Shawn, all your plants & cuttings look great! I've got the gnat problem too.Been doing the mosquito dunk in the water for about a month now. I think there's less gnats. They sure do like water. Find tons of 'em dead floating on top of my Amaryllis seed water. Doing the California method with the seeds. Amazing I have little sprouts! Anybody else growing Amaryllis seeds? Shawn, you should wintersow seeds you want of your annuals. Easy,cheap & doesn't take up inside space. Ma Nature does the work! I just sowed about 20 milk jugs, soda bottles & ziploc baggies last night to go outside. Theresa

Thank you all for the compliments on my babies. I was amazed by the differences in the babies of John Peat x Lace Cookies myself...this was a cross I bought off of the lily auction, so I am not certain of it's accuracy as I am with my own crosses. Rita, I have a seedling bed that is on my someday to be terraces in front of my yard...not a well watered or well tended area, and I lost a couple hundred of my babies to slug decimation last year, so decided that that was not the place to plant little babies. We have a family vegetable garden on my brother's property below mine, and that is where I have planted this year's seedlings. Fortunately, they can be planted very close together, so they don't require as much room as the big ones do!

We start seeds in cups with Walmart brand potting soil. Starting seeds and gardening isn't complicated. Start the seeds, repot, harden, plant, till/weed/feed/spray, eat and enjoy..rinse/repeat http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load/tomato/msg1116545016871.html Half way down the page I planted 6 plants last year in three holes to try it. I got good results and besides I have to dig half the holes and planting this way takes up half the space. Think about it, there's no downside to planting two in a hole. When planting seeds we use 12oz cups. We buy clear cups at Walmart. I take a stack of 6 or 8, turn them upside down and poke five holes in them with an ice pick. We fill them with potting soil about 2/3rds full and plant two tomatoe seeds about 3/4" apart about 1/4" deep ..no more. As the plants grow keep filling the cup up with potting soil to cover the exposed stem. The hairs on the stems will grow roots. The more roots the better. I built mom two grow lights. She also has a wood/coal burner in the basement utility room where the plants are. That room is generally 80*. The perfect temp for growing new plants. Plants love the good light and warmth to grow. Another thing..never feed new plants plant food..just plain water and not to much..just keep the soil lightly moist. The clear cups will aid in looking at the moisture and you can also watch the root growth. We let the plants grow to 9 to 12" before we pot them. I go to restaurants and ask them for or to save their plastic mozzarella containers. These are great for potting. These pots are I believe 1.5 quart containers 6"X6". I have about 150 of them I keep on hand. Store them away from sunlight when not in use and they will last several years. I stack them about 5 deep upside down and poke about 6 holes in them with a ice pick. To prepare the pots, I take a 12oz cup and fill hit hard packed with real damp dirt. I enclose the top with duct tape. I take the large pots and fill the bottom with a good one inch of dirt. I place the 12oz enclosed cup and place it in the middle and fill and pack dirt around the cup..pull out the cup. When we are ready to repot we just take the plants out of the 12oz cups and drop them into the large pots..compress them in, fill to top and lightly water then we put them into the greenhouse I built. I buy shish kabob sticks at Walmart for supports..98C for 100..tie them with knitting yarn. Remember ther are two plants in each pot. When planting to the garden we try to bury at least three inches of the stem for good roots and we prune off any branches touching or near the ground. As the plants grow I prune off the bottom of the plant up about 12". I start pruning off bottom sucker, not all, as the plant grows and towards the top after they start reaching five feet. If you prune alot you get fewer but larger tomatoes..limited pruning gives you more but smaller tomatoes. I take a middle ground. We had plants this year that I punned off the tops at near seven feet. If I wouldn't have they would have easily been eight feet or more. Two years ago we had a cherry tomato plant that reached 9'4" and was just loaded with tomatoes all summer. Hope this helps.

I'd live with the curling just fine, the burning of leaves is my problem, because they fell afterwards. You can see the top 2 pics and how the green color is turning to black. I'm almost pretty sure now it's spiders. We have plenty of them here, and I've crashed at least 5 tiny ones today, I've found them hanging from the leaves with their strings or whatever that thing is called. I've used all sorts of soil. Sandy one and I mean just sand taken from clean sand-dunes, sand plus potting soil, pure Ukrainian potting soil alone, and sand plus clay plus potting soil...etc I've started to give them an organic fertilizer and spray them with a pack of minerals. At the beginning I made their pots drench with water just to fill in any air in the soil, as I used to do with the citrus seedlings, but it seemed that it was a huge mistake. So far everything is in pots and not in the ground, because I live in an apartment, and the piece of land to be a little farm for my experiments is still a barren land and has no wind cover, which will be deadly during the summer and the coming autumn. The temp hits 45-48ðC in the summer, and 12-18ðC in winter. At night in winter it drops to 0ðC sometimes but not for long, and if it's a barren land than a -2ðC has been recorded. Also, winter is really dry here, and even the summer of the last couple of years had been dry as well. The pots right now are in the shaded balcony, and the temp there is around 27ðC, and I don't think they're hardened enough to be fully exposed to our harsh weather. Looking forward to hear from you and your experience.