I have 15, 4 gallon pots with tomatoes of various types, 10, half whiskey barrels with carrots, onions, lettuce, and cabbage, 20 zuchinni plants in the ground, and at least 50 pea plants in hanging baskets. I compost all of my soil, so it is %100 percent organic with all of our vegetable waste from the house, chicken manure from our chicken coop, and horse manure from the pasture. I recylce the dirt from the previous season, and add well composted grass to act as a mulch with the soil. We have 5 tomatoe plants in our greenhouse that sprouted from the composted soil that we dumped the rotten tomatoes in from last season, which was quite the surprise to the wife and I.

I have started to do aquaculture in our fish pond this year too after a trip to Epcot this winter. (Take the "Behind the Seeds" tour at the greenhouse boat ride, it is well worth the time!)I have a 1" thick, 3' X 3" piece of foam with 1" square holes in it. I put a rock wool cude in each hole, and dropped lettuce seeds in them. The foam sits on the pond free floating, and has produced one batch of lettuce already, and I started to second batch two weeks ago. I put rock wool cubes in a 2 gallon pot, and now have 3 tomatoe starts in there that i will need to cull soon. It is an experiment, but it seems to work really well. The fish waste provides all of the nutrients the plants need, and the airiator (spelling?) seems to help both the plants and the fish at the same time. Plus, I NEVER have to water them!

If you get a chance, Epcot has some very, very interesting techniques with hydroponic, aquaculture, and other growing ideas that made the ticket price to the park very worth while.

Nice to see so many others enjoy playing in the dirt as well.

Have fun, Jeff