I agree with many of the statements made here. We also eat from the garden and when in season. Lucky for us, the seasons here are long! We simply plan our meals around what the garden produces! I think this really simplifies life. Lettuces grace our table from December to June, tomatoes from July to December, cole crops are good from November until June. In the winter we eat peas and favas, in the spring runner beans, in the summer common beans, in the fall sometimes cow peas, sometimes limas. Carrots produce every month (but they are less tasty in the summer), beets most of the year, chard all the time. We grow all the herbs we use, but only have basil in the summer and cilantro in the winter. Fruit is great, and even better now that we started growing strawberries. Our fruit production goes like this: December to May too much citrus! strawberries are producing most of the time, peaches in mid summer if the squirrels let us have some, figs in August and September, then some of the neighbor's grapes. We do buy some tropical fruit from time to time, bananas, mangos, papaya, we can't grow those too well. I also eat a lot of my preserved (dried) figs troughout the year. So I think we produce 90% of the fruit and veggies we eat. We produce some potatoes, but need to buy some for part of the year. Same with onions. Garlic was a bust, must do something about it. We grew corn a couple of years, no more. We are using the space to grow artichokes, better return on the investment! So we buy corn a couple of times a year. As far as other grains, I have tried growing amaranth for grain. No fun to harvest, but I like it as greens in the summer!

So you think nature was made to keep us safe? Because that is completely backwards, we evolved to adapt to survive in the environment. There is natural horizontal genetic transfer among plants in many cases, it probably happens at a higher rate than the artificial transfer, we just don't find and take care of the naturally occurring ones. Who exactly brought up "Substantially equivelant"? Is that a reference to something? The chances of a gene successfully piggybacking with a target gene are roughly 1/10^19 (about 30 base pairs to a primer, need at least 25 to match to have any percentage work, then you have about 15 cycles where your "piggybacker" needs to be chosen preferentially to your target site, to be fair the 1/2 chances on the 15 or so cycles would probably be lower than 1/2 and the 1/4 chance of any given base pair would probably be a bit higher, because the four nucleic acids are never found in the exact same ratio, its typically between 19 and 31% for any given base). What prevents the gene from getting away outside of the lab is the lack of equipment and reagent in the environment. Yes some genes can make it through the natural way, but again we aren't choosing toxins that affect humans, so there is no reason to think that a gene in corn from pigweed will affect milkweed any more than a gene in corn from corn. The lab techniques require equipment that is never found in nature. As for toxins against pests and against humans ... they will be in the plant. But a toxin you spray on the plant will probably be there in higher quantities. Potentially we can produce toxins in just the parts that are attacked, for instance we could produce a toxin in the stems of squash to quash SVB. However thus far we have been sticking to toxins that aren't toxic to humans, Bt for instance, binds specifically to a protein in the digestive tract of lepodoptera, humans have been spraying the whole bacteria on veggies for years and years with no problem. I am a student, and haven't made anything worth testing, but yes they do test on animals, and sometimes they test poorly (Jules Dervase talks about a test done on rats with tomatoes and how the rats wouldn't eat them ... neglecting to mention that the rats wouldn't eat any tomatoes GMO or non). For me the worst cases are things like golden rice, they simply moved some genes from one edible plant to another but had a huge push back, had they been successful they probably would have prevented nearly 250,000 children each year from going blind. Since it was ready to be distributed globally 8 years ago that is 2 million children.

First, thank you so much for answering. My house is on concrete slab and the valve of shut water on/off is in the garage close to the thermal. We think, not sure that the water line cross through the wall and meet with the copper pipe outside of the house. By the way I have a sewer line close to it outside and a drainer box of the city that is in the back yard and a drain box on the street. A guy from the city water brought a device of hearing and he heard a sound of water running harder sound at the water meter than at the thermal control. At the beginning of this, before the high bill came we were having trouble with one bathroom, we used to hear a sound of flushing but nobody was there. This sound was more clear at night when sleeping. I changed the rubber ring/band inside of the tank. The sound was less but not disappeared. We forgot about this and suddenly the sound disappeared completely. I don't know if this has relation with this. One last thing. When we shut off the water from the valve inside close to the thermal the water meter is still running, but when We close the water from the inside of the water meter box it stops... thanks again.Anything else you can tell us, please...

Agree - keep it simple or it becomes depressing work. ;) Soaker hose, my fingers, and a few stratigicaly placed tin cans have worked well for me for years in my particular soil. And in very dry areas of the country growers have success doing dry-farming of tomatoes. The plants will tell you when it needs water and too little water is better than too much. Oxygenated roots are even more important than water. The crucial phrase - consistent moisture level- is too often misinterpreted to mean consistently WET soil. But that isn't true. It is the word "consistent" that is important. The plants will adapt to the available soil moisture if it is consistent. But if it is the complex details that appeal to you, by all means, go for it and I wish you luck. Dave