AHHH. It's been too long!! I see. Thanks, Zecowsay, that's good to know. Yeah, those leaves seem to have stopped growing, and the ones coming out the middle have been very slowly but surely growing. (By slowly, I mean VERYYYYY slowly.) Anyway, AN UPDATE! There's now a SECOND orange seedling sprouting up; it looks about the same as the first seedling did in the first picture I ever posted, although one of its sprout leaves came out very tiny and mutatedish.(I SHALL NAME IT 'NEMO'.) Is it possible for a seed to contain multiple plants? Because I know for a fact that there was only a single seed planted in this pot... And what should I do with the two? Seperate them, or leave them together? Also, on a side note, I got an OttLite desk lamp. They give full spectrum lighting, don't generate a lot of heat, and I've heard they're supposed to make pretty good plant lights.(The bulb is only 9W!) So I'll put the little guy, or rather guys, underneath that for a few hours a day(or more if you think they need it, I'm not sure how much light they need) and hopefully that'll help them really take off. They haven't been growing very much at all, and I suspect it's because there just isn't much light or warmth during this time of year.

I've been holding off on adding to this discussion and I'm still afraid I might be premature. The whole "boiling" the plants doesn't make a lot of sense to me. It seems like cutting off someone's head because they have a sore throat. Nematodes do harm the looks and the "catching" part is disturbing but for most of the year they are fine. I decided on trying the less extreme suggestion of using the soap and mouthwash. I think this was suggested by Donna? It was a few years ago anyway. I only had a hand full of plants with the nematodes so I picked the leaves off as they showed up and sprayed the plants with a pint sized spray bottle of the mixture. The next year I started earlier when the plants came up and tried to do it more often but I realized at the end of last year that I'd used only 2 to 3 of the small spray bottles over the summer to repeat treat the dozen or so plants that showed the nematodes. While none of them got worse and some slightly better, it dawned on me that this was likely not enough. This year I started out early in the spring, as soon as the eyes were up a few inches. I mixed the stuff in a 4 litter (half gallon?? I hate metric) plastic milk jug - 2 at a time. I DRENCHED the soil all around the emerging plants. I was good about doing the treatment every 2 or 3 weeks for quite a while. I think I did it at the beginning of July and should have done another treatment part way through the month but ran out of the soap. I got some soap the other day and treated them again yesterday. I've been checking daily for any sign of nematodes. What I found was nematodes on a wild Solomon's Seal that is showing right now. There is also evidence on a couple other hostas that I did not treat this year because I either forgot they had it or didn't notice it last year. I have an Albo Marg. directly below the infected Solomon's Seal. It is one I've treated and it is showing no signs so far. I doubt I even looked at the Solomon's Seal and realized that was probably where it came from originally since the Hosta had been in place for years. So far, and it is a bit early, none of last years infected plants are showing ANY signs. The fact that it is showing up in other, untreated plants makes me hope that I'm making progress. I had a hard time finding a picture of an infected plant from last year to see the date it was visible but the Grand Tiara definitely showed it on Aug 8. As of today the rest are all still clear. I guess I'll know in the next few weeks. Solomon's Seal he next two Albo Marg. are not the one I was talking about above. They are two different, untreated this year, plants.

Here's my list. I'm taking into account plant health, size, and fruit set / flower drop: Cuore Di Toro: A+ Rutgers: A+ Opalka: A+ Red Brandywine: A Eva Purple Ball: B+ Aunt Ruby's German Green: B Golden Queen: B+ Neves Azorean Red: B- Brandywine Sudduths: C+ Marianna's Peace: B- Cherokee Chocolate: B+ Super Sweet 100: B Reif Red Heart: A- It's been very odd weather again this year, the opposite of our normal "spring" (we haven't had a real spring in about 3 years) it's been hot and dry mostly. A lot of plants that did great last year are lagging behind this year, a few regulars are doing great as always, Cuore Di Toro (Bull's Heart) and Rutgers for example already have near full size fruit on them and they are pumping out the blooms as we speak. Neves Azorean Red was an all-star last year, and growing well this year, but it has very few flowers set and developing. Brandywine Sudduths is another which is slow to start up this year, but I feel that that has to do with the hotter temps - it seems to flourish in cooler wetter weather that we normally get in early spring. As to the debate of whether getting plants in the ground earlier gets you earlier fruit... So far, for me, all the plants that were in the ground mid-April (2-3 weeks before most plant out in my area) have small green tomatoes and are about double the size of the plants that were started and went into the ground two weeks later. That is likely just a stroke of luck due to earlier hotter weather, but worth noting regardless.

Emmhip, don't get too jealous too quick.lol This is not the kind of closet space that could be used for clothes or anything like that. It is all in a structure that is seperate from the house. Plus with this being a farm I guarentee mice visit those closets... a lot of mice. The bulky stuff being out of my way is bringing back my energy and drive to work on that place. As for the closet, ummm...that is more like curisoty mixed with fear. You can bet I will have a clear path to the door and be armed with a shovel when I open that.lol I must admit I didn't reach my goal today. I spent most of my day stalking my mailman for a package.lol It turned out that he didn't bring it with him so then I had to have the post office search for it. After all of that I had to run to the PO to retrieve my package. I did however work on the burn pile while watching for the postman. As luck would have it the minute I was getting it to start burning the sleet and rain started. Needless to say most of the junk is still sitting there unburned. Okay, tomorrow is another day. I will dig out at least one bag of junk out of the SK, no excuses. Foxy.