I'm about 40 miles from official zone 6a. I'm thinking my neighborhood just has a good mini climate. The neighbor across the street, his lilic bush was in full bloom the first part of April before the cold snap. I was amased! I'm not used to seeing lilacs until closer to Mother's Day. The house 3 lots down, Their Yucca's are budding. This is our first year here, we moved from NW Indiana in the fall, so I'm have been getting many pleasant surprises. This had really got me thinking about zone pushing in my WS for next year. The soil here is VERY sandy, I am sooo used to heavy clay soil. Could it be sandy soil warms up quicker?

Hi Leslie, "Are seeds only viable when they've been pollinated?" It is not a ridiculous question! The answer is it depends on the plant. Some plants have flowers with all the parts need to make their own seeds. These are called perfect flowers. An example of a plant with perfect flowers is tomatoes. You could grow tomatoes indoors with out insects and get fruit. You do need vibration as wind would cause to make the pollen move inside the flower, but that's all you need. Some plants do need to have insect pollinators to set seed. Most often it is just a flower to flower cross and one plant full of flowers will do. Often times on plants like this, early blooms, blooms during inclement weather and possibly late blooms will have few good seeds because of the absence of pollinators. There are even a few plants that need a second similar plant nearby to set seed though these are not the usual things we save seeds from. A good example of this is apples. An apple needs a different cultivar nearby to set fruit to make seed. It is its way of creating genetic diversity. So that is why apple seedlings never come true to the parent. Seeds can develop in cool weather just fine. There's a few big ones like beans that have trouble. It is not because of pollination(beans also have perfect flowers), it is because of the seed trying to loose moisture and harden. Good seed will always be hard. So if you say save seed from Purple Coneflower, you will find lots of seeds in a seed head. There will be good ones and bad ones. Ones that are not plump and hard are no good. Bad ones will be smaller possibly thinner and will collapse under pressure of you fingers. If seed is bending, squishing, turning to dust, etc. when pressure is applied between your fingers, they are definitely no good, and not worth a germination test. Most annuals and some perennials germinate easily at room temp with a paper towel test and you can check your seed, but if your seed is hard, you should be fine. Some perennials need a cold period to germinate so doing a quick germination test isn't feasibly, but again if the seed is hard, you should have good seed. Usually hard seed that doesn't germinate is old, has been exposed to high temps and humidity in storage for too long, has unusual germination needs(very rarely,) or is one of the few seeds that need to be stored moist(some woodland perennials.) That's more of an answer that I think you asked for,lol, but you can see your question wasn't very stupid or basic : ) Remy

