My asparagus foliage is covered with green 'berries' that will be turning red in a few weeks. I will harvest them, let them dry and will be happy to send you some. Can you wait? I would love some of your pepper 'twilight' and/or patty pan squash.

YAY! That makes me happy. I've been working on the wintersowing thing, and swimming in a sea of seed catalogs... I'm READY for spring!

Busy1, So, you're saying they want green tomatoes for frying or making chow chow or something? For a market grower, you know, that's good news.....because you can take green tomatoes to market earlier and (with green tomatoes being more rare) command a higher price. Sounds like a win-win situation. I just won't hardly pick a tomato green except in the fall. If a huge cold front is coming and I know I need to pick all the fruit, I'll pick the green ones and try to ripen them slowly, especially the longkeepers. Most years when I have a lot of greenies, I do send a big bunch to work with DH for one of his coworkers who likes to fry 'em green and also make chow chow. I do grow some green-when-ripe types most years, but they're no more suitable for frying when ripe than the ripe red ones are. River, Bill P., who used to post on Garden Web as Gone Fishin' before he passed away last year, raised most or all of his seedlings in a cold frame every year in either zone 7B or 8A. He was slightly east of Dallas in the suburbs, so I'm not sure which zone he was in but it was either 7B or 8A. He had great success. Actually, if I remember correctly, his was actually a hotbed because he put down a layer of hot (fresh, uncomposted) horse manure several inches down deep in a trench, put garden soil on top of that, and planted directly in the garden soil. The heat created by the horse manure as it decomposed kept his plants just warm enough at night. He always raised beautiful seedlings and the only trouble I ever remember him having was the year it rained non-stop and his in-the-ground plants almost drowned. So, I think it could work for you and, you know, you could throw a heavy blanket or comforter over the "hothouse" if a late snowstorm threatened. I suspect this is one of those projects that you'll just have to try to see if it works. It should work. People have raised seedlings using similar methods for years. If the seeds don't get warm enough to sprout, then you'd essentially be wintersowing, which ought to work fine anyway for most plants. Well, I'm not sure about peppers. Peppers don't like cold at any stage of their development, so I am a little concerned about that. I'd post a message for Seedmama here on this forum and ask her if she wintersows peppers and has success with them. I think Ilene wasn't happy with wintersown peppers in the past either, but I'm not sure if my memory is correct. (The older I get, the less confident I am that the things I "remember" actually happened.....LOL). You also could buy a seed germination mat and start seeds indoors using it underneath the flat. In the room where I have my light shelf (with ordinary fluorescent lights) and germination mat, the room always seems hotter to me than any other room in the house, and I think the lights generate more heat than you'd think. Just lights and a germination mat might create enough heat in your house to start seeds, and then you wouldn't have to worry about the temperatures dropping too much outside and causing you to lose your plants. If you try this method outdoors, you also could place milk jugs or two-liter bottles full of water inside your frame. They'd serve as solar collectors--absorbing sunlight and heat all day long and then releasing it into the air at night as they cooled. If you paint the bottle black, they'd probably heat up a few more degrees. You also could add heat by purchasing a soil heating cable and running it through the soil underneath the cans with your seedlings. You also could line your coldframe with a light-reflecting mylar paper. It would reflect light/heat back onto your plants. That kind of thing would be available in rolls from someone like Worm's Way that sells to indoor and greenhouse growers. You probably could get a similar effect from aluminum foil, but it might not be as reflective. Later in spring, as the occasional very warm day hits, you'll have to open the lid up during the day so that your plants don't roast. Dawn

That's why we try to get them into the ground as soon as we can...when they are ready to grow, they're gonna grow and it is important to get them into the ground before they get rootbound. Once they reach a certain point with a certain number of leaves, growth just explodes....as you can see with your root growth just this week. To a certain extent you can slow down plant growth by keeping the plants at a slightly cooler temperature. People often grow their seedlings at too high of an indoor temperature and get very rapid growth. While it seems cool at the time, it isn't necessarily a good thing. Plants that grow too fast indoors can get rootbound and stall. I have tried to keep mine from getting too tall too fast by moving them out to the greenhouse when they were tiny and had only 2 true leaves. It worked up to a point....but once the daytime highs were in the 70s, their growth accelerated even though the nights in the greenhouse usually were in the 40s or low 50s. Inside the house I try to keep them at 60-65 degrees and no warmer, which usually means closing off the heating vent in the room where the light shelf is because that many lights make enough heat on their own. Sometimes I even close off that room from the rest of the house and open windows to let some cool outdoors air come in to cool down the room. I'll link the soil temperatures below. You should go by the 3-day average, but it will seem low because it is reflecting the cold days/nights we just had. You could look at the 1-day and see what a difference a warm day and night makes. With the nice weather we're having now, the 3-day averages will climb pretty fast, at least until next week's cold front rolls through. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: 3-Day Ave Soil Temps At 4