I doubt I know anything that you all don't, but in what is closing in on one year of gardening, I have learned: 1. Gardening is insanely addictive. I planted some red annual salvia and white petunias to cover and a stump. They looked so pretty, I was hooked! 2. Assume nothing! I live in extreme south Georgia. We don't have killing frosts, right? WRONG! I still had about half dozen or so of those original salvia growing and blooming in their bed. They looked gorgeous, until about a week ago. Now, they are brown goo. 3. Not everything likes to be heavily fertilized. Another member here (debbiep) lives right up the road from me. Over the summer she helped feed my growing addiction. She gave me two little tomato plants. I put them in my little, tiny edibles bed, dumped a ton of my guinea pig mulch on them and crossed my fingers. In short order, I had two huge, gorgeous plants, and one tomato between the two of them. :P 4. Irises are my absolute favorite flower, and despite all the gorgeous, diverse varieties that exist, there is no real red. 5. Your significant other may not always appreciate or even understand your passion. After I announced my plans to expand my UGA beds to include an homage to the other 11 SEC schools, my husband told me I was $E&(#W$&(# (insert your own pejorative) nuts. 6. Your children do not know the difference between seeds carefully harvested and laid out on paper plates or coffee filters to dry and trash. The same goes for newspaper and cardboard saved for weed barrier. :o I am certain there is more, I will try to share useful information as I think of it. Christan

I've enjoyed this thread. Some of our 2013 hits and misses from first time items were: Hits Mizuna: Comes up quickly from seed, produces abundantly and is a cut and come again veggie. Tokyo Bekana Grew very well here from seed in the spring and fall. We love it raw in salads as an alternative to lettuce. Fingerling potatoes: we grew five varieties and all did well and were DELICIOUS. Did very well at the farmers' market. Zephyr summer squash. These are very delicious and showed good disease resistance and yield. Safari zuchinni. It wasn't a good year for zukes for us, but these kept coming even after the others bit the dust. Red Russian kale. Produced very well. Tasty and tender. Moon and Stars Yellow Fleshed watermelons. We really enjoyed these. Not as sweet as Crimson Sweet, of course, but crispy and delicious. Fails Lemon cucumbers. Produced poorly. They taste fine but not worth the space they take up. Won't plant again. Burgundy okra. The problem with this is that the wildlife couldn't resist it. Deer and groundhogs destroyed it, while hardly bothering the Clemson Spineless. If you can keep the critters away, this would be a good choice. But we won't bother with it again. Creasy Greens (upland cress). This didn't come up at all. Surprising since it grows wild here. We won't bother trying again. Here is a link that might be useful: White Flint Farm

Hello, I recently bought some pesto basil perpetuo from Burpee. The plants arrived the other day and they were in horrible shape. The leaves were ALL damaged, had brown spots on them and had many broken leaves. I removed the worst of the damage, but one of the plants now looks dead and the other two aren't far behind. The tops of the plants were bent over to make them fit into the shipping container, which was plastic and several leaves were mashed where the container was snapped closed on them. Is there anything I can do to save the two that are still alive? I am appalled at the horrible quality of the plants Burpee sent to me. I expected healthy, compact plants, not these leggy pitiful little plants. The link posted above--I went and looked in the links and couldn't find the basil perpetuo there. What should I look for in their catalogs? Thanks, Noss

Definitely use your nose to identify your plant. In the nursery, don't be afraid to pick off a leaf or two, crush it (to release those tell-tale essential oils) and smell it - even taste it, if you're sure it's an edible leaf. As Gardencraze says, you can't mistake an Apple Mint from an Orange Mint, or a Chocolate Mint from a Basil Mint! I'm not sure that a photo would help much with the ID. You can get an Apple Mint with an all-green leaf, but Apple Mint also comes in a variegated form. Both smell and taste like apple. It's much the same with Thyme, which comes in an assortment of flavours and smells. Use your NOSE!