Ok, here is what I have: Red hot poker (just starting to sprout) giant coneflower (several containers--no sprouts--started Jan 10th) day lilly yellow esperanza gaillardia (also several containers--no signs) tickseed-coreopsis (started to sprout) butterfly bush-buddelia (or however it is spelled--sprouted a while ago, but slow growing) foxglove--sprouting columbine--no signs shasta daisy--my first sprouts chinese lanterns--starting to sprout red flower yucca--nothing lantana--nothing canna lily--have 2 sprouts balloon flower--have sprouts rose of sharon--nothing desert willow--tons of sprouts larkspur--tons of sprouts lupine--getting 2nd or 3rd leaf already datura and double white datura--getting some sprouts pomegranate--nothing clerodendron--nothing cleome--nothing starting 2/18: california poppy marigold columbine alyssum canterbury bells. Some of the lasts I know shouldn't have sprouted, I just did them about a week ago. My lupines (the first set) are my biggest and have the most leaves. I'm not generally worried about the seedlings not getting bigger as I know they are probably working on the roots as mentioned earlier (and my philosophy in gardening is: if it is green, it's not dead. Not dead is good. And, all the seedlings are green at the moment.) I have been taking the lids off them during the very warm (up to the high 60's, some 70's) day and putting the lid back on at night (where it gets to the 30 and 40's). I also have them in a container and next to the house in a little cove to hopefully shield them from the winds. For the past several years, we've had very warm February's (or is it februaries?) and then a cold march. I was just wondering if I sowed some of the stuff too early. I have my sprouted's in one spot, so it should be easy to put a blanket over them if I need to.

Okay, thank to all who have replied, but I am still so confused about this vine. I've read to cut it back, or keep it cut back to 18-24inches during the first year of growth. I don't even know how old this plant would be considered. I do know that I had one long spindly vine growing up the trellis, I had read that isn't what you want. So I decided to cut it back. But I was so scared to do anything to it. It still looks like the pic above, in this post. Except now, I've cut back that one spindly vine and I see nothing happening now. It looks just like it did the day I purchased it, weeks ago. Now it's not even climbing the trellis. I guess I'm waiting now for something to happen where I cut back, but don't even know what I'm looking for. I can't even tell what's what on this thing. Branches, twigs, hard wood, soft wood, last years wood, this years wood, leaves, buds, I couldn't for the life of me tell you where what starts and where what ends. It's a tangled mess, all down at the bottom. There are two or three main stems coming out of the dirt. I assume that's the start of each section of the vine. So I'm assuming, if I see three main stems coming from the ground, somewhere amongst all the tangled mess, there should be three endings, to each of those stems, in which I could train to climb the trellis if I could find an ending. I don't know, but maybe I should just leave it alone. It's not dead, it's green, I see one ending that might be showing new growth, but if it is, it's still only gonna be one long lanky little vine growing up the trellis all alone, because I can't tell where what starts and where what ends. I'd much rather sacrifice any additional blooming this year and have this thing put out new growth from the ground. But I don't know if I should chop this thing all the way to the ground or not. I just planted it this year, know nothing about it and have done nothing but stress since I got it. I guess if it starts growing again, and I do have that one piece start growing up the trellis, I should just leave it and enjoy it. If I knew that cutting it back all the way to the ground would help it in any way shape or form I'd do it. That way I can see it as it grows, where the starting and ending points are, if that makes any sense. Because as it is now, I can't tell what's what. Scroll up to see the pic of what it looks like and tell me what you'd do if it were yours.

Even if planted upside down, I bet that any existing shoot would find its way upward toward heat and light. My point was that the non-sprouters might either be slow starters, or not have any eyes to begin with, so you may be waiting on absolutely nothing. That's why I like to watch them before I plant them. It sounds like you got commercially produced pot roots Kat, with lots of (usually) broken 'fingers' hanging off a tight knot of smaller tubers clustered around an old cut off stem. I fell for a few packs of those at a big variety store and 2 of 3 clumps have yet to show any signs of growth. Sometimes you get all good tubers, it's just not very good quality control in those cases, in my opinion. And it's a shame the dahlia eager shopper might not know what to look for which are signs of growth: an eye or shoot already showing on the shelf in the store in either light green, pink or purple showing signs of life from the dull brown tuber. If you really wonder, I would do as Triple B said and unearth them, put them in light and barely damp soil with the crown/stem exposed and see if you do see growth in a few days. If you do, you can replant them with confidence. I have nothing against potroots, but those haggard, dried out, broken masses that are packed in bulk are often a lost cause and you're better off spending your $ on a solid dahlia vendor's tubers or potroots. For what it's worth.

