Dave: Weird thing I saw at home depot the other day -- they had cool crops like brassicas, lettuces and such. Have had them since last fall. But I noticed brand new flats of peppers, cucumbers, toms, and other warm season crops. I have no idea why! While most of the U.S. probably thinks that Socal is mainly mild climes(which it is), there's no way those crops are doing ANYTHING outside right now. I usually don't see toms and peppers et al at the big box stores until late march at the earliest. Which, by the way, is the time of year to get going for summer crops here. While it probably won't freeze again this winter where I'm at, the average highs for Feb. are around 60-65 and lows in the low 40's. Way too cool. Kevin

I second that as a great nursery but I've also found that planting (most) seeds on May Day are just as good as transplants from any nursery AND the bonus is that you get a huge variety to choose from. My DH and I (he's the veggie guy, I'm the heirloom tom's and flowerlady) did a test last season. Took plain ol' Roma tomatoes - some 4" tall plants from seeds planted indoors in flats under lights in March which had been potted up twice, some 6" tall transplants from the nursery, and some seeds planted in a cold frame outside on Tax Day. All were set out on May Day along with some seeds sown that day on freshly cultivated soil. When harvest time arrived we could not tell which were which without our notes! The transplants were taller but had the same amount of fruit while the cold frame plants were thicker stalked and bore longer as did the early sown plants and the fresh seeds. Patience is the key here. The result was that cultivating on May Day and sowing seeds was the least expensive and the most reliable (since you can oversow just in case) with the same or better results than the more labor intensive other methods. Besides, a whole packet of seeds cost less than a six pack of babies and left over seeds can be traded on the Exchanges page or kept for sowing in the next several years. It is also much less work planting seeds than it is planting transplants. These seedlings seem to grow stronger in native soil from the beginning while transplants get 'set back shock' adjusting to soil that is not like what it was grown in and that has to be hand watered until they get settled in with a greater risk of losing some to inattentiveness. We were both amazed and decided that we could get the best result in the old fashioned way - sowing seeds in the open ground at the right time. Besides that, the grandchildren thought it was a miracle watching us sow and then checking the progress every weekend, while we must admit we liked it too. You might consider doing a test like we did. Buy a few plants and a packet of the same variety seed. Plant side by side and see what happens. You might end up being a seed collector like I am. Tomato seeds, stored properly, are viable for at least 10 years, as are lots of other seeds. Nancy the nancedar

It depends on how you make your compost. I mix very little (or no) soil into the bins, and I have not had good luck using my compost in pots. If your seedlings look good, though, you must be on the right track.

Good morning Dawn and everyone else! I haven't posted in awhile because I've been busy "pre-gardening". This weekend has been cold and rainy here in far NE OK although so far not too bad. I have been doing a bunch of "wintersowing" thanks to your tip, Dawn, several weeks ago. It really makes sense for some plants that require cold stratification, and I'm trying it for some others as well. So I have been busy acquiring milk jugs and baking my garden soil to use in them, since the expense of seed starting mix has overwhelmed the whole purpose of having a garden for me, which is economy. Well, that and taste. But anyway... I've been making seed tape of my lettuce, onion, and radish seed and I was going to put them in the ground this weekend but looks like I'll need to wait. I've been over on the seed trading gardenweb site and met a bunch of really nice people. Thanks to them and to the people over on the wintersowing site, I have lots of new seed to try this year. On the frugal gardening site, I learned how to make newspaper pots, and I think that's the best idea since sliced bread! And on the Garden Art site, I saw the coolest things. A teacup birdfeeder, a man and a dachshund made of clay flower pots, and bottle trees! I dragged an old artificial Christmas tree out of the attic, stripped it down to just the metal branches, then started picking up cobalt blue bottles from my job (one of the businesses is a recycling center -- we collect clear and brown glass, but people keep leaving green and blue, for which they don't have a market right now, and they have to dispose of them. (If you have a recycling center near you, just don't go and take things out of the bins -- ask first. Anything else is stealing, even if it IS just a blue wine bottle!) My bottle tree is coming along, I still don't have quite enough small blue bottles, but I add a few each week. AND THEN.... I got interested in heirloom beans. I have grown Lazy Wife snap beans for years and never knew they were "heirloom". I went to a gourmet site, bought one-pound bags of several kinds of interesting beans. I will have enough to plant and enough to sell for seed at my spring yard sale. At 30 beans in a bag for only fifty cents each, I can double the money I spent (if they all sell, which probably they won't, but then maybe I can use the extras to trade.) But even if I only sell some, I may still make my money back. The only thing is, the gourmet site sold the beans to eat, not to plant, so I had no information on growing habit (whether pole or bush, for instance). Some of the names of the beans were not found anywhere else on the Internet, but I went to the "Beans & Legumes" site and some of the regulars over there have been helping me identify the beans. It appears that many of the beans I bought as dry "gourmet" beans are most commonly used as snap beans! Leave it to those Gourmets... I'm just an old redneck woman and I look at my Lazy Wife dry beans as seed, not something I could put in a pot with a hambone and cook. So I'm getting my horizons broadened in lots of ways. I still have a few beans the "Bean Experts" didn't recognize, if anyone wants to give it a try I'll post a list. My Datura seeds, none of which came up at all last spring, germinated much sooner than I expected this year, after being sanded and soaked and set under a lightbulb in January. Out of the 15 I planted, I got 10 plants. I've repotted into foam 12-oz drink cups and they are all getting their 9th and 10th leaves, sitting under the fluorescent lights. The leaves and stems look so nice and healthy, I'm very proud of our accomplishment, Dawn! And my seed starting mat came, so I've replanted the pepper plants that didn't come up, and I'm getting some sporadic results. I'm thinking the purple pepper seed that I took from peppers that were given me last summer were just not mature enough, because they are the only ones that not one seed has germinated. The tomatoes that I planted in January are doing well under the fluorescent lights. I realize I planted too soon. Usually I plant them on the last weekend in January, they take a week or two to germinate, and by April 15 they are still somewhat small. So this year I decided I wanted bigger plants, but I overplanned. I used seed-starting mix, which the seeds loved, and set them under an incandescent light that provided heat, which the seeds also loved. Some of them were popping their heads out within a few days. Others took about a week. So that was a real jump-start and probably too much. Now I'm seeing some stress in a few of the plants, because I think I'm keeping them too wet so I'm going to let them dry out a bit and hope for the best! I've already repotted them once. And I've decided I do not like those little peat pots. The roots grow right through them and start drying out. The only advantage is that you don't have to remove the pot when you repot. So far my newspaper pots are not letting the roots grow through but they're just as easy to repot, plus the newspaper, when below ground level, will decompose and help retain moisture around the roots. All in all, if the weather cooperates and my back holds out, I should have a really interesting garden this year. Plenty for my "audience" that walks along the sidewalk outside my back fence to ask questions about and point out to their friends. I've met a lot of people in town this way. Since I work full time I don't get many chances to "neighbor". This year I'm going to try to plant more flowers, as attractants to lady bugs, and of course the butterflies and hummingbirds. And because the squirrels keep digging up the mammoth sunflower seed I plant, I've wintersown them this year so I can have more than just a few plants. I myself cannot see one benefit to having squirrels. DH and his family ate squirrel when he was a boy. They were poor sharecroppers and would've starved to death otherwise. Maybe that's one good use for a squirrel.