Thanks for your expert help. I have kept perennial seeds from year to year and found them to be viable but I assumed that vegetable seeds, being tender annuals/tropicals in this zone might have been different. And I wish I wasn't aware of the viability of those weed seeds!! Bcskye, the seeds have been in the cookie tin over the fall & winter, stored in my unheated basement along with my perennial seeds so they should be O.K. It never gets more than about 15 degrees down there. Paully, the reason for posting this question here is that I don't have time to test their germination individually. I am a winter-sower and really far behind so I'm pressed for time. Thanks again, and happy gardening.

Any advice on what to look for and when to dust for them? Squash bugs and squash vine borers will likely be your primary problem given all those squash plants so you'll want to do some research into identifying and treating for those two. Peppers may have a few aphids and this info sheet tells you about the weevils/caterpillars pests they may have. Bt is the pesticide of choice for them. "When to "dust" for them all depends on what kind of "dust" you are talking about? Remember the first rule is to ID the pest. Then make sure it really is a pest, not just a bug much less a beneficial bug. Then research what specific pesticide to use on it. Good luck and enjoy your garden. ;) Dave PS: on the off chance that by "dust" you mean Sevin, please consider using the liquid spray instead of the dust. The liquid, bad as it is, at least doesn't kill as many beneficial insects as the dust does.

Yes, Katamari is the rolling stuff up game. Its really addictive for such a simple game, and theres three of them. The part I like the most is the amazing effort they put into the music. I found some of it on youtube and it ranges from techno to jazzy lounge music, swing music, Im pretty sure someone even snuck a gospel peice or two in there. While Iw as writing yesterday I stumbled across someone who had done an orchestral version of one of the themse that made my jaw drop. Video game music is constantly impressing me with every passing year. But anyway, back to gardening... Part of my problem with the space issue is theres a movement out here for the "Grow Biointensive" system. While I'm interested that they've managed to do so much with such small topsoil space, I've noticed all the beds dealing with the system need at least two feet of soil, dug down or in raised beds, and thats not what I have. My mum has been trying to push me in that direction, but I dont feel confident with it at this time since I wanted to get more of a feel for the general gardening situation since its my first time and all. Some plants still got pushed closer together than I would've liked but then none of us had seen some of these plants actually growing before. The cukes are doign better than I expected for being about 6 inches closer to each toher plant than I really wanted them to be, but we had such a huge amount of plants to deal with that I did the best I could. I think the funniest part about all this is while it is my first time growing a real garden, I've been growing virtual gardens since I was abotu 19, playing an online game called "Final Fantasy 11", which had a really complicated planting/gardening system most people didnt know about. That game system is actually what got me really focused on the seasons, when to plant, where to plant, when to fertilize, what plants grew better in what geological areas, and I even had a little notebook for a long time where I'd record the weekly cycle of my virtual plants in relation to the moon phase and exact time I made any modifications to the planting space. Even the gamers thought I was nuts, but I loved it! They'd even die off or give terrible results if I neglected them for too long, or give off better results if I got proper gardening tools, workbenches, and diffrent planters had diffrent effects too. Im getting better results with a real garden than I was in my virtual gardens though... Except for that one time I accidentally harvested 122 virtual onions. I can tell you, the cooks sure were happy with me.

Funny you should ask. I just planted some day before yesterday for the very first time. Here's some info from an old Organic Gardening "Secrets of Master Gardeners" booklet I have. "Potato onions, (Allium cepa, Aggregatum Group), an heirloom variety, taste delicious and are great fun to grow. Their flavor is considerably milder than that of Egyptian onions. These multipler onions form large bulbs and small bulblets from each bulb. Plant them in fall in well-drained soil with plenty of organic matter, setting the bulbs 5 or 6 inches apart in the beds, with about half the bulb emerging from the soil. Potato onions produce green bunching onions in spring and a crop of large (3 inches or mroe in diameter) bulbs that are excellent keepers in fall. Harvest the mature bulbs when the tops dry down. Just be sure to leave some bulbs and some bulblets in the ground for next year's crop. Full size bulbs left in the ground will each produce about 20 sets the next season, while the bulblets will mature into the season's harvest. Hardy in zones 3 to 9. This is all I "know", but by next year, I should "know" it all! (So to speak. :) FYI: I bought my sets at our local Agricultural Coop. It's great. The owners actually pay somebody local to grow seed for all the traditionally grown vegetables for the area. Unbelievably cheap seed: 15 CENTS for a package of about 25 squash seed, for example. I've been counting my blessings all summer.