Okay. Last year, farmerdill gave me his planting schedule for fall gardens. I copied it all into my garden journal so I wouldn't forget. Here goes. Mid July: Start collards, brocolli, cauliflour, and cabbage from seed. Sow it into pots, barely covering the seed with a light dusting of potting mix. Set the pots into dappled shade and water daily. Dappled shade for me is on my deck under the deck benches. Underneath there, the plants get full sun in the morning until approximately midday and light to full shade the rest of the day. It works. This year too, remarkably. Also, in July, I pull most of my first crops: tomatoes, beans, squash, etc. which are now finished and replant them, beginning to leave room for cool season crops. This year I have successfully seeded okra, cowpeas, cucumbers, and squash, though last year mildew got the squash and cucs. Also, it's helpful to keep the squash under row covers to keep squash vine borers away from them at least until they begin to bloom. August:Late month direct sow turnips, rutabagas, mustard greens, and Asian greens. You can also sow carrots and beets, though I have yet to get a good stand of beets. Septembmer: set out your seed started brassicas from July around the middle of the month. You can still direct sow leafy greens too. Mid month, start onion seeds (short day) in flats. And in the third or fourth week, plant lettuce, garlic, spinach (tough), and red mustard. Plant the onion seedlings into the garden in late November or early December. It helps to get better germination in extreme heat if you cover the sown beds with fabric row cover and water through the fabric. I guess it holds the moisture in the beds longer. You certainly need to water daily until germination, which is really fast, 3-4 days for most things. I have only had a fall garden two years now, but it's wonderful! I keep all my greens and lettuces under floating row covers draped over fence wire hoops and both years, absolutely everything lived and produced all winter long. (Temps above 10 both winters.) I also mulch the beds well with pinestraw. This is for freeze protection, but it also has a benefit of keeping the greens perfectly clean. If you harvest the leaves with scissors and don't pull the plants out by the roots, cleaning the greens is a snap. I hope this helps you!

Sounds like alot goes into the thought os heat and air! I have abasement I would like heated and cooled a bit in the winter just to keep mold down (or i couild use the dehumidufier we have for the cooling because it is cool down there). The kids are miving back (grandchild and aLL) AND we want it warm down there. tEMPS HERE IN gEORGIA DO NOT GO LOW FOR LONG. Cost efficiency and heat is our concern (with three kids in college) would the heat pump, the electric baseboards, an electric firplace, be best? It is a small basement (less than 800) with a room already done (plug in heat) and two left to do. Before we get to work on it we need to decide on the heat flow and perhaps even the cool flow for summer. The ceiling is insulated and the unit would be just for the basement. Other questions: are registers and returns necessary in such a small area?Or ois that depending on the type of heat used?

Just turned mine off. We love the cool tiles on a warm day. Ours is from Flextherm. It has a feedback loop (thermostat) and is silent. However, the manual that comes with it is quite confusing. At least it has default settings that you can use while you're figuring it out. Also, be sure that the warming elements are close enough to your sink to keep your tootsies warm. I challenged my contractor on this just after they installed the wire. He promised the warmth would extend several inches laterally from the wires. It doesn't!!!!!! idiot!!!

tigerdunes - I have learned a lot from reading your postings on this forum and I appreciate your inputs. Your minimum specs list has already been very useful (though a lot of sales people really struggle to find answers about some of the items on that list), and IâÂÂm leaning now toward the XL15i instead of the $660 more expensive XL16i. I still havenâÂÂt completely ruled out Carrier and Rheem, but a neighbor has had a 4-ton Trane XL14i for over three years and I like the way it does not seem to have collected very many of the evergreen needles that are everywhere around here. I am curious though just why the XL16i has so much trouble with dehumidification, and whether that is important to our well-shaded house just outside of Seattle. We havenâÂÂt bothered to run our heat pump in cooling mode for at least the last decade, so I remain mostly concerned with heating performance and expect to use very little cooling. Also, is the XL16i any less reliable that the XL15i, or is it just (as I understand from other forum postings) that it is more complex to hook up and hence more prone to improper installation? I am also puzzled when I compare ARI heating performance of the XL15i and XL16i. At 47 degrees their ARI heat capacity and COP are identical, and at 17 degrees the 15i has only 1% more heat capacity. The 16i has the better 17 degree COP, 2.86 versus 2.82, but it falls down on HSPF to 8.50 versus 9.00 for the 15i. This seems to imply that the 16i spends more time in defrost mode, but I do not understand why. Returning of your spec list, I assume âÂÂstaged backup heat stripsâ refers to the capability to selectively turn on part instead of all of the backup heat? Our old heat pump has this feature, but I have yet to find a sales person who can tell be whether modern systems can do this. One issue is not really relevant until our new heat pump is being installed, but opinions about it are so amusingly diverse I cannot resist asking. Our power utility offers an extra rebate if we install a lockout control. What should it control? We have a lockout set at 32 degrees on our old heat pump and I understood it prevents the backup heat from coming unless the outdoor temperatures is below 32 degrees. The âÂÂenergy expertâ I talked to at our power company agreed, but said the lockout should also turn off the heat pump compressor at 32 degrees to âÂÂprevent a spike in our electric bill.â I recognize efficiency is down at that temperature, but unless there is a lot of icing up it still seems to make sense to run the compressor. Sale personnel were about evenly split whether the lockout should turn off the compressor. Is there any clear answer on this?