I've been growing species ornamental grass from seed for 3 years now, and I haven't found any that seem to need a cold period. I haven't cross-tested all the cool season grasses yet, but Festuca, Deschampsia, Sesleria and Luzula do just fine without cold stratification. All the warm season grasses I've tried also do fine without it. In fact, they seem to do better. I've had a lot of rotten seeds from winter sowing warm season grasses. Not so many with cool season grasses. All of this is based on either commercial grass seed, well dried, or my own harvested seed, dried indoors over at least the winter.

Julia The 11 months to sprout cross was Scottish Fantasy x April LaQuinta. I started trying to germinate those on Jan 7, 2008 in more typical manner (water/peroxide in a warm closet). When they did not germinate after 3 weeks I started cycling them between the fridge & closet trying to get them to germinate. Every time another seed germinated it was on the warmup cycle after additional refrigeration. 4 (of 10) seeds of this cross germinated, one at a time over 4 months of trying last winter. 3 of those were lost to gnats. The one surviving sibling from last winter germination has grown to a nice size and put on increase in the garden. Another seed germinated in the fridge on Nov 15th so now I have 2 planted indoors from this cross. There are now four remaining seeds from this cross that went right back into the fridge to either wait until Jan when I'll have a better chance of seeing them through the rest of the winter, or if they sprout earlier on their own in the fridge I'll plant them right away too. The other two crosses 3 seeds germinated in the fridge for each after 8 months: Asian Fairy Bluebird x Spacecoast Cool Deal Seagull's Heaven x Spacecoast Cool Deal I started trying to germinate these in the typical fashion on Mar 2, 2008. When they had not germinated by end of April and following several cycles between the closet and fridge, I gave up and left them in the fridge soaking in water/peroxide. I asked on the e:mail robin about this and the best detailed response I got is that they were probably "dormant seed" type (not to be confused with dormant foliage type plants). Seeds of this type, I was told, break dormancy with wet+cold storage for a minimum of 6 weeks. I never did leave them that long at one refrigeration cycle when I was trying to germinate them last winter. They said dry storage in the fridge will not break the dormancy so does not count as part of this 6 weeks. Some people report success breaking that dormancy in some seeds at room temperature using the water/peroxide soak as I did. However, it may be noted that if water is used alone w/o peroxide it can actually inhibit germination of some seeds. It seems that the last detailed studies conducted on this were in the 1950s though some folks have done informal experimentation since.

Tom, you should know that the VAST majority of butterflies, moths, and their kin are important pollinators. The VAST majority of caterpillars are not major defoliators of garden vegetables. What a silly remark! You should know that by planting a small selection of crops, you will attract those creatures that feed on those crops. Count a few caterpillar species in with all the rest of them. After all, we are setting the table. sahmof, is there anyway that you could take some pictures of what you are finding? Cutworms curl themselves into a fat 'C' and are found in the soil, besides grubs. It's helpful to know who the culprits are. Don't bring in any fishing worms to your garden. Believe it or not, soil can be perfectly healthy without worms. But if you continue to build the soil with organic matter of some kind (compost, fallen fall leaves, etc.) and mulch adequately, you'll soon find that the right kind of earthworms have moved in.

I would be concerned that your seeds are rotten. Pepper seeds are generally white when dried except for a couple of varieties that start off black. When preserving the seeds make sure that the pods are extremely ripe before harvesting and that they are dried pretty quickly, then stored in a cool, dark, moisture free location.