I'm not saying this to discourage you from raising them from seed, but just so you will know....you can buy Cherokee Purple transplants in stores. I see them at Lowe's, Home Depot and Wal-Mart, as well as at smaller, local ma-and-pa type nurseries, every year. So, if you think you have to raise CP from seed in order to grow them...well, you don't. However, I prefer to raise tomato plants from seed rather than buying them at stores. I think I get healthier, happier, stronger plants that produce better for me when I grow my own. Mostly that is because I am able to start the seeds at exactly the right time in order to have them the size I want for the approximate planting date I have in mind. I've grown CP and the closely-related Indian Stripe from seed for over a decade and you have to be careful about your seed source. Some of the seed available commercially just isn't the "real" CP. Jay was the first person here on this forum to mention this years ago, so I started paying attention to the seeds I was using, and sure enough, I found I agreed with him. I changed the seed supplier I was using, and found to my delight that the seeds I purchased reminded me of the "old" CP I grew in the early to mid-2000s much more than the plants I'd grown from seeds purchased from other companies in recent years. The seed supplier whose seed produced the real CP for me is Gleckler Seedmen, and I'll link them below. I'm not saying all other CP seed will give you a lesser plant with smaller, less flavorful fruit, but that is what I found in several instances with seeds purchased from several other sources. For a starting mix, you can use any sterile soil-less seed-starting medium. I've used several kinds and find that any variety purchased off the shelf has worked for me. You can spend a lot or a little on a growing medium, and I don't necessarily think that the more expensive mixes give you any better result than the less expensive ones do when you are starting annuals from seed. I usually just buy the Jiffy sterile soil-less seed starting mix because that is what is on the store shelves when I am ready to plant. You can use whatever size container works for you. Starting small and potting up works, but you also can start with a larger container. It is just easier to manage smaller containers if you are starting lots of plants from seed. I usually start everything in 72-cell flats, planting multiple seeds per cell, and then pot up to individual containers once the seedlings have a couple of true leaves. When I pot up, I usually put two seedlings in each small pot (I use paper cups if I pot up while the plants are really small or larger plastic Solo cups if I am behind and don't get around to potting up until the plants are larger). As long as you have holes poked into the bottoms of the cups for drainage, any of them will work. Plain old shop lights work just fine. I've raised thousands of seedlings under them with no problem whatsoever. Just remember that no matter what sort of lights you use, the seedlings have to be hardened off to outdoor conditions gradually. I start with one hour the first day, two hours the second day, three hours the third day, etc. Remember that plants raised indoors are not used to direct sunlight or direct wind, so suddenly exposing them to a full day of sunlight and spring wind often will kill them that very first day. Proper hardening off is a vital part of the process you cannot ignore. A lot of us make our own seed-starting shelves by suspending a shop light from chains on a shelving unit. My first one was just three plastic shelves and it cost less than $10.00. Each shelf was lit by one shop light that had two bulbs. My current unit has 5 shelves and each shelf is lit by two shop light fixtures, each one containing two fluorescent tubes. It is easy to start small your first year and, then, if you find you enjoy raising plants from seed, you always can invest more money in a larger shelving system and more lights as the years go on. I went pretty slowly from using the 3 shelf unit for a couple of years to a 4-shelf unit for a couple of years and then to the current 5-shelf unit. Actually, my first couple of years of raising plants from seed indoors, I just raised them on an east-facing window sill because that was the only place we had direct sun. The house we lived in then was on a mostly shady lot, so I had to work with what I had. The plants got a little leggy, but not unbearably so. The seed company I'm linking below has seed that is true to type. The Cherokee Purple seeds I purchased from them produced plants that produced fruit that was larger and true to type and taste. I had become increasingly frustrated with growing CP from seed because the seed from many suppliers is producing smaller fruit that was not/is not the same CP I first grew in the early to mid-2000s, so I have been very happy to have found seed that produces the Cherokee Purple that I remember. It sounds nitpicky, but if I am going to grow and eat CP, I want it to be the best CP available and the one that is the most true to what CP is supposed to be. Victory Seed is another company whose seed usually is true to type, and so is Southern Exposure Seed Exchange. I've gotten really picky about who I buy tomato seed from because I'm seeing a lot of heirloom tomato seeds producing fruit that is not the fruit it is supposed to be, and that is very frustrating. I think too much seed is being produced without the proper protection and some seed is cross-pollinating and giving us plants that under-perform. I used to start seedlings in very small containers and progressively move them up every couple of weeks to bigger containers. One year I just decided to skip that step and went from the 72-cell flats to 20-oz. plastic cups and it worked just fine, so I no longer bother progressively potting up to bigger containers. I get ripe tomatoes about the same time every year regardless of how many times the seedlings were (or weren't) potted up while growing indoors. The important thing is just to not start your plants too early. If you start them too early and they grow well, you likely will have to pot them up to larger pots to avoid having them become rootbound. If you start your tomato seeds 6-8 weeks before your anticipated transplanting date, your plants will be just the right size at planting time and you shouldn't have to worry about potting them up more than once. If you grow peppers, by the way, you can start them at the same time you start tomato seeds, but you need to hold them indoors a couple more weeks because they do not tolerate spring''s cooler soil temperatures and air temperatures as well as tomato plants do. I like to put 7 or 8 week old tomato plants into the ground, but will hold my peppers in pots (and this may mean I have to pot them up twice to bigger paper or plastic cups or pots) until the night-time temperatures are sufficiently warm. So, often, my pepper plants might be 10-12 weeks old when they go into the ground. That sounds too old, but from plants put into the ground in early May, we're usually harvesting jalapenos before the end of June. I like to have the first big harvest of paste tomatoes and peppers ready together in June, along with onions, so I can make and can oodles and oodles of salsa from late June through late July. Some years it all works out that way, and other years the tomatoes are ready before jalapenos and onions are. I think you'll really enjoy starting plants from seed. I noticed how much thought you put into building your raised beds and how well they turned out, so I know that you can do this. The big secret about raising plants from seed is that it is pretty easy. Annuals, in particular are a cinch, and once you understand the stratification needs of biennials and perennials, they aren't as hard as you'd think. Once you start raising your own seedlings, you'll have so much fun you won't want to stop. The first couple of years after we moved here is where my seed-starting activity suddenly exploded and got out of control because I finally had enough full-sun areas to plant as much as I wanted. So I did! As soon as I moved one flat of plants outside and had an empty space on the light shelf, I started more seeds. I kept doing it until the weather really was too hot for me to be transplanting young plants into the ground. It amazes me how many flowers, veggies and herbs I can cram into my raised beds, and growing plants from seeds makes it possible to grow lots of interesting plants that you rarely see in stores. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: CP at Gleckler Seedmen

I figured out how to collect the seeds from my Rose Campion plant tonight. I've been reading all about looking for self sowers and haven't found any. Today I was getting ready to deadhead and I noticed that some of the seed pods looked a different color and were dried up and there looked like a seed in top of pod, so I got myself a paper bowl out of the garage cabinet, and turned that dried pod upside down and shook it a bit and all these little seeds come falling out. Yippee! I looked for more and then it started to sprinkle and thunder and lightning so I will check again tomorrow. I was so excited and I had learned last week how to collect the Sweet William seeds. I've known about how to collect bee balm and marigold seeds for years. Learned about columbine seeds last year or year before that.