Another thing to do, not as exciting as playing with roses but a good way to spend these last days of winter is taking care of your tools. Take your pruners apart, clean, oil and sharpen them. Same for your loppers and even your shovels. Survey your tagging system if you use one and see which tags need replacing...or start one if you've been meaning to do it. Draw a garden map and label your roses. (This can get you thinking about what you can still fit in or replace with new roses this spring.) Check your chemicals if you use them and order anything you're low on, including fertilizers for the upcoming season. Gather your material of choice for tying up roses whether it be old pantyhose or velcro tie strips. Get everything you need to start out this spring in one place so you know where it all is when you need it. Check your supply of sunscreen and find your best gardening hat. There is a lot to do as the sun gets warmer and the snow gradually fades away if you just stop and think about the tasks to come. Oh, and something very important: if you've been a couch potato all winter, it's time to start exercising and doing stretches to limber up so you don't hurt so bad when the real work comes. Now, I need to go and follow my own advice. LOL

I think you're right. Here I think the only way to do much good with veggies is to 1) do season extenders like you said 2) do stuff that people don't traditionally grow. Here that is stuff like broccoli, asparagus, snow peas, lettuce, herbs. Everybody has tomatoes and squash 3) do old timey stuff that's not in the store. By that I mean stuff they ate as a kid that's not typically at Krogers. Here that is purple hull peas, butter beans, and specific varieties of corn. 4) do stuff that is too big spaced for back yard gardens. Here that is watermelons and cantelope. 5) do stuff that's in the store but not fresh. Okra for us. Grocery store okra is gross. 6) fruit. Not many vendors have fruit but they all have tomatoes, peppers, squash and green beans. These are my strategies, plus next year I plan on trying to have a pretty good selection of seedlings. Lowe's has just about shut down all the nurseries in our town. The Bonnie plants have gotten pretty darn high and I think I can price competitively against them as well as offering single pots of some things. For example, who wants six Jalepeno plants. I get strawberry plants from my supplier for 24 cents each. What a rip off what Lowe's charges for those!

Not to worry Mari. As others have said tilling is not necessarily needed. My tiller was never effective in this rocky, hard clay and usually just bounced all over creation so I stopped trying. I've been doing exactly what you did for the last two years with great results. I'm slowly reclaiming what I thought were impossible areas just by putting down a couple of layers of cardboard right overtop of thriving weeds and making sure it overlaps properly to prevent sunlight from penetrating. Then I cover that with a thick layer of mulch/dirt, etc... (heck, sometimes I don't even mulch if it's an area that isn't easily visible and won't be an eyesore. If there are already established plants in the area I just cardboard around them and pull whatever weeds may reach out around their bases. Otherwise I just wait until the weeds are dead before planting new things. Even if a few stray weeds or runners find a way through it's much easier to eliminate those few once all the rest are dead. I had an area that was completely taken over by wild blackberry vines taller than me. They spread 15 feet closer to the house in just one season! So I whacked everything to the ground and then blanketed with the cardboard in the summer and everything underneath is dead now(yay!) I have yet to find a chemical brush or weed killer that actually does what it's supposed to and kill the root of the annoying weed grasses, thorny vines, etc... This takes a little longer but will not waste your money or time like spraying. I also just borrowed a large rubber liner from a relative and I'm going to use that to try and retake my gravel driveway and parking area one section at a time. I have heard this "solarization" is not always recommended for areas where you intend to plant though because the heat will also kill the beneficial microbes & organisms that are in that soil. Weeds in gravel are an awful pain. I look forward to a day when we can afford to blacktop it. Sincerely, Danielle

Gnatty--I think you're safe in buying a used machine. I see a lot of them at yard sales at very reasonable prices. I suspect that a lot of them were Christmas or Mother's Day gifts. Mostly very lightly used, if they were ever used at all. If/ when I need to replace mine, I will buy one from a garage sale. Not much risk when you're spending $10 or less second hand. If you have bad luck w/ the first one, you can just go buy another one and still come out $$ way ahead vs buying new. If you open up the machine & pull the bucket out, the condition of the 'well' the bucket sits in may give you an idea of how much the machine has been used. My machine is used for mixing/ kneading only. I bake in the oven. Prefer the bread machine for mixing & kneading because it is easier clean-up. I never wash the bucket--any little bits of left behind dough dry & flake off. Otherwise, I would have to use my KitchenAid stand mixer, have a bigger chore cleaning up and put more wear and tear on the mixer. My stand mixer is an old Hobart KitchenAid that I would like to preserve for as long as possible.