Hi Gardenweed, Thanks for the tips re: planting schedules - that makes sense to me, and is pretty much what I would have guessed, but nice to have it confirmed by someone with more experience. How fortunate you are to have grown up with gardening parents, and to have inherited all that good soil yâÂÂall built up over the years! IâÂÂm in the house my husband grew up in, and I donâÂÂt think his folks were much into gardening, so each year I try to carve out and claim another little bed or corner as time and energy allow⦠That is a shame about your laptop (and job) crashing. My husband & I have a computer shop here in our small town, and he also teaches computer classes at our local library, one of which is photo editing. For that one he has his students use Magix Xtreme, which I believe is a free download - might be a useful (and cheaper) alternative to Photoshop. Not to get too far off gardening here, but we are also sometimes-sailors! We bought a MacGregor 25 in 2006, and took it on a big adventure sailing down the gulf coast of Florida for 5 weeks in 2007. Since then, we try to get out on our nearest lake for a month or so each year, where we can dock it and leave it for a few week end visits with friends. HavenâÂÂt had a chance to do any sailing this year, since our shop assistant quit at the end of Feb - too many computers to fix in this town. He has occasionally hinted at chucking it all and taking up the live-aboard cruising lifestyle, to which I always have to point out that as appealing as that sounds, it is very hard to garden on a boat! :) CanâÂÂt have all our hobbies in one basket, unfortunately. IâÂÂll keep those hostas in mind when I get around to planting. (Good tip about the egg shells!) IâÂÂm in our local garden club, and that seems like something some of my fellow members might have, so maybe I can get some shares, if thatâÂÂs not too hard to do. Once again, thanks for your helpful insight & genial conversation! Best to you - Amy

Thanks, Mary, only the new bed for grasses is lasagna. The sod was dug up in the others and amendments added. Some of the sod went to the neighbors and some went into my compost bin as a green. Some went to the landfill as it was quack grass. I still need to add more greens to the lasagna bed and have been getting UCG from my local Starbucks. Glad I dug the long front bed and the iris bed last fall as my knee is bad this spring and this ole gal who has never had allergies now has spring allergies. Not getting as much done as I would like but keep plugging away. Maybe you need to try another location for your hellebore. I have mine under the locust tree facing southwest. Haven't done anything special for it.

It's been a good year for me, despite what feels like a winter of plagues; freak hard freezes, fungus gnats, containers attacked by slugs and snails... Out of the 122 sowed thus far, only these are not up. Adlumia fungosa 'Bleeding Heart Vine' Ageratum - White (Suspect dud seeds; blue ageratum planted the same day came up.) Aristolochia fimbriata, 'Dutchman's Pipe' Asperula orientalis 'Blue Woodruff' Calamintha nepeta 'Catmint' Campanula - 'Odessa' (All my other campanulas came up, and took about the same number of days to do it, so I suspect old/bad seeds.) Cimicifuga -Pink Spike Cyphomandra Betacea 'Tamarillo', 'Tree Tomato' (Think this needs more time.) Digitalis parviflora 'Chocolate' (I never have trouble with digitalis, so I think these were duds.) Geranium -Coconut scented Impatiens glandilufera -Wine red (Second year in a row I've failed with this.) Knautia macedonia -Maroon Meconopsis cambrica 'Welsh Poppy' Mirabilis viscosa Monarda citriodora Monarda didyma - Red Beebalm Nasturtium 'Apricot Trifle' (I planted 'Salmon Baby' on the same day, and it came up gangbusters.) Perilla -'Red Shiso' (Third year in a row failing with this!) Pinelia pedatisecta 'Green Dragon' Rodgerisia aesculifolia Sabatia angularis Saponaria officinalis 'Bouncing Bette' Tanacetum niveum 'Silver Tansy'

Thanks Lindalana for sharing the specifics of your techniques; I had started some exotic ones last night and when I read what you said, I actually put a heat lamp/heating pad on them as they were well insulated under a humidity dome and tucked in with a thermometer, and I took it up to 92 degrees F before removing the heat (room temp is close to 79 F here all the time). The temperature settled back within a few minutes; so maybe that will do for the lukewarm water, it was only one variety and probably my slowest one and the seeds had just (finally!) arrived. Daniel thanks too and for the great pictures. I was going to try something similar and it is reassuring it is working nicely for you and probably solves a uniformity problem if you need that. There are three reasons why I held off doing that, disease, expensive or having few seeds, and bumblefingers me stressing small sprouts upon a transfer. Here's the thing with me. Molds are a great problem here. Not necessarily initially, but later as the seedling develops. I used to add a small amount of fertilizer to my seedlings but now I do everything germination related in pure (distilled) water under sterile conditions including no paper, filters, etc. Holding off on the small nutrient content doesn't allow anything undesirable to get much of a start and the fertilizer can always be added diluted later. But I think I'll try next a few minutes soak in a very weak soluble fertilizer like Lindalana mentioned and then sowing the seeds into distilled water as normal (for me), though it will be inorganic. If that doesn't cut down on the scattered germination times, I'll think about pre-germination but once I get a plant going the problem is usually slowing its growth, not selecting for vigor, at this latitude, though for fall it might make more sense. I'm just frugal with the seeds as I usually only get about 20 and preselect only the well-formed ones. I started by double sowing, and that has the same problem, too much seed waste and leaves decaying material. This post was edited by PupillaCharites on Tue, Aug 19, 14 at 10:49