Every market is different and some of them (mine) do not attract high end clients. I sell at a HUGE flea market where most of the customers don't speak English. They come every weekend. They come with money in their pockets. They come to socialize and shop. I love building a relationship with these people and I have to keep in mind the limits of their resources. I try to tailor my product size to the price they will pay rather than force larger, fancier product on them. It seems to work. Every weekend I see new vendors trying to sell some homemade product and getting frustrated with the lack of sales. I try to explain that open-air vending is different, a certain type of person will be coming to this site. They shop for different reasons, they value things differently than most people. What you think will sell may not move at all. If something gathers lots of interest but few sales then it is time to re-evaluate the price but rather than slash the price or raise it drastically, pull the item from the shelves and bring it back next weekend repackaged a different way so that you make money and the customer sees it as a better value. What works for one vendor at one market may not work for another somewhere else.

Ada, I either do grow or have grown many of the flowers you listed, so here's a few comments. Amaranthus--I grow many kinds and they all sprout easily and grow well, even in areas where the yucky, heavy, red clay soil has not been improved at all. Most years my various amaranths reseed. Angelonia--performs very well even during the hottest parts of the summer. Black-eyed Susan Vine--grows well, self sows abundantly, and I've had the same results you have with the various colors. Butterfly Weed--grows very well here and truly is a butterfly magnet. We have them growing wild in the fencelines here near us. I have grown them in my cottage border too. Calendula 'Flashback' and the other calendulas I've grown have done very well. They are supposed to be more of a cool-season flower, but some years they have made it through most or all the summer as long as I have been able to keep them well-watered. Cleome 'Violet Qween'--grows fine here although it doesn't seem to reseed as prolifically as Rose Queen. I just grow taller flowers in front of it to hide the naked stalks, esp. as the summer goes on. This year, mine continued blooming in late November or early December because they were in a spot near the house where they got a little water every occasionally and sunlight/heat from a southward-facing wall. Cosmos--I've grown 15 or 20 kinds of cosmos here in southern OK and they've all grown more or less equally well. I haven't had any powdery mildew problems with them here, but then I don't have much rain or high humidity most years. Echinacea--grows well but not necessarily long-lived in my garden. Any individual plant may last 3, 4 or 5 years, but not forever. It tends to be our occasionally very rainy year that gets them, but then they are always planted in fairly unimproved clay soil. (I save the heroic amounts of soil prep for the veggies.) Gaillardia--At our house, it does best if I plant it in well-drained, compost-improved, sandier loam and not in the heavier clay. We have gaillardia here by the acre in our part of Love County, so I don't plant it much. It does, however, come up here and there from wind-scattered seed. Gazanias--Quick and easy from seed and tolerates really hot weather. Geranium--I grew them the first couple of years we lived here, but they really don't like our hot, dry summers so I haven't grown them since about 2001 or 2002. They always look great until late June or early July and then the struggle with the heat begins. Gomphrena--I've grown several kinds here, including Strawberry Fields, Purple Buddy and QIS Mix. My Strawberry Fields self-sows and comes up in the gravel driveway down by the road, about 200' from where I originally planted it. Some of the darker purple ones reseed also, but the paler lavender or lilac-colored ones have not reseeded. I get better germination when I presoak the seed for 24 hours before planting it. Heliotrope--I love the smell, but it does love our dry heat, so I don't grow it here. Hyacinth Bean Vine--I've grown these every year since we moved here, and for quite a few years before that. I love them, and they are edible, although I don't think they are as tasty as many other agricultural beans. Mine have reseeded for the last 4 or 5 years, so I don't bother saving seed to replant any more. I probably get more compliments on these plants than any other single plant I grow. Impatiens--Grew lots of them in Fort Worth, but only grew them the first year here. The wildlife ate them all to the ground, and I haven't grown them since. Larkspur--I've grown Imperial Mix for years and they reseed every year. Haven't tried the one from Park's that you mentioned. I have them in several places around the yard. Millet--I've from the Foxtail, the purple ornamental ones, and the common ones that sprout from henscratch that the hens and wildbirds miss. All grow equally well. If you have a problem with stink bugs in the veggie garden, plant millet close to, but outside the garden, as a trap crop and kill the stinkbugs when they flock to the millet. That way, you won't have to spray your veggie crops with anything. Nemesia--I don't grow it here because it doesn't handle July and August well. Nicotiana--I've grown every one of them that you can find seed for, and they grow great here. Langsdorfii likes a little more moisture and afternoon shade than sylvestris. Some nicotines reseed for me, and some don't. I've had them come up in the middle of pastures from seed blown from the garden, and they were some of the best-looking ones ever, even though they got no supplemental water and no care. Petunia--I'm just about done with all the standard petunias. They just struggle too much in July and August. There's two exceptions: Mexican Petunia and 'Laura Bush Pink' wild petunia and 'Laura Bush Purple' wild petunia. As far as I know, the Laura Bush wild petunias are only available as seed from Wildseed Farms in Texas. I raise mine from seed every year. They grow just fine in the heat, although they do best if you cut them back hard once or twice during the summer and let them regrow and reflower. Mine were in bloom from April through December, and even reseeded, both in containers and in the ground. I grow them in well-amended clay soil in full sub. I've grown plenty of other petunias from seed over the years, and had some of the Wave petunias in handing baskets on my wraparound porch for several years, but they just don't like our July/August heat in Love County. (Most years it is a fairly dry heat.) Rudbeckias grow better for me if I put them in the one bank of sandy soil that runs across our property. They've never done as well in the heavier clay soil I have on most of the place. We have native ones that grow just fine here, but a lot of the cultivated ones don't do quite as well. Salvia 'Victoria' grows very well. I haven't planted any in years, but the ones I planted in about 2001 or 2002 reseed every year and do just fine. Very long-blooming here. Bloomed into late Nov. or early Dec. this year in spite of some pretty cold nights (down in the teens). Sages--Most of the sages don't do well for me unless I put them in raised beds in very well-amended, well-drained soil. The exception is Texas Hummingbird Sage which grows very well despite the heat, gets huge, is a butterfly and bee magent, and reseeds everywhere. Sunflowers--I grow gazillions of them, and like to color-code them to the season--growing the paler yellow, peach and lime ones for late spring blooms, the golden yellows and orange (Soraya) for summer blooms, and the red, gold and orange (and bi-colors) for the fall. If you have a lot of sunflowers, you'll have to watch for the black-and-orange caterpillars that like to devour their foliage. Verbascum 'Southern Charm'--only did so-so here. It may not like my heavy clay or my hot summers, but my grandmother always loved verbascum and grew it in her sandier, more well-drained soil in Texas. Verbena bonariensis--a longtime favorite and it reseeds all over the place here most years. Some years I have to pull up hundreds of them because they come up as thick as grass if I didn't deadhead early enough the previous summer. These even come up in the middle of the pastures. I have the best luck surface sowing it outdoors in a covered container (winter sowing). Since it reseeds so prolifically, I've only grown it from seed twice here, and I wouldn't have planted it at all the second year if I'd realized how much it would reseed from the first year's plants. Vinca--I grow it every now and then, but not most years. It has a lot of disease issues here so I usually only grow it every 2nd or 3rd year. I grew it more when I lived in Texas and had better soil. It is really easy from seed though. Zinnia--I've grown all kinds of zinnias and they are my favorite flower. I like 'em in all sizes, shapes, and colors and they attract billions of butterflies. I've grown the entire 'Profusion' series ever since they first came out, and this year I'm going to add the Knee-High ones and the new double ones. They grow insanely well here and the only trouble they have is the occasional bout of powdery mildew in wetter years. I've never met )or grown) a zinnia I didn't like. I grow a large cottage border around the perimeter of my veggie garden and in various other areas around the yard. Because we have a large property, I only grow plants that are pretty tough and fuss-free. If they need pampering and lots of special care, I don't bother with them. Most of what I grow reseeds, although every few years I bring in new batches of seed (maybe the same flowers I already have, but in different colors, for example) to shake things up a little. It sounds like you have a lot of fun flower-growing planned for this year. Dawn

