Congrats on the new yard! NO has a climate very similar to Galveston where I live. Plus there are some great nurseries in NO. Google your county extension office, you'll find a list of plants recommended by your area, growing tips, etc. Also you can usually find the master gardners there, ask questions, etc. Right now there isn't a lot you can plant but you can start getting your beds ready. In a few weeks you can plant your fall vegetables & herbs, winter squash, tomatoes, onions, cabbage, greens, etc. all do very well in fall gardens in our climate. There is a book called Gulf Coast Gardening, should be able to find a copy on Amazon, I think there is one on gardening in New Orleans that was published a few years back, if not there is one on gardening in Houston that will work for you. Visit the nurseries in your area and talk to the people working there, they are a great source of information-stick with the smaller individually owned nurseries as opposed to big box or chain stores. Have fun! oh, and look for books on sub-tropical gardening. Tally HO!

The sun shouldn't have killed any plants from seeds you sowed directly in the soil, unless the ground was very dry -farmers plant seeds in the open ground with no protection. Might have been slugs, cutworms or damping off fungus, although damping off doesn't usually occur in the open ground. You'll need to harden off the plants you purchase - expose them gradually to sun and the cold of night over a week or two. You start them with just a couple hours of morning sun, until you get them up to full sun. Some of your plants look like they have yellowing veins, which you might google on. Since it seems to occur in different kinds of plants, it's more likely to be a nutritional deficiency than a disease. But don't over fertilize. Your prepared bed looks great.

This swap is gonna be at my house--128th and Colorado Blvd. For you, up I25 to 120th and then east a couple miles! The location varies, but so far we've managed to have one on the north end and one on the south end each year. That helps some of the people who come from Colorado Springs and other points south, or Ft. Collins and other places up that-a-way! If you haven't already checked it out, the very first post on the swap thread has all the basic info about what happens and how we do it. Re GardenWeb!!! I'm used to the way it looks and how it works, but it's an ancient site, and there are a LOT of problems! As you'll probably discover, you can't copy/paste from Word (or from site to site)--it turns quotes, dashes and other things into gobbledygook, you can't edit or delete posts, things appear, disappear, get stuck, etc! Occasionally people can't sign in! For some of us, our "zones" have morphed into something more "artistic" than useful! (That's what happens when you copy/paste!) And my bio, which really used to be on my "bio page," disappeared, and it won't let me put anything back in---at least not without adding a whole bunch of information that I didn't need to give them when I first signed up! In spite of all those problems, GW really is the best gardening forum on the web, so we all still hang out here! One thing you might want to know, if you start a new thread and want to put a link to something, type in your text and then hit "preview," and then a box will magically appear on the bottom where you can paste a URL and name it whatever you want to. That used to be there BEFORE you hit preview! (If you want to use live links in the text, you need to use HTML code---I think it's called!) And if you're running into the green underlined in-text advertising links, you can disable them by going to the link below and clicking on "disable." That way you don't need to worry about accidentally mousing over one of them and having a BIG, obnoxious box suddenly blocking what you're trying to read! Just a couple Helpful Hints to help you find your way around our Antique site! It really IS the best gardening forum, and I've never found anything else even remotely close to RMG! Hope I haven't scared you away, Skybird P.S. One more Helpful Hint! You might want to get used to copying your text quickly before you click preview! It doesn't seem to happen very often anymore, but every now and then your post will DISAPPEAR between typing it and its actually showing up in the thread! Really bad--especially if it's a long post! If you have it copied, you can just paste it back in and try again! (On the other hand! This doesn't happen much anymore either, but every now and then a post will "duplicate itself," sometimes HOURS later! Keeps life interesting!!!) Here is a link that might be useful: Disable In-Text Advertising!

I have a bookmark folder called "Forums" that has most, but not all. I use the master list for lesser visited forums. I see they have a search function there now that wasn't there on Friday, so maybe...now, about that new window opening and having to pick a forum for ones post... tj