The Back Yard Is Brand New... What Will Happen?

Did You Know? - Perlite is a unique volcanic mineral which expands to about 13 times its original volume when it is heated to a temperature of approximately 1600 F (871C). During the heating process, the mineral particles pop like popcorn and form a granular, snow-white material that is so light in weight it weighs only about 5 to 8 pounds per cubic foot (80-128 kg/cubic meter).

Each particle of perlite is comprised of tiny closed air cells or bubbles. The surface of each particle is covered with tiny cavities which provide an extremely large surface area. These surface cavities trap moisture and make it available to plant roots. In addition, because of the physical shape of each particle or perlite, air passages are formed in the growing media thereby providing excellent aeration. Fertilizer appropriate to the plants being grown should be added. Horticultural perlite is available in several different grades. The coarse sand size has been used for many general gardening and horticultural applications, but the finer grades work best when used outdoors.

Advantages of Horticultural Perite

• Improves aeration and drainage
• Makes moisture and nutrients readily available to plants
• Is inorganic and does not deteriorate.
• Has an essentially neutral pH of 6.5 to 7.5.
• Serves as an insulator to reduce extreme soil temperature fluctuations.
• Is sterile and free of weeds and disease.
• Is clean, odorless, lightweight, and safe to handle.

Did You Know? - Botanically, a tomato is a fruit: the ovary, together with its seeds, of a flowering plant. However, the tomato has a much lower sugar content than other edible fruits, and is therefore not as sweet. Typically served as part of a salad or content course of a meal, rather than at dessert, it is considered a vegetable for most culinary uses.

One exception is that tomatoes are treated as a fruit in home canning practices: they are acidic enough to process in a water bath rather than a pressure cooker as vegetables require. Tomatoes are not the only food source with this ambiguity: green beans, eggplants, cucumbers, and squashes of all kinds (such as zucchini and pumpkins) are all botanically fruits, yet cooked as vegetables.

This dispute has led to legal speculation in the United States. In 1887, U.S. tariff laws that imposed a duty on vegetables, but not on fruits, caused the tomato's status to become a matter of legal importance.

The U.S. Supreme Court settled this controversy on 10 May 1893, by declaring that the tomato is a vegetable, based on the popular definition that classifies vegetables by use, that they are generally served with dinner and not dessert (Nix v. Hedden (149 U.S. 304)).

Did You Know? - A cherry tomato is a very small variety of tomato that has been cultivated since at least the early 1800s and thought to have originated in Peru and Northern Chile.

Cherry tomatoes range in size from a thumbtip up to the size of a golf ball, and can range from being spherical to slightly oblong in shape. Although usually red, yellow, green and black varieties also exist. The more oblong ones often share characteristics with plum tomatoes, and are known as grape tomatoes.