Kirts, I feel like you are being wise to plan ahead. With the continuing modernization of some countries, like China and India, where the demand for oil and gas and other petroleum products is increasing exponentially every year, I see our energy costs continuing to rise. Since the average item in a grocery store in the USA travels about 1500 miles BEFORE it reaches the grocery store shelves, obviously the ever-increasing energy/transport costs will keep food costs rising. The changes we are seeing in the commercial agriculture industry and the food distribution network may force a lot of us to try to eat more locally. In the slow food movement, I think they refer to the effort to eat only locally-produced food as being a locavore. In addition, when you consider that a lot of the chemical fertilizers used by commercial farmers are linked to the petroleum industry, it is easy to believe that food costs will continue to go up because of rising fertilizer costs as well. I think people will turn to organic gardening as a means of lessening their dependence on foreign energy/fertilizers. There are many ways to store food and I use several of them. We have a tornado shelter and I use it to store root crops like potatoes and onions harvested in the summer as well as winter squash harvested in the fall. I have even stored winter squash on a shelf in the garage/barn and have had it last as long as 4-6 months in there. We have a large pantry located under our home's staircase. It is about 3 feet wide and maybe 12 deep. The height varies from 8' to about 2'. Back in that 2' area I store odds and ends we don't use often, like the pressure canner and my set of 4 huge stainless steel stockpots I use a lot during the harvest season. I freeze lots and lots of stuff. I always chop and slice onions and peppers and freeze them. I can usually raise a year's supply (or more) in the spring garden. I usually freeze tons of corn (I could can it if I didn't have storage space, but I do have storage space so I just freeze it.) Some years I get enough corn from the spring and fall gardens that we don't have to buy corn at all. The same is true of green beans and black-eyed peas. I even freeze tomatoes--they go straight from the freezer to the soup or saucepot in the winter. Okra is a little more iffy. We eat so much of it that I don't usually freeze much. I need to grow more, but the deer have been an issue with it for years, although I believe we've finally solved that problem. Thus, I should be able to grow more of it in the future. Carrots do best for me in the fall garden. If you have them in a well drained bed, you can leave them in the bed for months and harvest as needed. Another way to store them is in a clean trash can filled with sand. Pour a few inches of sand into the container, then put down a layer of carrots and repeat until all your carrots are stored. You also can keep them in a root cellar OR a refrigerator for months. Carrots can be frozen and even dehydrated. I dehydrate a lot of stuff. I then store all my bags of dehydrated veggies in the freezer, but you don't have to put them in the freezer. If you are careful to get out all the moisture, you can store dried veggies in the pantry. Even cantaloupes, muskmelon, watermelon and other lesser-known melons can be frozen. I usually cut them into squares, or use a melon baller to make them into melon balls and freeze them. You also can slice them into rather thin slices and dehydrate them. Their flavor and sweetness are so intensified by drying them that they are like candy. Anything that you grow in the garden can be dehydrated although some things take a pretty long time. I've never tried dehydrating corn, but I am sure it would work. Shelled beans dry naturally without dehydration and so do black-eyed peas. Many herbs can be tied in bundles and hung in a dry, warm, dark location to dry naturally. Canning is a lot of work and can be hazardous if done improperly, but as long as you follow all the recommended procedures and are careful, it is a great way to preserve food too. Cabbage will store a long time in a refrigerator or in a root cellar type situation. Back when people HAD to raise all the own food, a lot of them make sauerkraut to preserve the cabbage for winter, but I am not much of a sauerkraut person. There's always pickles too. You can pickle LOTS of veggies, not just cucumbers. You can pickle peppers, onions, carrots, beans, tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, watermelon rinds, etc. You also can make all kinds of relish and, there again, not just pickle relish but squash and others as well. Fruit can be frozen, dried or canned and you also can make preserves, jams and jellies. You can even make tomato preserves or marmalade. Storing food is not as hard as most people think, but it takes a lot of effort. If you want to expand your garden for next year, you could start building lasagna type beds this year. Although, as much as the heat bothers you and with your allergies, you might prefer to wait until fall to start laying out your garden beds. I like to clean out my garden beds in the fall and remove all debris. This is very important because many garden pests overwinter in plant debris. Usually I let the chickens roam around in the garden beds in December and they will dig and scratch and take care of lots of insects, insect eggs, weed seeds, etc. I also like to heap up tons and tons and tons of shredded leaves, gathered from our wooded areas, on top of the beds as soon as they are cleaned out after the first hard frost. The chopped-up leaves decompose into a lovely leaf mold or compost by spring. (If you don't chop them up, they break down a lot more slowly.) I also prefer to go ahead and add manure and compost to the beds in the winter months, so my beds are "ready to go" in the spring. Sometimes in a bad wildfire year, though, I stay too busy to get the garden beds cleaned up and replenished with compost, manure and leaves in winter. In those years, I really have a hard time planting on schedule because the beds aren't ready. I do all my planning and seed ordering in late fall to early winter. By the time the new seed catalogs arrive, I am usually about "done" although there is always something new that convinces me to order one more batch of seeds. Because my family understands and supports my gardening habit, my Christmas gifts are always handy useful things like gardening gloves (five pair last year, everything from goatskin to latex-dipped cotton to suede) and hand tools and such. One of my favorite garden gifts (I always ask Santa for this one) is a big cannister of electrical zip-ties. I use them to attach tomato cages to stakes, etc. There are several really, really useful vegetable gardening books and food preservation books that I find ESSENTIAL to my success as a veggie gardener. I have had most of them for years and years and years and still refer to them constantly. I'll make a list of them later. I'm off to the store to pick up some more food preservation supplies--processing all that corn wiped out my supply of freezer bags, and I need some pickling supplies before the cucumbers get out of control. I'll write later about corn and veggies. Dawn