We're another couple who got married in a hurry by a judge. We'd been living together for years and really hadn't planned to marry but, his office wanted to transfer him from Montreal to Atlanta. I'd been living in Montreal for 15 years but I was and am an American citizen. His company had an attorney who was going to help DH navigate the path to a green card. I found out that if we were married I could simply go to the consulate and request status for him so it was a no brainer to get married. I mean, it wasn't that we didn't love each other or have a serious commitment, we owned a house together up there for many years and I brought the mortgage papers to the consulate to prove it, it's just that we weren't in any kind of hurry. We might have gotten around to it without the push or we might not have.

Hey Vapor, for you in zone 6, you will need to dig up the bulbs of tuberoses. I started with three little bulbs in three pots three years ago. At the end of each year, I've been able to divide one pot into 2-3 divisions. This is what I do. I plant them in pots because it's much easier to winterize the plants that way. I would wait till the leaves start to turn brown from the cold night time temperature and cut all the leaves down to about 3". Then I would upturn the pot to get the entire root ball out and use two garden forks to split it into either 2 or 3 divisions, depending on how big the plant has grown. Each division is then placed in a gallon food storage bag. A little water is added into the root ball/potting soil so it feels moist, but not soaking wet. Then I would use a piece of twine to loosely tie the bag around the remaining dried up leaves to help keep the moisture in the bag longer. I then place all my divisions in the section of my basement which is connected to my unheated garage. The temperature there in the dead of winter goes down to about 45 degrees F. But I suspect refrigerator temperature (~ 38-40 degrees) will work as well. The only thing in winter you need to pay attention to is to periodically feel the potting soil in the bag and make sure it doesn't become too dry. If so, water it with a spray bottle. The bulbs will wake up in spring by sending fresh green leaves up the tied neck to tell you they're coming out of dormancy. If you pot them up in late March/early April indoors then transition them out when it's warmer, they will bloom for you in early July. Tuberoses really are super easy to grow and very disease-free, and they will reward you with that amazing fragrance, quite unlike anything I've smelled. --Lin