Al and Nathan, I hope that you don't mind my sharing a humorous story about Turface, that really highlights your points and underscores how respected a product Turface is in the industry. My son is a Turf Grass Agronomy major at a large Southern university, and did an internship last spring/summer at one of the major league baseball spring training facilities in Florida. Turface is used for excess water on the fields that occurs during rainstorms, especially those "popcorn" showers (downpours) that occur frequently in Florida. It has helped prevent many a game "rainout" due to its effectiveness. It takes many bags of Turface to do this (for one game), which can become a bit pricey---so it's a protected commodity in the baseball industry. During one sudden torrential downpour, the Grounds Crew quickly pulled the tarp over the infield, and then took cover in the visiting team's dugout to wait out the storm. The Turface bags were kept to the side in the visiting dugout, near where the Grounds workers were standing. The visiting team's pitcher had a bad inning just prior to the rainstorm, and came into the dugout kicking and throwing things, as they sometimes do. As he looked for things to use to vent his frustration, he eyed the bags of Turface to the side, and the Grounds workers caught his glance, and could tell that he was tempted to kick them, also. They immediately, in *unison*, said "don't even think about it!". Throw your glove, knock over some bats, kick the bubblegum containers over, but don't mess with the Turface...unless you want to take on the Grounds Crew... :)

mdr944 - When I bring mine in - usually around Columbus day, I stick it by my balcony sliding glass doors where there is a plain floor-ceiling glass that is part of the door. In winter, I go no sunlight there (I face NE), but it is somewhat "bright". But more importantly, I have a table lamp with a 200W reading light near it, so it gets artificial light during the day. I reduce the watering a bit and cease fertilizing. It may have a bit of a shock and will yellow and drop some leaves but it recovers and will often give me a couple blooms in February or March. I understand that some people place them in a cool dark spot, but then since they are evergreen, that tends to really stress them and they will drop leaves, but will resprout later when brought into warmer brighter conditions. But when that happens, they are very late to bloom since they bloom on new growth. However if you can keep it near a bright reading lamp, then it can hang on through the winter and can bloom too! The main thing to look out for if you keep it in a bright or sunny warm spot inside, is to keep humidity around it. These can easily get spider mites if the air is too dry around the leaves, so either sitting it in a big pebble tray filled with water or using a humidifier (I keep a couple going in winter), will help. I was trying to see if I had a fuller picture of it from last year when it was outside but I did manage to find one not long after I brought it in when it was still blooming: From an older picture of it when it is outside when it is blooming, it looks like this (my hummingbirds like perching on it and will peck at the flowers too): Believe it or not, this was from Home Depot in a 2 gallon pot with 4 plants in it. It has slowly died back to two thick ones over the years, but I have actually never pruned it to shape (which I really really should do...LOL). I just prune off any dead or broken branches. It is in a 14" pot, which was about the biggest that I felt that I could lift (I have since potted a large coffee plant in a 16" pot, but that is a bit easier to lift since it is one central trunk that sits straight up).

Even in very mild climates, there's not all that much that will bloom continually through winter in the northern hemisphere :-) Winter daphne is really late winter daphne, seldom blooming before March but depending on species/hybrids selected, you can get an early and long bloom season from some hellebores - 'Ivory Prince' is one of the better choices. But you may be better off selecting plants that offer other winter interest - colored foliage, berries or attractive bark, etc. I find mixed containers offer the greatest appeal, but these generally require a good sized container - I'd consider 16-18 inch diameter a minimum. You could choose a dwarf Japanese skimmia (a winter bloomer that loves shade), a yellow or red twig dogwood, dwarf conifer or an evergreen grass like Carex as a centerpiece and add heucheras for foliage color, wintergreen for both foliage and berries or any other evergreen perennial. Trailers like vinca or fancy leaf ivy are nice additions to cascade over the edge. Winter pansies will provide a lot of color and if in a protected area (out of the rain, primarily), florist's cyclamen will flower throughout winter as well and will tolerate some pretty cold temperatures.

Paula - you may want to look into Flickr if you decide to take photos of a bunch of your seed parents. I finally coughed up the $24.95 (annual charge) for a pro account because it's just so much easier to organize my photos there than on my computer. Makes sharing individual photos or sets of them easier as well, and I have to admit I like being able to give and receive comments - and peek at gardens from around the world. Spartangardener - I was tossing around the idea of going directly to tires but am a bit concerned that some of the grass and weed seeds we have in the compost might compete with my winter sown seeds. In smaller containers I can use a good quality sterile weed-free seed starting mix. Depending on when we get the tires ready to go, I may go ahead and tire-WS a few "riot of sunflowers" tires or mixed planting tires using my most abundant seed. If all 56 of those nicotiana I planted out last week contribute to the seed program I can sow recklessly with the seed and if I lose a few while pulling out weeds it won't be a big loss. It would be nice to use the tires as big HOS germinators from December to May, then harvest their HOS and move most of them to colonize the really inhospitable garden areas. Then from May to September or so the tires could serve double duty as pretty gardens and nursery beds for perennials and seed-harvesting annuals - most of which were WS started in smaller containers. The prospect of growing large numbers of plants looks more doable than it used to thanks to things like winter sowing, tire gardens, HOS transplanting, and getting a stock of perennials going for future division. I'm thinking of something like this as my general plan: WS into pots in flats as the way to start seed packet seeds and other seeds that I don't yet have established. Tires as rich soil growing areas to be used as nursery beds to take perennials to dividing size and to grow annuals for seed. Current garden beds will get augmented with the vegetable container compost this fall, but they are still going to be tough environments for plants to grow in. They are a good place for plants that I have in such abundance that I can lose a few and it's not a big deal. Things like most of the zinnias, 4's, cerinthe, perennials that I'm starting to get a lot of - always with a couple safely held back in tire gardens to ensure next year's seed crop. Then there's the wilderness. The first spot is in front of the front rail fence and behind the front border shrubs. It's a nice big area with brutal growing conditions. Digging it would just give me another really awful garden bed, so I'm going to plant it with tough plants in HOS placed into holes with a bit of compost, and for the first year it's going to be a weed whacker garden. (That's one where you've got some islands of plants colonizing and you weed whack in between them - then dig more holes and plant more each year. I'm planning on hitting that area with hunks of hollyhocks, black eyed susans, cone flowers, corn flowers, blanket flowers, and probably a bunch of 4s. As we start to get to ridiculous numbers of plants here, the next spots to plant are the two steep slopes to the right and left of the front yard. These are wild brush covered slopes and the soil is so poor it's almost impossible to describe. When I have a good stock of bomb proof perennials we're either going to brush cut out sections or temporary fence it and let the goats eat it down to the ground. Then I load in plants and seed and hope for enough spring rain to let things get a foothold. I'm looking at starting 2000 - 6000 plants this winter and hoping that between the tires, current garden beds, and HOS colonization I'll have enough established perennials and annual seed to actually start getting something established on the slopes in Spring 2010. If we can get enough seed this year to direct sow the goatland area in Spring 2009, and if they don't eat every flower, I'll have a second potential seed harvest source there as well. And once I have banks of flowers established on the front rough border and the two slopes I can just take it easy, collect bags of seed to direct sow each year, and just WS to add fun stuff to the garden. I plan on doing a lot more sitting on the porch, drinking coffee and looking at the gardens after the first 5 years or so of work on them. As for hotbeds, no I hadn't heard of them but hubby has. We'll look into it further - sounds very useful. Well, the rain is going to miss us again. Maybe I still have a chance to get it to rain if I go out and start my watering. :) Lynda Oh! Hooray! Rain started while I was spell checking! Hooray!