The trick to tell which flowers are done blooming and which ones are about to start is to shake the "cob". If it is light and rattles, you are dealing with "buds" that are done for the year. I also find that the "buds" dry out pretty fast after they are done blooming, and they become more of a tan colour, while the buds about to open are a nice, sharp green. If you don't want any accidental reseeding, be careful when you remove these - the seeds are loose and peeking out and can spill out at the slightest movement. On the other hand, if you are crazy enough to want to save seed from these guys (I am!), this plant is one of the easiest to save seed from. Just make sure that all of the flower "cob" is totally dry to ensure that the seeds are ripe. You can sow those right away and they will bloom next summer.

Did I see that Dawiff? Did you say you are starting over with a new garden and it's totally fenced? hoping you won't have to deal with the 4 legged things? Dream on girl, dream on. If the groundhog finds his delights in your garden, no fence in the world will keep him/her out. Remember they dig under ground, live under ground, make miles and miles of tunnels under ground. No obstacle is to big, to high, to low or dug down to deep to prevent them from filling their stomachs. And just to make life more miserable for us folks, they will climb a fence if they have to, to get their favorites. I just that "Chuck" would decide to climb my chain link fence and get him/herself empalled (however you spell it) on all the sharp spokes on the top of it. I know, not nice, but after the destruction I have had, the tree that came down next door today in the wind and soaking rains, and get told that it was a healthy tree with barely any roots to hold it cause the ground hog chewed up all the roots; well it's hard to feel compassion for them. So how late can you plant perennials in your "new found warm zone'? Thinking that if it's long enough and late enough, I might be able to get those daylilies you have wanted from my yard, and I don't want, dug out and shipped priority mail to you in the fall. If not this fall, then you will be stuck with them next spring. Sooner, don't think that a groundhog can't get into really small places, trust me they can flatten their fat bodies and squish through all kinds of places that you think it coudn't fit through. Valiche, I've been looking forward to the blooms on my vesuvius for a long time, just hope no one decides that the buds will taste better than looking at the flowers. Poor "Miss Lupin" had another tough day. Even in the rain, the groundhog was sticking it's body right behind her and waiting to attack. Twice I screamed through the door to scare him/her off and hopefully their are 2 flowers left. Fran

Tiffy, that pic doesn't really do the cosmos diablo color justice. This pic was taken a few weeks ago with the sun shinning directly behind it. I wasn't intending to get the pic with light at this angle, just some pics, but this is what I got. A lot of times the cosmos diablo will have more of the lighter orange on it when it first blooms, then darken a few days later. This one is from last year just after it started to bloom I love both the cosmos diablo and sunset. The bloom early in the summer, by July 4th at the latest for me, and keep blooming till the frost gets them. My original seeds came from my grandparents farm just before they sold it, almost 40 years ago, and I've been growing them myself every year since. First in pots on an apartment balcony and finally 30 years ago, in my own beds at my home. They only grow 1--2 feet so they fit in the beds in a variety of locations and if you want to really keep them short, you can prune the plants to stay very short and they will still bloom beautifully. I will have tons and tons of seeds of both the diablo and sunset for trades and BEAP offers in a few weeks. Just getting things all together now. NORTHENER, the dahlia diablo, fireworks, and collarette dandy are dwarf dahlias that are easy to start from seed and bloom the first year. Lots of people just sow them as annuals and toss the entire plant out at the end of the season. the seed packets came in mixed colors, so what I have been growing where just the colors that I got from the seeds I originally WS. I've saved the tubers for the past 2 years because I liked the specific colors and combos of colors that bloomed and wanted to be sure that I had them the next year. I wasn't sure that the seeds would come true to the parent plant because they are open pollinated and I have a lot of the dwarf dahlias. As far as I know, the seeds that I collected last year and the year before did come true to the parent plant, at least for the friends that WS seeds that I collected from them, here in my town and a few towns away. The collarette dandy are new seeds that I WS this year and they where from mixed color seeds. I only sowed 2 seeds and wouldn't you know that both of them bloomed in the same colors but with different color combos, so they do look different. I should have seeds from them, including collarette dandy, diablo, fireworks and stargazer. NAN, My chinese forget me nots where WS in March and up within 3 weeks. I planted them in hunks with a lot of hunks together in big holes because they look so much better when they are clumped together. Yes they have bloomed all summer for me, even when I didn't dead head or collect seeds from them until now. They started blooming around the end of June and are still going strong. They are a real work horse in the garden, blooming even under the worst of conditions. They where some of the only things blooming in my beds last summer, when we had real cool temps and rain for 2 solid months in June, July and into part of August. This summer, they have been blooming without skipping a beat, with horrible heat and humidity, most of June, all of July and August and even into the first week of Sept. Add to the fact that we had no rain to speak of for 2 months, more than 7 inches below normal and I can only water every other day. They still chugged along, blooming their hearts out. Just not a plant I would every be without. Fran

Wow! beautiful color and size! I am just trying to root two Hilo Beauty cuttings, but I have heard they are not the easiest to root... Did you get yours already rooted?