly variable. Some years there will be a night or two with a very hard freeze at the end of September which could kill your plants before they produce. Other years? November is the more normal time, and at least one year since moving here, and possibly two, we didn't have a hard freeze until mid-December. So, if you start with 5-week old plants, you're likely to harvest well before the first killing freeze in fall, but if you start with seeds, the odds are higher that you won't. Your success with fall brassicas often hinges on the days-to-maturity of the varieties you're growing. If you chose brassicas with DTMS in the 50-65 day range, then even direct-sown seed can grow plants that will produce before hard freezes hit. If you choose brassicas with DTMs in the 70-90 day range, then the odds of harvesting before sub-freezing temps set them back are higher. Some brassicas won't hardly freeze anyway, but some are very sensitive to temps below the mid-20s. Obviously if a person put 5-week old brassica plants in the ground today and the person next door sowed seed today, you'd expect the person who started with 5-week old plants will have a better chance of harvesting before sub-freezing temperatures arrive. However, this is Oklahoma where the weather does all kinds of crazy things, so I am never going to say something is guaranteed to work or guaranteed not to work. Our weather here doesn't allow us the luxury of guarantees, not ever. OSU-RECOMMENDATIONS: With everything that OSU recommends, there are research-tested scientific reasons for each and every recommendation. In real life, our gardens experience such wild swings from too cold to too hot and too wet to too dry that we can take risks and not necessarily follow all of OSU recommendations. Remember that recommendations are just what is recommended. That doesn't mean you cannot grow in other ways. Sometimes you can ignore the recommendations and it pays off, but other years you'll be wishing you'd done it OSU's way. Dawn

Thanks for that Tony. Uncle Remiggio says he hasn't forgotten the order you sent him, but he hasn't been the same since the last Yowie incident and hopes you understand.

dave in nova - I checked Euonymus kiautschovicus, because I don't know it all. I couldn't find any UK sites referring to it except just a single mention on RHS. It doesn't seem to be much known here for some reason. E japonicus is a very common plant, especially in older gardens. Along with Aucuba, Box and Cherry Laurel it's a tough old stalwart of the Victorian shrubbery