Stage Rat, thanks so much. I googled it and that is what it is. I will go right out and dig it up. I don't want those in my flower beds. I wish all my flowers looked that healthy though. I forgot to mention lesons learned about which containers worked best for me. My favorite is the round containers that I get cakes or cookies in (also an excuse to buy them). I make newspaper pots, and they are so much easier to plant out than to try and get the babies out of a milk bottle or 2L bottle. I think the newspaper helps the soil also. I tear off the top as I am dropping them in the hole so that they don't wick away the water. All of mine that were planted that way are doing the best. Also, I put a small water bottle in the center and use plastic shower caps (16 for $1) from the dollar store on top of them--it works great. The second favorite is the 1/2 size stem table aluminum pans from Sam's. The shower cap fits on them also with a small water botter to hold it off the babies. I think I will learn many more lessons from the responses to this thread. Thanks again for helping me ID the plant. Also thanks to everyone who shared their lessons learned. It is a great help. Jeane

You shouldn't be getting an "invalid url" message from the html link (3rd box in list, under each picture). As soon as you left click within the 3rd box it will say copied, you just have to come back to your GW post, right click and select copy. You can then preview your GW message to see if it worked right. I've gone to your album and the lily pictures don't seem to be too big so I wouldn't worry about resizing those particular ones. If someone doesn't come along to save the day, you could always link directly to your album from the GW linking provided under the message composition box. From your photobucket album, copy the website address from the top of your screen and put that in the "Optional Link URL:" box and then for the name of the link you just call it My album (or something similar) Hope that works :) Here is a link that might be useful: Ellix

Gardenrod, All of us are still learning. I say often that I learn something new here every single day and it is so very true. As Diane said, we have an amazing group of people here. My attitiude is that we are much stronger/better prepared for anything as a group than any one of us ever could be alone. Besides that, who else understands our gardening obsession better than other folks similarly afflicted? Diane, I've always done the cold treatment too, but not really as part of a deliberate plan. Rather, my tiny tomato seedlings get the cold treatment when they are kicked off the lighted seedstarting shelf and moved out to the back porch to make room for other seeds I need to start. Before I started moving the plants out to the porch while they were very small, they got big and lush indoors but didn't adapt as easily once they were moved outdoors to harden off. Clearly, they'd had it easy for too long. Now that they are exposed to cooler temps earlier, they seem tougher and hardier even though not as tall and lush. Maybe this year I'll proceed with a plan and move them out when they "should be" put out for cold treatment instead of just haphazardly doing it when the plant shelf is too full and I have the urge to grow more seeds. Chandra, As others so aptly pointed out, a certain amount of exposure at a young age benefits tomatoes in ways that we may not fully understand. Plants exposed to cold treatment at a certain stage seem to produce more heavily and to perform better later on. By contrast, peppers (and I think from my observations this applies a bit more to hot peppers than to sweet peppers) that are exposed to cooler temps earlier in the year can remain stunted for a long time and unproductive for the entire season. I used to transplant peppers out into the ground at about the same time I transplanted tomatoes. I struggled for years to make sense of why my pepper plants looked fine and grew well but didn't produce heavily until fall. The tomatoes were producing just fine, so I knew there was something I didn't know and didn't understand about the conditions pepper plants needed for optimal performance. After learning about the pepper plant/temperature connection, I started holding my pepper plants inside longer and waiting to transplant them out a couple of weeks later than the tomato plants. The difference in yield was impressive. Now it is just a part of my routine. I haven't done objective testing with a control group, but I'd say that by holding the pepper plants inside longer and planting them only after the weather/soil are at the temps they like, I am harvesting twice as much as before, and I am harvesting 4 to 6 weeks earlier than before. Last year, the pepper harvest began in earnest so early that it surprised even me. My plants went into the ground in early May, and I was harvesting sweet peppers and jalapenos in mid-June. It probably did help the hot peppers somewhat that we were hot earlier in the season than usual since they thrive on heat. I just pulled out my harvest record book from last year and I harvested 10 lbs. 2 oz. of jalapeno peppers on June 15th. That is the largest early harvest of hot peppers that I've ever had. If I was not already convinced that planting peppers late was a useful technique, last year's June harvest convinced me. I use two fans for circulation in the guest room where I keep my seed starting shelf. The ceiling fan stays on 24/7 and then I have an oscillating fan I use to toughen up plants. The light movement of the circulating air helps the plants develop stronger, stockier stems. You know, the same thing is true of trees. Young trees that are tightly staked so they cannot bend much in the wind are weaker over their lifetime than trees that were not tightly staked or that were not staked at all. With the trees, the early exposure to real wind helps build stronger wood. By exposing our tomato plants to circulating air while they are inside, we are preparing them better for the stronger winds they'll be exposed to outdoors. As for the effect of soil temperatures on germination of seeds, the most reliable data I've ever seen is that on Tom Clothier's website. I'll find it and link it. Using his chart, you can see exactly which temperatures give the best germination rates. However, most of us have to start seeds of some types a bit earlier than the optimum temperature on his charts because we're in a constant race to "make" our garden grow and produce before the high summer heat shuts it down. Carrots, for example, sprout quickly in very warm to hot soil, but grow poorly in it. So, we have to settle for lower germination rates and slower germination times so that our carrots can grow during the time when soil and air temperatures are optimal for them. Finally, much of what I know/understand about soil and air temperatures and their effect on vegetable plant growth and production I learned from Dr. Cotner's book. Before his book came out, I understood that some crops go into the ground earlier and some later but didn't truly understand exactly how temperatures affect growth and performance. I still have to refer to his book to doublecheck the temperatures various veggies need, but at least now I know enough to check the book for his recommendations instead of blindly following the calendar, or just "guessing" that a particular vegetable can go into the ground at a certain time. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: Effect of Temperature on Seed Germination

