Dody, The quick answer is "no". When the problem is too much summer heat too fast, the solution is to start your own plants, grow early and mid-season types, get them to a nice decent size before your transplanting date, and transplant as early as weather conditions allow, which could involve the use of frost blankets, Kozy Koats or Wall O Waters, or low tunnels to provide protection from cold weather. In lieu of those things, you could move to Alaska where, presumably, it never gets too hot too early. You also can prolong their fruitful period to a certain extent by shielding them from the hottest part of the day with shade cloth once the real hot weather arrives or by planting them where they get sunshine for only 6 to 8 hours a day instead of 10 or 12 or 14 hours. Research shows that there are some advantages to grafted plants, particularly among commercial growers. Commercial growers who grow thousands of plants have continual problems with soilborne diseases and, depending on their soil, also with nematodes. Grafting commercial plants onto nematode-tolerant and disease-tolerant rootstocks give the commercial growers a huge advantage. However, even rootstocks that are tolerant of diseases and nematodes eventually succumb to them. If the grafted plants give them even a few days to a few week more of production from their plants, though, then it can mean the difference between making a profit or enduring a financial loss. How much will a home gardener gain from using grafted plants? I think the results will be highly variable. If you garden in soil that is heavily infested with nematodes, grafting likely would be worthwhile. If you garden in soil that has perpetual issues with soil-borne diseases, it likely will improve your plants' life span and harvest. If you are dealing with heat-related issues that can shut down production almost before it begins, grafted rootstocks won't help. If you are dealing with common foliar diseases like bacterial speck, bacterial spot or early blight, then grafted plants probably have no advantage over ungrafted ones. I can see where folks in very humid areas of the southeastern and Atlantic coastal states that have huge disease issues might benefit from grafting because a lot of them have had to switch to container growing only to get a good crop. If I had a greenhouse, I'd try grafting. Without a greenhouse and a propagation chamber to increase the odds of grafting success, I don't think grafting will work out well for the average home gardener. That's why I'm waiting to see how it works out for Jay. He is in the process of building a greenhouse, so one of these days he'll have a growhouse to play around in and will, therefore, have a place to do the grafting. When I finally get to build a greenhouse, and I hope that time will be soomer rather than later, I'll probably try grafting, but it certainly won't be this year. Dawn

Zone 6A here and am dealing with pith necrosis myself. It's weather and over feeding related. Cool nights with high humidity and high nitrogen levels in the soil. How often have you been feeding your plants? I never knew this disease existed before this. I didn't know you could over feed in ground plants. Suffice it to say I know now. The bacteria that causes this is naturally in the soil. Plenty of sunny days can overturn this issue. My plants have been dealing with it now for over a month. I'm still getting fruit. Obviously I won't get as much fruit but I am getting some. BTW I stopped their feeding. FYI I do remove the diseased branches and I have tried to water them every day to try and remove as much of the nitrogen as possible. This is a learning experience which I hopefully won't have to deal with next year. Hope you have positive results!

Earl B is the originator of that website, and I know Earl. He's been aggressively collecting seed for many varieties for quite a few years now and his intent was to sell seeds for what he grows. As you can see from his site he's not quite in business yet but has listed his inventory. I'm sure he'll start selling seed for less than 900 varieties at first, and whether he gets up to selling seed for 900 all at the same time, well, I doubt that just b'c of the mechanics. There are many folks I know who have seed collections of many more than 900 varieties, actually there are several SSE members who list close to that in the SSE YEarbooks, for SSE members only. I'm one of those tomato obseesed folks who has grown over 2500 different varieties and I haven't thrown out one saved seed since 1990. But then I'm not in the seed business, just obsessed with tomatoes. LOL I list a few varieties in the SSE YEarbooks and many years ago made huge seed offers here at GW, but switched from doing them here to another site where I just got through with the 2011 offer, now closed, and packed up about 400 seed packs and don't want to see another #1 coin envelope for a very long time. LOL Carolyn Carolyn

Ok everyone....I have one packet of Spinach Tyee Hybrid to give away as a bonus. Please let me know asap if you'd like this seed. Folks, at this point..please consider requests for bonus seeds locked in as I have already stuffed the envelopes with the miscellaneous veggie bonus seeds that have were gifted and posted updates in all the forums. Also, I have been gradually stuffing envelopes with items from wish lists, so please consider your wish lists locked down at this point as well. Thanks