Rosie, "How can I control all the volunteers?" If it is convenient, I let the volunteers bloom, to see if they might possibly be anything special. When I was gardening in Maine I actually had a couple of "breeder" quality zinnias appear among my volunteers. In Maine, the volunteers had already proved that they could survive as seeds in solid-frozen earth for several months. However, from my viewpoint, as soon as a volunteer has bloomed with an "uninteresting" bloom, it is a weed, and I remove it. I also "cull" the zinnias that I have planted myself. I want my garden space to be occupied by exceptional zinnias and by selected "breeder" zinnias. "I'd also like to know what you recommend re spacing. Mine that are crowded now are getting leaf diseases." Crowding promotes leaf diseases, because it denies the lower leaves their needed sun exposure. As the weather gets cooler you can spray your zinnias with something like GreenCure to delay the onset of foliage diseases. We had a rain last night, so I am going to spray my zinnias with GreenCure later this morning. As for spacing, the more sun exposure the better. I would like to have my zinnia plants three feet apart or more (for easy access for pollinating them), but that isn't always possible. Occasionally two good zinnias will come up close to each other and I just leave them and try to clear away all the zinnias that aren't "good" in their immediate vicinity. When I "cull" my zinnias, I just pull out the "bad" ones as if they were weeds, except in the case when the bad zinnia is close enough to a good zinnia that pulling out the bad zinnia will damage the root system of the good zinnia. In that case, I use a hand pruner to snip the bad zinnia off at the ground level. In previous years I had a big compost pile just for zinnias, but zinnia compost can contain disease organisms, so now I just package my discarded zinnias to discard them in the trash pickup as garbage. I am doing the same thing with tomato vines in case they carry tomato diseases. But I must confess that I have a lot of zinnias that are too close together right now, and their lower leaves, the ones that can't get sun, have already died off. Maybe I will do better next year. I would like to have by best zinnias at least three feet apart. I enjoy looking through my zinnias to see what characteristics they have. You might want to look at your zinnias closely today, because you might have something interesting out there right now. If you intend to save seeds from a zinnia plant, mark it in some way so that it will stand out after all the zinnias are dead and brown. Also, you can save seeds from zinnias before the heads are completely brown. Just bring them in and spread them out on an old newspaper to dry. You can leave the flower on the zinnia plant and just pluck out the petals with the "ripe" green seeds, like in this picture. With some practice, you will learn to tell the seeds that contain a baby zinnia plant embryo from the seeds that are just empty shells. I use Ziploc Snack bags and 3x5 cards to store my dried seeds. I write descriptive information on the 3x5 card for my own reference at a later time. If you have any more questions, please don't hesitate to ask. I and others will be glad to help you. Zinnias can be very interesting, and a lot of fun. ZM (not associated with any product or vendor mentioned)

Update: I moved to the Caribbean 11 months ago and brought my sorry, three legged Lepismium?? with me. It's grown a bit but is still a tiny thing. Maybe now we can better ID it??? It hangs happily on a porch, receiving 5 hours of morning sun, then indirect sunlight the rest of the day. I noticed most of the tips and edges have turned reddish since relocation. It also has little white 'beards' all along its stalks. However, it has never flowered. Perhaps it needs more sun? And, by the way, what's up with this Tanzanian Zipper? Those are Echinopsis pups in there with this Tanzanian Zipper. I received it as a cutting with 3 others that died within a week. This one looks the exact same size it looked two years ago! It's still alive but never grew one root and appears to be in a perpetual snooze. Any ideas how I can jolt this one to life? Or perhaps it's time to throw in the towel. If anyone has this succulent, please consider a trade with me...click on my username to get to my profile, where you'll see my trade list. I'd love to own one that actually does something. Peace! - Maria Elena

Linda, Your charms will go out tomorrow from the PO. I forgot to put the note in before I taped it up. Please send me you correct addy. I seem to have something different from what is on the evenlope. Sandra, You keep the charms I sent to you by mistake. Call it a Suprise treat. Last night I had a CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIE IN A CUP. Has anyone done this. What a great idea if you don't want sweets sitting around the house. Didn't taste bad. Have a great day. gmom

Hello Lindseed, " Now that I think of it, in desperation, I took the soap bottle after all of my seedlings went missing once again, and squirted it all in the flower bed and then watered it in. " That would be a no-no. As someone said in the link you gave, Dawn is not soap, but is a detergent. Most of the damage you have pictured is probably from the Dawn detergent overdose. You have probably seen the television commercial where a single drop of Dawn makes a dramatic difference. " Oh, and as for the experiment. Here is what's happened so far. " It's too soon to make any conclusions based on that. Has it been less than 24 hours since you made the cuts? " I just found this, and am now completely convinced it's from the dawn dish soap. Oh how I regret that. " That mega-dose of Dawn needs to be washed out of the soil. Hopefully you are due for a rainy spell. It would use a lot of your well water to try to wash it out yourself. If you over-use a well, it can run dry. During the drought of 2012 our well ran dry from overuse of it to water our gardens. It would recover somewhat in a few hours, but we had to reduce our water usage to what our water table would supply, and water just our best plants. It's OK to use Dawn as a wetting agent in your sprays, but use an eyedropper and add it a drop at a time. One drop might be enough. " Actually, not completely convinced, because it's also on the zinnias in the tire. " And, since you did not apply Dawn to the tire, that foliage problem is probably caused by Southern Blight (Sclerotium rolfsii) or Gray mold (Botrytis cinerea). The plant debris in the tire favors both fungus diseases. Notice that this seems to be more of a spreading infection than the near whole-plant distress from the Dawn. Remove as much of the loose organic material from the tire as you can and replace it with sand. A bag of children's play sand from a home store might be sufficient, or you might have some other source of sand available. If you want to spray the plants, you could use a systemic fungicide like Bayer Disease Control for Roses, Flowers, and Shrubs. Or, if you prefer a non-toxic solution, Green Cure consists of Potassium bicarbonate (an ingredient in baking powder) and a proprietary wetting agent. Green Cure is not systemic, so it needs to be reapplied after every rain and it does not protect new growth like systemics do. I have used both products with satisfactory results. ZM