Definately do the toms. I did both last year and although the tomatoes were smaller than the store-bought ones that the neighbor got they produced so much more (he's still ticked off). The peppers on the other hand weren't as good. Out of the 8 plants I only got one pepper and that was about the size of an egg. I think that for us here the season it too short for the pepper to get enough warmth to produce a good crop. My toms are already outside in jugs and my peppers will be started inside this year.

I just was writing about this at a lovely tomato website I frequent, they're so sweet--they made a little WS forum and on an almost one on one basis I can relate WS info with people who are not beginner gardeners but have a huge level of experience with plants. We were talking about WSing vs cold-frame and the differences of the two and the differences of climate. Because I am here in zone seven I have learned that in my garden I can have bitterly cold weather followed by a warm spell. I would never sow anything except nut seeds now because they need multiple freezing and thaw to get that shell cracked. We just had a weekend of bitter cold and our first snow, today it's raining and 47 degrees. The warm spells can last for a few days. But when I lived in the Upper Catskills zone 4/5 we were usually frozen rock solid from the end of October until mud season in mid April. Up in zone five, you're putting out your tomatoes and they go into a prolonged dormancy. It's is really cold for months on end and a period of warmth during the usually cold months long enough to stimulate germination is a fluke, it can happen but it's not the norm. I envy your ability to sow a tender annual that early...it's very convenient and I wish I could do that here in zone seven. We all know our own climates best. I've got a maritime climate with air warmed by the gulf stream and any tropical storm down in the Caribbean is going to effect my garden three days later and send me a blast of ground thawing warmed rain. Other states with zone seven will have different weather patterns without much fluctuation which could cause premature germination of a very tender annual like a tomato or a pepper. I'll reiterate, we all know our own climates best; sow based on what you know. T

Thanks for your comments and suggestions everyone! I have forgotten to look at this post for some time. I usually spend most of my time in other garden forums such as "Tropicalesque", "Palms", "Far North" and "Utah gardening". Bearstate, I totally agree, cannas always look their best in clusters or large groups. You get that "shock value" of bold color in one spot. Larry, I wish I remember the name of the tall red cannas in the back with the burgundy leaves, but I don't remember! I know some of the shorter ones in that group are "Black Knight", but I don't remember what the really tall ones are. Sorry. In the second picture, the tall plants behind the flowering cannas are canna musafolia, or commonly known as banana canna. This grouping isn't the best picture of them because they were planted late (mid may). I had others planted that were much taller and better looking, that I planted earlier and gave more fertilizer to. If you happen to start the banana cannas inside in pots in March, if you transplant them outside and give them good sunlight, soil, water and fertilizer, you can get them to grown huge leaves and shoot up to 8-10 feet high in a good season. A lot of people mistake them for banana plants. They certainly grow alot quicker. The tubers on these plants can get quite large.

>>I wonder If I graft the japanese maple onto a regular hardy maple in my climate?Grafting I'll use the example of roses here. Just like japanese maples, most roses are not hardy to zones 4 and lower. The are zone 5 and up. Hybrid tea for instance are not hardy but they are grafted onto hardy roots. Unfortuntely, this doesn't make them hardy in zone 4 and down, we have to protect them heavily so they will come back the year after and even then you run the risk of loosing them. Not because the root system is in danger but because the grafted part is. But even if you loose the grafted part during the winter, you still may have roses that will emerge from the root stock, below the grafting point. Of course, they wont be the same hybrid tea that you bought since that part died, but a hardy rose from the plant on which it was grafted. I would say the same rules would apply to japanese maples grafted onto hardy maple roots. You probably know the Explorer Serie roses. These roses are hybrids but are not grafted, they use their own roots to grow from and they are hardy to zone 3 and some to zone 2. I have 5 of them doing very well and they never needed any kind of winter protection and I never even thought about giving them any either (zone 4b QC, Canada). Why is this? The crosses were made between hardy species and/or cultivar from the the start and the breeding was done not to impart hardiness in the first place but to develop other caracteristics such as colors, trailing habits, short plants, diseases resistantce, etc. They probably used less hardy roses in their breeding program to bring in some new genes unvailable otherwise. Hybridizing If you cross two zone 5 plants like two acer palmatum, you'll end up with a bunch of other zone 5 plants. But if you cross a zone 2 plant with a zone 4 plant, you will probably end up with 80% of the plants hardy to zone 3, 10% hardy to zone 4 and 10% hardy to zone 2. Then if you take one of these new zone 3 hardy plant, roses for example and cross it back with a zone 2 rose, you may end up with a 50% zone 3 and 50% zone 2 stock. And if you cross back again one of these new zone 3 rose with a zone 2 rose, you may end up with a 75% zone 2 - 25% zone 3 ratio. These same rules would also apply to maples making crosses between 2 different species, one of them being the japanese maple for the first cross. The difference is here: in the example of roses I took, the desirable plant and the one used in every cross was a zone 2 and the goal was to bring a zone 4 plant to zone 2. With every cross I did I added some zone 2 hardiness to the gene pool. With the japanese maple, we would be working against the odds, the desirable plant and the one that should be used in every cross is a zone 5 plant and that would bring a zone 3 plant to a zone 5 only. And if I added more and more zone 3 maple, I would be loosing more and more of the japanese gene pool. Either way leads you away from the wanted result. And we haven't even said a word about what could be recessive of dominant in these crosses, which is also a very important factor to keep in mind. This can be observed in the new clematis hybrids that are reaching the market these years. Old clematis were hardy in zone 4, but crossing them to warmer growing one has yielded many new very desirable hybrids, but only hardy in zone 5, 6 or even 7. We have gained in beauty but lost in hardiness. In a word I don't think grafting would be successfull in the way you would want it to be. And breeding wouldn't work quite the way you would want either from what I understand from what you said. These are two of the reasons why I said that selection was a much better approach in your case. It is not an easier or shorter one way to do, only a safer one. Hope this helps!