depends on what "bottled water" is. bottled water like dasani is a NO NO, it must not have any of the harsh mineral salts that normal water has. You have 3 options, R/O water from a R/O unit (I purchased a Nimbus WaterMaker Mini unit that fits any USA tap socket for $80.00) or Distilled water (must say distilled, albertons sell it, costco should to) or rain water. I would avise atleast a 40 watt flurecent bulb for your light, VFT's LOVE light, as long as the bulb is not incandesent which can burn them. It does not have to be a grow light, full spectrum bulbs just give more natural light which help the plants grow, verilux bulbs are only about $15.00 per bulb ( I buy off amazon) I have hardend off my plants, so they no longer have any humidity dome. They grow indoors on a shaded window sill with those 2 40 watt verilux bulbs hanging overhead on a timer in a light fixture. I used distilled water from albertons to begin, but this got to expensive with the purchase of my american pitcher plant outside, thus I found out about the affordable WaterMaker Mini R/O unit. I fill up my 2 gallon bottles and then clip the R/O unit off my tap and put it in the fridge until its needed next. I also foliar feed my plats with Epiphytes Delight that I purchased from californiacarnivores.com. I do this since they dont really get bugs indoors. They are honestly growing healtheir, stronger and better out of the humidity dome. You can read the topic here called "HARDENING CP's" to see how I did it (how it was suggested to me) I live in Salt Lake City, Utah. My plants are in the basement which has a day temp of between 60-70 F, with the furnace running you can imagine how low the humidy is. Hope this helps, you are welcome to ask questions here or by email at: necro1234 at yahoo dot com Cheers Sheldon

Chicken moats are real and legitimate and people who use them swear by them. : ) I even saw a photo once where someone put a tunnel underneath their driveway as part of their chicken moat so the chickens could travel safely beneath the driveway to reach the part of the garden on the other side of the driveway. Now I'll have to find and link an example of a chicken moat. I'd like to put a chicken moat around my garden, but our old, spoiled rotten chickens are used to free-ranging and wouldn't take kindly to being confined within a moat. If I ever do it, I'll have to use a new flock of young chickens who've never known the joy of free-ranging. Charles, Are you rural? You need guineas. I had them for a long time (more about them in the grasshopper thread) but after the year in which I had two cougar encounters on our property and we, and everyone in our very rural neighborhood lost all our poultry (and many lost cats and dogs)...and I'm talking in excess of 120 birds....I've never bought another flock of guineas. I was really attached to them and losing them one by one over the course of the summer was really painful. I haven't found any kind of shrub that grasshoppers won't eat. In our worst year here, they ate the young fruit trees, including the bark, the leaves, and the fruit (but left the pits hanging from the stems), and they even ate holes in our fiberglass window screens, the cotton rag rugs on the wraparound porch, etc. When they are hungry, grasshoppers will eat anything and everything. The dog we had when we first moved here would eat a grasshopper now and then, but none of our current dogs do....and he didn't eat enough to make a dent in their population either. Our chickens control them well outside the garden, but I don't like to let the chickens free range in the garden in spring through fall because they'll peck at fruit like tomatoes, which doesn't make me very happy. I will turn them loose in the garden in the fall after the garden is pretty much frozen and dead so they can dig and scratch and eat insects to their heart's content. When I have winter crops, they don't bother them much once they are no longer tiny new plants. Any task on our property that involves sticking an arm, hand or foot into a place where a snake might be lurking just doesn't get done at this time of the year. I do those tasks in winter. If I have to lift something, like a board or piece of sheet metal on the ground, I lift it with a stick because it is just about guaranteed a snake will be underneath it in the summer months. When you live around lots of venomous snakes, you learn to be careful. The closest I have had a venomous snake would be about 3" from my hand. It was in early March about a decade ago and it scared the fool out of me. If you don't start out being careful enough, you quickly learn to be more careful around places where snakes live. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: Chicken Moats

In my own case, I've worked for years to amend my native soil, that I didn't want to just lose all that effort when I made my "Mel's Mix". So, I left the boxes open on the bottom, and just worked Mel's mix into my existing soil. This eliminated a lot of problems with Mel's mix not supplying enough nutrients in the first year. My native soil (primarily clay) is actually very good, especially after 5 years of amending and amending and amending with compost and other organic matter. My first year I had to look hard to find worms, now I need to only turn over a single trowel of soil, and I can find a half a dozen worms! It's a great thing! Secondly, I would be very careful with the heat down there in Texas. Radishes (and most root crops for that matter) are cooler weather crops, so they might have gotten fried in the sun.

Well, if they are on track, we are heading into Winter (assuming you live in the northern hemisphere), and they will be dormant during that time. In other words, I don't think they should be growing right now. If their internal clocks are set correctly, they should begin splitting Jan-Feb depending on the species and conditions. As Kara said, a picture would be nice.