Getting into the matter of what fertilizer to use ....how, when, why, where and what; you probably could write a book on the many factors involved. The basic understanding of fertilizer is knowing that there are certain needs that plants....all the plants in the world....are necessary to bring them to their ultimate growth. I'm sure you do understand the 3 main elements...N. P...K.. nitrogen...the first number, promotes leaf growth, greening up, plant efficiency, aids in decomposition of organic matter, counters specific reasons why plants don't grow as they should Phosphurus...the second number stimulates early root formation and growth, gives rapid and vigorous start to plants, hastens maturity.....et al Potassium...(sometimes known by the term "potash") produces strong stalks, increases vigor and disease resistance assists in the production of starches, sugars and oils. plus many other necessary uses I suggest you read up on the subject by just putting into your browser window...."fertilizer".....follow the yellow brick road. Aside from what each of the elements do for a plant, there must be an understanding of why and to what degree is best in certain circumstances. This cant possibly be given to you in a few short sentences. About glads....the best advice I can suggest is to think many. Plant glads in volume and together. Whatever you do, don't line them up like soldiers....standing at attention. You may decide to put groups of the same color together....or mix up colors. You may wish to plant them deeper than others. Putting a glad 8" down instead of 6", will only delay the plant's showing by a few days. The 8" will give certain stoutness but chances are you will still have to give them support. Depending on variety, you can usually count on a glad coming to bloom in about 75 to 100 days from time of planting. To that, you can also plant glads a week or two apart so that continuous bloom through the summer is there. In zone 5, you can generally get away with planting glads until the end of June....give or take a week and add time for more milder areas.

Hi Kenny I have an own root Osiria that's about 5 years old. The blooms are really quite unusual, much fuller than Snowfire with curling petals. Considering that it was planted too near a tree it has been stalwart. I would call it a rare one worth finding if you can.

We grew "Lundy Lane" and I found it to be a very lovely mostly-yellow Pernetiana. Its' foliage is a very light-medium green, and very attractive. One caveat: of all the Pernetiana roses I've grown it suffered the most badly from blackspot. I have an organic rose garden and never sprayed it with anything other than Cornell. It continued to bloom c. 3 weeks later in Autumn than my other Pernetiana roses, which also endeared it to me. For comparison, these are healthier Pernetiana roses for our area, near Oakland, California. I never needed to spray theses with anything: "Duquesa de Penaranda" the healthiest of all Pernetiana roses in our area. The climbing form is fantastic!!! "Soliel d'Or" "President Herbert Hoover" the most fragrant of the Pernetiana roses to my nose. "Gruss an Coberg" "Mari Dot" a fabulous Dot rose but very small on her own roots, I'd love it on rootstock. Luxrosa

I agree right now if you can keep your old pc working for you and wait till windows 7 comes out you will be avoiding having to purchase any upgrades. It will be out in about a year. If you have any friends that have pc knowledge likely they could easily help you install a new hard drive and some RAM, these are things I do myself but my first time I was pretty anxious. I also agree that the desktop is generally the best option unless you travel a lot and would need a laptop for that. My sister just asked me the same question and I talked her into a desktop pretty quickly, if you have not used a laptop try asking a friend with one to let you try it out for an hour or so, feel how the keyboard feels, see how you like the touch pad instead of a mouse, etc. If you have any problems seeing also consider the smaller screen of a laptop. I have pretty severe hand problems so using a smaller keyboard would be very difficult. Sitting in a chair with the laptop on your lap would require some type of laptop desk so you do not block the air flow. As stated updating and replacing parts in a laptop is much more difficult. One thing you could definitely do also rather than install a new hard drive in your pc is buy a stand alone usb backup hard drive and move all your thousands of pictures and music and other files and data to that hard drive and free up your hard drive in the pc, if you did that and got rid of any old programs you no longer need, clean out any junk files and folders, empty the recycle bin, defrag the hard drive you may find you have plenty of room on that 80Gig hard drive. I have been seeing some incredible prices lately on usb hard drives so you could easily find a nice size one for around $50, and you could use that stand alone hard drive with any new computer you buy in the future. Plus no one would have to install it for you, you just plug it into your usb port and then you can access it from your pc just like your other hard drive. Add some RAM to what ever belarc says is your limit for that pc or at least 2 gig and I bet you would be surprised. RAM is cheap. I just bought a 1gig stick for one of my computers and it was less than $20 shipped. If your current pc is a desktop I would also highly suggest turning it off unplug it and open the side panel up and clean out all the dust bunnies, that can really affect the performance of a pc. Cleaning the computer and its components ecost has some very good prices right now this search is for under $50 units but it gives you some ideas. well now you have lots of options and ways to go and up to you to make that big decision. Here is a link that might be useful: usb hard drives