caroline - welcome, welcome, welcome I am happy you got started but just a bit concerned about the sunflowers you already sowed. Watch them carefully because if you have a warm spell, they might germinate early and then later get hit with a blast of freezing weather. Some of us try and do the annuals a bit later to avoid that "early death".... Read as much of these threads you can, you will do great your first year, but be sure that you do your annuals a bit later than the perennials that are at least cold hardy. Good luck - hope I helped Carrie

My goodness.. I feel like my garden's eating breakfast while all your garden's are having an after-dinner cocktail!!!!! I looked for seed on flag yellow iris today. I have penstenon (sp?) red Huckster and rocky mountain in bloom, but a long ways to go till to seed pods! I've got Lychnis "Molten Lava" that is blooming and I definitely want to save seeds from that, loves it. But honestly, if I start the seed collecting thing" before I have finished the planting out thing, I think my family will disown me. As it is there are all these SNIPPY comments (smile) about the lack of groceries, real meals and any time with me, outside of the garden, in the daylight! Nancy

Growing Indoors vs. Outdoors Grow them outdoors. You are unlikely to have enough light indoors to get them to bear unless you have a glorified greenhouse of a sunroom. Just sitting them by a window is generally not enough, nor are heat lamps a good idea because you are going to burn the plants with them almost guaranteed. Just put them in containers if the actual soil around your place isn't good enough. Walmart carries those really big tree planters, buy those (its what I grow my container peppers in) and fill them with miracle grow potting soil (not the moisture control kind). Cross Pollination: If you actually want to prevent almost all likelyhood of cross pollination, you're looking at probably 100 yards (a football field) between species, or a large blocking object (like a house). But in truth, it is unlikely that you will get accidental crossing even if the plants are sitting right next to each other. Peppers are mostly self pollinating, so the odds of accidental crossing are actually pretty low to start with. Preserving: Drying the peppers and making powder out of them (get a dehydrator and a cheap coffee grinder) is the way I prefer. If you want to try canning, you need to learn actual canning. Glass mason jars, wax seals, boiling baths, the whole nine yards. Otherwise you will simply get mold and spoiled peppers at best, and horrendous food poisoning at worst. Types: Just be aware that the hotter the pepper the longer it takes to germinate the seeds (in less than ideal conditions I've seen ghost peppers take MONTHS to sprout). Also, I grow some of the black pearl peppers. They are ornamentals. While you can eat them, they generally are not used for food, but as decoration. That said, black pearls are very cool looking pepper plants.

Elaine, you're more than welcome to come out to the next time we have a physical meeting, which will probably be in October. Jay, you would be more than welcome to come out, though I recognize that it would be a trip for you. You're more than welcome (much more than welcome) to help out with participation on the forum. I really want to see it start perking. So far, people drop in and look around. But they don't post. This is probably due to the fact that there is so little there. I have actually plugged this forum whenever I have done seed saving forums, and I will figure a way to include it as a link from Green Country Seed Savers Network's web page. Those who attended last Sunday's meeting know that I both mentioned Oklahoma Gardening Forum and, specifically.... Dawn, as an example of the great resources available here. George