Outsmarting the tree rats (squirrels) around my house is a full time job. This past spring I hit on a new idea. When I plant a container I invert an empty wire hanging basket over the container and the plant gets sun and can be watered but the squirrels can't dig in it. Another idea: I bring in a lot of plants to "over winter" under lights in my garage. I have so many that it is hard to reach my hand under the lights (4 shop lights) to the middle for watering. So I bought a pump sprayer with a long wand and it works great! In late winter I add a little liquid Dawn detergent, few drops, to each gallon of water and not only does the soil get wet easier but the worms that are waiting to hatch into distructive pets just don't hatch. Don't know what it costs me to run those four shop lights all winter but I don't care. It is a small price to pay to be able to "garden" every weekend in the garage. Many people have mentioned that they mark their outdoor plants with a "permanent Sharpie". In my experience there isn't a "permanent Sharpie", they all fade and quickly too. A grease pencil/china marker or expensive "no fade" garden center marker are the only markers I have found that won't disappoint you by fading. Eight years ago I decided to learn about gardening so I tapped into my local library. I checked out nearly every book they had on gardening and learned so much. The Gardenweb forums are also a wealth of information and entertainment. There is always something new to learn and I appreciate all of you who take the time to write in your ideas. One last idea from me...I keep a small notebook on my computer table and jot down any idea I find that's new and I will want to try. Little pieces of paper get lost but I always know where my notebook is and also use it when I order "on line" so I will remember the name of the company and the order date. Tina or Trowelgal

Megan, To list something as "Has," one should have enough for at least four full samples. A full sample of seeds is 25 seeds. A full sample of sweet potato slips is 3-4 slips. I more often try to send a small sweet potato, and let the person sprout their own, and get more that way. I do get more than 4 requests for some things. Been receiving several requests a day, for a couple weeks now, and joked with my wife, yesterday, "Wow! Here's a request which doesn't ask for Red Wine Velvet Sweet Potato!" (Slight exageration) I believe four samples is the guideline for offering as "Has." Less should be offered as Limited Quantity. If you have something really rare, and in need of propagation you label it as "Must Reoffer." That cuts way down on the requests. I respect all the opinions expressed above. Each is making some good points. Dawn, I am completely uninformed about whatever Amy Goldman may or may not have done. Nor do I know why George DeVault left. Actually, I don't read the other yearbooks very much; just the winter yearbook. There are some good articles in them all. I just get busy and don't get around to it." Perhaps they have mentioned something in one of these. While we're on the subject, I'd also like to add another disclaimer. The SSE has been a little, ... well, I don't know just how to describe it,... liberal, or "left leaning," as an organization; and that, for as long as I've been a member. That is not my personal leaning/persuasion. I just live and let live. But as a member, I hope no one every things I simply believe everything the organization puts out ;) George

My husband was in michigan this week and that was one of the flights he thought about taking on thursday night. He flies a lot and it just hit close to home. Clarence is not far from where we live. We are a little more out in the country. Big sigh of relief. When the news came on at 10pm they announced at the end of the broadcast that a plane had crashed by the airport, but they didn't know anything yet. By the time the 11pm news came on, it was not until after the weather that their news crews made it to the neighborhood and they announced it was a commercial plane. WIVB broadcast without commercial break until I went to bed at 2am. When my husband called to say he was alright i was so grateful. (wipes tears and sniffles) Fran, Could i have the blanket flower, please? BTW, DS#3 watered my keyboard once, its still a little iffy. We set it in from of the blower on the woodstove for a week. Just FYI those of you sowing in the keys LOL! Thank all of you for the prayers. Families here are esp. close knit and things like this are difficult for anyone. Praying for your FIL, too Nichol. Fleethart

Gary, I also thought that you were referring to the method used to save seed rather than the way seeds are stored. Craig called me this AM as he often does, he's now retired as you know and is having a heck of a good time doing all those germinations on older seeds and we talked about it at length b'c he's also raising my plants for me to ship up here and a few of the seeds I sent him that were sent to me are older seeds. As to processing seed, we both will only use fermentation. As for storing seed most of mine are are plastic screw cap vials in 100 place boxes b'c they are actually scintillation vials that I "liberated" from the place where I last worked b'c they moved to a different system. When I ran out of vials I started storing my saved seed just in regular business envelopes stored at ambient room temp. Craig does use mostly glass vials, just different stroke for different folks. I think how one stores seeds depends on how many they need or want to store and where they live as to humidity, temps, etc. Craig was relating this AM how he woke up seeds of Cherokee Purple from 1992 which was the first year he listed it in the SSE Yearbook, OK that's 19 years and I countered that I was still ahead of him in that I woke up 22 yo seeds of Septmeber Dawn. LOL The documented record is waking up seeds 50 yo that were stored at the Cheyenne Station, a precursor of the USDA stations and those seeds were just stored in a file cabinet in envelopes and germinated tested after they were moved to the new USDA station at Ames, IA. There are quite a few of us who have also found that seeds of heart varieties lose viability quicker than others. We also talked this AM about how each of us try to encourage increased viability of older seeds, or try to wake up seeds that have shown no viability, at first, when tried. Back in the mid-90's we got a lot of seeds out of the USDA when it was still possible to do that and the germination on most of them was weak to nil so we had a lot of seeds to work with and tried many methods we knew about to wake them up. I won't go into that here, but suffice it to say that when Craig is trying to wake up old seeds , and he does it in those cells as you've read elsewhere, he puts saran wrap over the cells with recalcitrant seeds. I do something a little different and that's to soak those seeds in water for about 24 hours with a pinch or two of blue stuff, MG or Peters or whatever, or a few drops of liquid fish or seaweed prep. The reason for that is to up the nitrate concentration whch has been shown to participate in seed germnination. Befoe that I was using 0.2% K nitrate, but really, the problem with older seeds is one of dehydration. So, whether you meant to ask about seed storage, which I've spoken to or the method used to save seeds, I've spoken to that as well, and actually for both Craig and myself and yes, we've been the best of friends now for over 20 years. Carolyn, who notes that she recently sent a rare rin/nor mutant variety ( means they never get ripe) to a hybridizer, those seeds were from 1993 and he got them up quite easily. I really don't think it makes a huge difference whether seeds are stored in glass, plastic, paper envelopes or whatever, when it comes to seed viability, as I hoped to illustrate above.