@Donna-Yeah, I THOUGHT the peat pots to be a good idea this year. I had read on here people using plastic cups, but thought it was just to save money. WELL, after learning their ridiculous moisture wicking properties(so it's harder to know how much to water the plants), and the size I got this year worked, but were probably too small, I'm going with the cups next year. ;) Also, I was worried about the roots growing through before I was ready. Though the tomatoes were decent enough in not growing through to bad, some of my other plants, like the broccoli if my memory serves me right, had grown through too much, in my opinion, to think to take off the pots before planting. @Rabbit-LoL! Love it. ;) But yeah, I forgot to put that! Gosh, I try so hard to not talk my husband's ear off about my plants, but it's so hard when you're so happy and excited...or nervous and worried(damping off scare anyone? ;) ). I love talking plants, even though this is my first year gardening. ESPECIALLY tomatoes! My husband is quite perplexed as to my unusually high interest in a vegetable that we're not even big eaters of. Well, fresh anyways. But we use a ton of pizza sauce and also other tomato products(soup, paste, etc.). I think I might have told him, but out of all my plants I'm most excited for tomatoes because there's so much variety! Like yeah, there's probably a dozen heirloom broccoli you could find on the internet, but tomatoes, there's thousands! I wanna be a collector/taste tester of every heirloom variety! ;) That's why, like you're saying, this forum's great because all us tomato fans can chat it up. @Missingtheobvious-About the potato leaf varieties. I was all perplexed when some of my tomatoes came up normal and others were potato leaf. I had read about it previously, but hadn't seen pics, and I hadn't thought to check what kind of leaves the varieties I was planting had. I was all wondering when the normal leaves would come! lol Weird thing is, I don't know if it's related to the varieties I chose or what I'm fixin' to say, but this year two of my varieties of reg. leaf looked awful, had issues, etc., but I hardly lost sleep over the potato leaf varieties. Again, I don't know if it was related to varieties or not, but I can't help but now be more partial to the potato leaf tomatoes. ;) @Homegarden-That's so cool that you had never had a tomato with a different color than red but now you're branching out. ^_^ I guess I too, when I think about it, hadn't known there was different color tomatoes until this year. I have never tasted a different colored tomato, but I have Sun Gold, Sunsugar, and Paul Robeson(or Rambling Red Stripe, label issue) growing this year, so it'll be neat to see if I taste a difference. :) That's cool you got some people hooked on your Golden Queen so they request 'em. I hope to have a taste test this year for friends and family with my twelve varieties(and others if friends or family wanna donate a tom or two to the mini event). If I got requests as to what to grow next year, I'd be so flattered! ^_^ @Cdon-I hope that's not true about pepper plants! I've been trying to water more because I thought I had read somewhere that, by doing so, you create a hotter pepper. But maybe someone else might know for sure. By the way, like the slogan. I'll have to remember it.