Joao Winckler

27F after everything was already up is brutal, that's just bad luck more than bad planning. Worth looking at what actually survived though — sometimes a late frost like that reveals which varieties are tougher than expected, and that's worth knowing for next year. Cold frames or a simple low tunnel over the most tender stuff would have saved most of it, but you can only really learn that lesson the hard way.

Eliot Coleman is definitely the right starting point. The other thing worth looking at is a double-skin polytunnel — the air gap between two layers holds heat surprisingly well and cuts heating costs significantly in zone 4/5 winters. Combined with cold-hardy crops like spinach, kale, mache and claytonia you can get genuinely usable harvests through the worst months without much heating at all.

Buckwheat is good for smothering but it won't touch quackgrass rhizomes. If the quackgrass is thick, a smother crop followed by deep wood chip mulch (6+ inches) over the whole area tends to work better than any single cover crop — starves the rhizomes of light long enough that they exhaust themselves. Worth doing that before you plant any permanent trees rather than fighting it afterwards.

The up-potting advice for small pawpaws is worth following honestly, especially for a 1L pot. The taproot on pawpaws is fragile and they really hate being disturbed twice in quick succession. I'd get it growing strongly in a larger pot first, then plant out in autumn or early next spring when it can establish without the heat stress on top.

Tap water is probably fine once diluted that much, the chlorine concentration becomes pretty negligible. Tereza is right that it tends not to cause issues in practice. If you want an easy workaround going forward, leaving a large open container of tap water out overnight before mixing usually does the job, or you can collect rainwater for the dilution step even if your initial batch uses tap.

Jay — that's the frustrating thing with ginger on a windowsill, the root just doesn't build up enough reserves over summer to carry it through winter dormancy indoors. Might be worth trying a heat mat under the pot next time to keep the rhizome warmer and push a bit more growth before the days shorten.

Congrats! Fair warning - once it's happy it really does spread, especially by seed. I've had plants pop up 3 metres from the original patch. Leave the seed heads up over winter and you'll get a nice little colony going.

Yellow on potatoes with brown leaves is often a sign of blight starting, especially if the weather has been wet. The purple on cabbage leaves is usually a phosphorus issue, common in cold or waterlogged soil. Worth checking drainage first before trying anything else.

Slime moulds are great fun. I had one appear overnight on a wood chip path last summer — bright yellow, looked completely alien. Came back the next morning and it had moved a few inches. Gone by the end of the week. The stump breakdown is probably what's feeding it, even if the wood looks dry on the surface.

The gap between "enough trees" and "trees actually producing" is the brutal part. Cristobal's experience rings true - you plant what you think is plenty and for the first several years you're just watching them establish. For a suburban lot I'd focus on a few reliable producers rather than spread across many varieties. Bushes like currants and gooseberries will give you something to eat far sooner than most trees, and they don't need much space.