Hi, from Warwick, NY!

Hi, you guys! Hubby and I live in the countryside inbetween the villages of Warwick, NY and Florida, NY. I love gardening, but have been distracted a lot by impromptu travels across the country. This year I hope to stay put more! I received an advertisement for Mel's book in the mail and was very interested in the concept of vertical gardening. We sent away for the book and had some questions about what greenleaf mold was. Thought he must have a web site, looked on the back of the book and found you guys!

I am in the process of looking through the site and absorbing all of the info. The book that I ordered was an older book that mentioned about how to make the different types of fertilizer. I'm so happy that I discovered this site and now realize we don't have to go that route.

In our neck of the woods we have a lot of deer and we had already put a very tall fence around our vegetable garden area. At first I thought I could make 4x4 garden spots in my standing ground by careful placing of walking planks, but now I think having the raised beds might be a good idea and using Mel's formula for mixing the growing medium and filling the forms with that. We have groundhogs, or woodchucks here. I think I'll put some chicken wire underneath the frames to keep them from burrowing right up in the middle of them. Believe me, they will! They had already burrowed into my original vegetable garden. I'm going to try to control that problem by putting the chicken wire down even under my walking planks. I recently purchased a bottle of powder that one can shake down that is suppose to keep them away along with the deer, but upon reading the label more closely, I don't think it is a good idea to use it since I have grandchildren who visit and it doesn't sound safe for them or near edible plants. So, just manually trying to keep them out with the chickenwire on the ground is hopefully going to work. Naughty little pests! Actually, they are getting pretty fat as the years roll by!

I'm trying to gather material together to put in my compost bin. We unfortunately have a few walnut trees on the property and have just learned they absolutely can't be used in compost or they will kill your tomatoes. I'll have to be more careful to only use the leaves from the locust trees. The pods from the locust trees are really a menace. After the locust blooms, the blossoms and pods fly in the wind and land everywhere. New trees try to spring up everywhere they land. I have to repeated pull them up in my garden. I have recently had husband cut one tree that was hanging over our garden spot. One year I tried to keep them out with clear plastic but it took away the lovely look of my garden, so I ended up taking it down. I think it might be easier to grab them using the SFG way. The ground I'm not using will have wide planks on them, so it will be easier to sweep the pods up on them. The ones that get onto the SFG, I will try to pick up as quick as can be and will be able to reach them from all four sides.

Well, it is so fun being here with all of my new fellow gardeners and learning from Mel and all of you! LindainWarwickNY