Growing most types of fruit from seed is generally a bad idea. There is a high chance the fruit will not be as good as the parent variety. For those of you who are not aware of how this works, in nature fruit species can have a lot of genetic diversity from generation to generation. When a good producing tree is found, it then gets propagated from cuttings. People usually do not want to take the trouble of growing a fruit tree from seed when they do not even know whether the fruit will be good. Generally though, lemons produce truer to seed than oranges do. Not talking about citrus here, but for fruit trees in general, it is theoretically possible to breed fruit that produces truer to seed, but it takes many more generations of breeding. These are often traditional heirloom varieties that have been around a long time. Whereas the seed from a Navel orange will not really result in a Navel variety, some of these heirloom varieties can essentially be continually propagated from seed. The terms "heirloom", "true to seed", and fruit "variety" can all be very relative and ambiguous terms.

I love to cook Asian/Oriental food, and I use fresh ginger on a semi-regular basis. But I am an impulse cook so when I need it I need right then!! But then I may not need it again until I get my next craving (which could be months). I usually keep a knob or 2 in the fridge covered with Chinese rice wine, but I recently decided to try growing some of the ingredients I cook with most on my patio. And ginger is definately one of my staples. I read the article about growing ginger, but now I have a few questions (I am very new to gardening). I am considering self watering containers for most of my plants. Do you think ginger would do okay in those? How big and deep a pot is best? As for harvesting, can you harvest a piece at a time all year round or do you have to wait til the dormant period? As I said, I may only need it every so often and sometimes I'll need a little, sometimes a lot. Can you just dig it up, cut off a small piece and replant it? Seems like storing it in the fridge till the next season kinda defeats the purpose of growing it yourself. But then again, it would probably still be fresher than what you get at the store! And what about galangal? I love Thai food and some friends gave me a kaffir lime tree and I am planning to try to grow lemongrass, so while I am growing ginger, might as well grow some of that too! I would appreciate all the help and advice anyone can give me! Thanks, Lydia

i tried two different ginger variety last year. the regular ginger was yield pretty big zhigome but i try to winterizing it out door and it die. i also grown the orange ginger roots and they came back strong this year, the leaves are interesting large same size as canas.

Mint is -very- easy to root; I have several cuttings doing well from a grocery store plastic box (read: four freaking bushes of it). I've also managed sage... however, after doing that and then starting from seed, the difference is night and day. Either I managed to somehow stunt my sage transplants or they're just not that great, but the sage I grew from seed (Burpee, nothing special) is far, far hardier and more potent, and grows incredibly quickly. If you're having trouble starting seeds, I'd suggest reading up from many sources; I combined the most popularly touted methods and ended up pretty much doing everything very simply, and haven't had trouble getting anything except tomatoes to grow (but that was a very poorly-done experiment, and I'll be getting it right next time).