Hi there, This is my first attempt at posting photos, so I hope the file size is not too huge. Please help me if I need to be more viewer-friendly with my images. My picture taking abilities are also a bit suspect. :) We have lots of dirt everywhere due to a recent foundation repair on the back of the house. Here goes! This is a front bed I made "lasagna style" last fall and am in the process of planting with perennials and annuals. Here is the middle of the front bed. I have mgs, black-eyed susan vines, and hyacinth bean, which will grow up and over the fencing--I hope! There are holly hocks, cosmos, 4 o'clocks, nicotania, and marigolds, too. Back of the house where you can see the foundation destruction. There are zinns, delphs, cosmos, snappies, cleome, nicotania, and 4 o'clocks all across the back. ws toms in the middle, basil, and rosemary (too tiny to see). The three big toms on the right are from a nursery. Barrell of dwarf sunnies, larkspur, and dahlias. Mgs, zinns, and marigolds. My hope is the MGs and sweetpeas (not seen on sides and behind) will climb up and around the chair. This is a picture from the "back" of the front bed, which is looking from the opposite side of picture #2. Lots of zinns, larkspur, and dahlias. Thanks for looking and letting me share! cheers, NB

I have my photos stored on Picasa web album, and here's how I upload my photos from Picasa to GW. 1 - I check that my albums are shared with "Limited, anyone with the link", if they're not Public; 2 - I open the photo that I want to upload; 3 - I look on the right side of the photo to locate "Link to this photo" and click on that; 4 - I high-light the codes in the box under "Embed image", then copy the codes; 5 - I return to my post on GW and paste the copied codes. I always got my photos appeared in my post on here. Hope that helps. By the way, I'd like to share photo of my two bulbs recently received from Royal colors. Xuan

Well, I just got my plants from E & R, an Amish company in Indiana.I wasn't able to insert a picture but have posted a link to a picture of them. See how much smaller the Black Cherry plant is on the far left? Next to it is Cherokee Black, which is taller. Then you will see a Caspian Pink out of its 3-pack and a Sweet Little Girl (already with bloom) out of its 3-pack. Surely they didn't send the wrong, mislabeled plant. Does it start out so small and then make up for it big time? I thought these were a good deal. No minimum purchase. The two 3-packs were $1.99 each and the individual plants were $2.25 each. It was the shipping that was killing: $8.35, for a grand total of $21.33 for 6 plants (I also got two ground cherry plants.) But $3.56 a plant isn't bad. Here is a link that might be useful:

I understand this. Certain crops do well with direct sowing but I've had contrary to the norm experiences to date. Carrots and onions and beets---eh, not as great as I hoped despite over seeding. Radishes all sprouted though using same method. Same with zuch, watermelon and winter squash---the seedlings I have had to pull that I hate because they weren't cheap and frankly, I'd love lots of all three---and both marigolds and nasturtiums too. My comment context is on several fronts. I did all transplants last year from mail order and a nursery. It was not cost effective but only one seedling of 15-20 didn't make it. This year was all direct sowing in contrast minus the yarrow left from last year. So yes, seed is cheap overall but I have empty space where I over seeded and not enough space where I counted each individual seed---100% germination with those seeds to be exact so I moved what I could to empty pots with crap soil to see how they do. It was a simple observation that others might find useful/intriguing because there is no right or wrong way to garden and why not share? But thanks for the information.