Hi I would love: Mina Lobata Spanish Flag Corn Silver Princess Morning Glory Sydney Bell Pepper Yolo Wonder Balsam Impatiens mix Larkspur Mix 100 seeds 2005 Ornamental Millet purple Majesty Petunia Primetime Blue 2005 Salvia Magic Rose 5 seeds Parkseed Butterfly Pea Vine 2006 Petunia Dolcissima Flambe 2007 Parkseed Morning Glory dwarf white 2004 20 seeds Petunia Storm Violet 2007 Stokes Seeds Catgrass 2005 Four O'Clock Kaleidoscope 2007 Four O'clock Pastel mix Four O'Clock Teatime Rose 2007 Hollyhock Summer Carnival mix It looks like no one else has choose these yet. I would love these for sasbe. Thank you so much Lisa

Guthion is another one that will be sorely missed. Cherry growers really don't have much of a backup plan after it's phased out in the next few years. They have a zero tolerance threshold for cherry maggot (due to stringent requirements of exports, as I recall). None of the proposed replacements for Guthion work as effectively. Currently extension personnel are telling cherry growers to find solutions for maggot before Guthion is completely pulled, but are not really telling them how to do it. Growers are essentially left to themselves to try to figure out some spray program that will work with the current insecticides available. Not to be misunderstood, I think the EPA on the whole has done a good job removing older more dangerous chemistries and encouraging newer safer ones. Although I'm not in complete support for the ban on Guthion and Methyl Bromide (given the increased restrictions for its use i.e. increased buffer zones, monitoring of drift, notification of neighbors, etc) what I'm mostly opposed to is the knee-jerk reactions which seem to be taking place with neonicotinoids and the current bee crisis. As far as competitiveness of U.S. ag, the U.S. farmer has been able to compete w/ countries where labor is very cheap. Traditionally this has been done through automation. A combine running through a field at 10 acres/hr. can compete with a Chinaman harvesting the same field, no matter how little he's paid. Some of our crops are still labor intensive (I'm thinking of fruits here) but that is changing. Thinning and harvesting are in the early stages of becoming fully automated. When that happens, cost of labor will no longer be a factor, as is the case currently with field crops. I do think environmental regulation may tip the scale. Not that I'm against regulation, just that we need to recognize there is a fine balance between adequately protecting the environment and rendering our food growing sector non-competitive. Perhaps that sounds like a severe statement, but the uncomfortable truth is that huge yield increases (and thereby the abundant cheap food) we've enjoyed over the last 50 years are largely the result of synthetic fertilizer and effective pesticides. I'm not trying to start an organic vs. conventional debate, just explaining my rationale for claiming environmental regulation can have a pretty big impact. It would be unfortunate if regulation got so aggressive as to take us back to years where pests took a significant percentage of the crop.

Bright Lights does make a fantastic ornamental. I have grown them for a couple years and I plan to transplant some to my flower garden as an accent when they get large enough. I suppose chard could possibly co-exist with tomatoes in an Earthbox, depending how many plants of each you're talking about. I have never put more than two tomatoes in one Earthbox and there wouldn't be room for anything else except maybe some small herbs like a basil or two. If you only had one tomato plant therein, then maybe a chard on either side could work, provided you kept it picked back of the largest outer leaves. Chard, which is a member of the beet family, eventually grows a large cylindrical root sort of like the mangel (sp?) beets fed to cattle. Generally my Bright Lights grew to about 18 inches in diameter (without the outer leaves being harvested) and about the same in height.

So according to what ppl are saying here I might be alright with my 2004 seeds I received from u.s. seed bank. I might of not used the best method to save them though. I have them in their original manila envelopes in a pint glass jar but just sitting on a shelf. Was that a bad mistake, the jar on the shelf. What you think, ppl. I best get to sprouting some I suppose.