Last year I collected tons of seeds from purple wave petunias and decided to give them a try. Most of the plants had purple or pale lilac flowers, but I got a red one too. They were all really weak and had very little heat tolerance except for those with purple flowers, so I discarded all the other ones. Right now I have 2 of them still growing and I have to say it's one of the best petunias I've ever had. It took them forever to start blooming, more than 3 months, but once they started - back in october - they never stopped. That's 5 months blooming despite the hot and humid brazilian summer. The flowers look just like purple wave's but smaller. The plant is trailing too and huge(4 or 5 feet long, growing on a window box), and for some reason it doesn't set seed - which is a good thing, because they won't stop blooming. I also planted seeds collected from tidal wave silver petunia, but the plants were too weak to be worth growing. I'll take pictures when they recover from all the rain we had today.

That's not really correct, the standard annual petunias you get from the home centers are annuals, but the Wave, Surfina and the possibly the Supertunia are annual - perennial hybrids. So you can't say that they pure annuals and the websites say they are hardy in zone 10-11 (I'm zone 9 but the USDA zones don't work well on the west coast because of marine influence). I was hoping someone with experience from a hot climate would reply but I know it's along shot. Also, typically about 1/2 - 1/3 of my annual petunias survive a second season - I can show you pictures. The whole annual/perennial classification can be blurry for some plants. Lots of "annuals" are completely perennial here(w/o reseeding) and as you know some perrennials will only last 2-3 seasons. For example annual Lobelias here are known to last more than 1 season w/o reseeding although the performance slowly declines.

my seed list was last updated 12/7/14. some seeds have been traded/used since then. but I have not found the magic link to update my list. can email current list to anyone interested.

I live in Vermont and my tomato plants have wiped out by blight the last two years. I usually plant 60 to 70 plants of mostly paste tomatoes that my wife converts into sauce. No sauce the last two years. Last year I tried regular spraying with fresh Bordeaux mix and Ortho's Garden Problem Solver. However, once the cool damp weather started the disease spread like wild fire and killed the plants before most could produce ripe fruit. For what it's worth Big Beef seemed a little more resistant than Celebrity. I've grown several other beefsteaks and slicers in the past but these two always seem to do the best. With the paste tomatoes, Classica faired much better than Super Marzano, Viva Italian and Halley 3155. I thought that was peculiar since Classica is a more sprawling plant. I also tried JohnnyÂs blight resistant JTO-99197 last year. It faired about as well as Big Beef but succumbed to disease before producing ripe fruit nonetheless. All of my tomato plants were staked in rows, supported with polypropylene twine, and pruned. I did not mulch. Right now IÂm thinking IÂll skip growing tomatoes for a few years, or maybe just a couple heavily mulched Big Beef plants in a far corner of the garden. ItÂs kind of a bummer to garden without tomatoes but the last two years have been too much work with no return. Oregon State Univ. has produced a new variety called Legend that has been reported as having some blight resistants. Maybe I'll try a few of those this year. Good luck to all with your tomato plants this year.