I'm hosting one in Rutherfordton, NC on August 27th. This is near the Biltmore, Asheville, the Blue Ridge Parkway . . many lovely sights to see. So far 71 people have responded. I look very forward to meeting many GW people, friends I've come to know 'on here', no Newbie will go home empty handed, working on how to keep confusion to a minimum now (going to send an Update letter so prearranged swaps/rides can be set up now, also want name tags worn -- any suggestions very welcome) especially since August is a common VAC month (gardeners divide perennials, some will wish to totally do away with plants to make space for new cultivars, go through seeds to plan next year's garden and much more), many are taking the week or weekend to come to the swap from afar and then visit friends in the area and/or VAC. All is open to swap -- plants, seeds, tools, birdhouses, gourds, magazines, books . . . if you can fit it in the car and want to trade may be the time. Katie

sockmonkey - looks like a precious Minnesota kitty if I ever saw one! Oof dah! Please tell - sounds like a story. FTM - so...where did you vaction? Scott, thank you. Because it's already late for this year, I thought I'd do it by mail the first time around, but when I sent out the invitation letter I mentioned a get-together swap meet if there was enough interest. The nearest Walmart or pet shop is 45 miles away, the nearest real pond shop 120 miles. Until I got a grip on how many people were interested I didn't want it to get out of hand. Sort of wanted to keep it among 'friends' and friends of friends. I'll take it from there. The U of MN West Central MN Horticulture Night is July 27th, so I'm going to publisize a bit then. My boss's wife is a very active member of the local gardening club, so using the facilities at work should we have a 'swap meet' wouldn't be a problem. I appreciate your input!! Thanks for all your good thoughts!

I am sooooooooooooooo excited. My husband laughs at me about this! I have talked about this for weeks and he get's a kick out of how excited I am to meet everyone and to see my garden mentor's garden. I'll try to bring a couple of chairs too, will leave in the car if needed. Sylvia, do you need any extra tables? I've got a couple 3 x 6 that are very light and I can bring those too. Bought the stuff for my pate' an am making some munchies as well.

Great idea! I love trading plants! A while back I created a group on flickr to try and facilitate local plant exchanges... but never got around to really doing anything with it. I planted a seed... it germinated... but then I never really gave it any TLC. I didn't give the seedling very much water, food or a larger pot. So it turned into a bonsai! Here's some feedback on your seedling... 1. It looks ghetto! :) Personally, for me it's not a deal breaker. But still... it was my first impression. Am I arguing that you should allocate more of your limited resources to improving the style? Nope. Substance is always more important than style. Craiglist is a perfect example. 2. On your homepage you have a little box with a little slideshow of plants. Beneath the slideshow it says, "Available Items". I want that to be a link that takes me to a page that shows me all the available plants. After a while I figured out that clicking on "Search" seems to accomplish the same thing. But "Search" really isn't the same thing as "Browse". You're just getting started so I'm hardly going to want to waste my time searching for all the plants on my very very very long want list. 3. Regarding your credit idea.... hmmmmm. Live plants equals three credits? I get three credits whether I share a Crassula ovata (common) or a Laelia speciosa (uncommon)? In that case I'm probably going to share my common plants rather than my uncommon plants. If everybody else does the same... your website will not be a good source for uncommon plants. Which is unfortunate for those of us who are interested in uncommon plants. Here's an alternative system. Allow people to use paypal to put money into their digital wallet (DW). Let's say that I put $10 dollars into my DW. I browse and see that you recently listed Crassula ovata. Given that, from my perspective, you're listing a very common plant.... I wouldn't allocate even one of my pennies to your listing. From my perspective your listing would be worthless. One person's trash certainly is another person's treasure... but if nobody allocated any of their pennies to your listing then... well... you get the idea. But what if you listed Laelia speciosa or any of its crosses? Then I would definitely allocate quite a few of my pennies to your listing! Recently some guy listed Bpl. Golden Peacock on eBay. This is a really great cross! So I took the time to share this listing with the Epiphyte Society of Southern California (ESSC). You can see how much the plant costs ($19.95) but you can't see how much the listing itself is worth. Clearly it's worth something given that I was willing to share it with the ESSC. But you can't see just how much the listing is worth to me or anybody else. In other words.... you're missing important information about the information. Let's explore this concept using this thread itself. You posted this thread to share information and perhaps to receive some feedback on your information. And here I am sharing some information about your information! Others have done so as well. But it stands to reason that you really don't equally value all the posts in this thread. I sure don't equally value all the posts in this thread. With the current system... we have the option to "Like" posts... and this does help provide some useful information about posts. It tells us how popular they are. But it really doesn't tell us how valuable they are. It's good to know how popular things are.... but it's infinitely better to know how valuable they are. It didn't cost me anything to "Like" your OP. Well... perhaps it cost me one second and one calorie to click the "Like" button. In any case.... the cost was vanishingly small. And it's because the cost of "Liking" something is so vanishingly small that it doesn't really convey much information. But what if I had allocated $1 dollar to your OP? Or $5 dollars? Or $25 dollars? I could have used that money to buy a nice orchid! I could have used that money to buy another Golden Peacock! So it would say a lot if I was willing to forego a really nice orchid in order to support your OP. Technically speaking... it's not fundamentally more difficult to facilitate allocations than it is to facilitate "Likes". In both cases you need an additional table to store the additional information about the information. And I'm guessing that you might want an additional column in your listings table to store the total allocations. That would make it easy to sort the listings by their value. The front end would just require a bit of javascript and AJAX. Fun stuff! Right now this forum doesn't allow us to valuate threads or sort them by their value. EBay allows us to sort orchids by their price... but it doesn't allow us to valuate listings or sort them by their value. Craigslist doesn't allow us to valuate listings or sort them by their value. Obviously your website can certainly succeed without facilitating valuations of the listings. I just really like the idea of being able to easily use my money to help bring valuable listings to the attention of other people. If somebody lists some awesome plant on your website then I'd certainly appreciate the opportunity to use my money to easily and clearly communicate my valuation of their listing. This website makes it stupid easy for me to try and encourage you with my words. Which is all kinds of wonderful! But imagine trying to grow plants with only words! Hah. I'd simply attach Golden Peacock to a tree and say, "Grow grow grow please grow!" Maybe that would work in Miami! But here in Southern California... if I want Golden Peacock to grow then I'm going to have to take the time and make the effort to water it twice a week (at night) during summer.