Thank you for your reply. Yes, I understand what you are saying. The book I got is pretty good in breaking out all the varieties and their particular needs. I also had a thought after posting my message that shipping would probably be about as much as buying the plant to begin with, so maybe my idea was not a good one anyway. Maybe better to find somebody knowledgeable locally to help me along and eventually share cuttings with. The best way to learn, in my opinion, is experience. Without failure, you never learn much of anything. So this is one more adventure where I'm sure I will learn a lot! :) Take care, Sandy

You can save seeds, but it depends how green, usually a 70%+ mature tomato works and less doesn't. Just ripen like you are doing and then cut through the tomato you want to use for seed with a sharp knife. If the seeds get cut rather than slip out of the way, probably not good. But if the seeds are brown and have gel around them, most will be good. I did this with one tomato and got a good plant from the seed, but next time I will put about 4 in each starter plug and take the best of the group, instead of just one which I normally do. You might want to pre-germinate them in a plastic bag on a paper towel and then the instant some good looking ones show germination, transfer the seed to the plug or whatever you use. Lindalana (pre-soak) and especially Daniel (pre-germinate)both do similar methods as they have posted. I personally don't because the first time I experimented with it, I let the roots grow 2-3 days and many of them did worse upon transfer. Just a suggestion. PC

I usually read the columns online, but wouldn't subscribe to the pay site. I find about 1 in 4 of their columns interesting. Some are laughable. Today's was about a person who missed a card payment and was mad about the charges so they went to a "counselor" who told her to stop making all credit card payments for six months. Now of course she has $9,000.00 in charges and the interest rate has jumped to 32%, and minimum payments (minimum payments? what's that?) have gone from $30 to $250/month or something like that. Now she's mad at the world. I think it's funny. But for the recipe help, yes there's a lot of good free sites, but also there's the cooking forum here on GW that is very helpful. Some may know of the one you're looking for and they'll give good suggestions on alternatives and suggestions on where to look. Another thing to try is look for the recipe posted in other areas. If you remember the ingredients and use them as keywords it could help. You might find the recipe posted somewhere, perhaps it was in a column in a newspaper or something. You might even email them and ask for the recipe. Worst thing would be they might say no or not respond. You might get lucky.

Not a problem. You can use whatever works for you. For me only... Chicken wire (I use heavy versions that can stand up on their own) retains its standing shape without adding wood sticks/stakes and allows me enclose the top of the stems inside the wired area, while burlap would need several bags and would be a pain to "stand" on its own unless I put some stakes to prop it up (I am lazy and don't want to do that). But note: I have only been able to find burlap fabric from bags that used to have peanuts so that is where I am coming from. I would end up with a ton of bags if I wanted to cover all the hydrangeas, especially large mopheads. If you can find burlap in larger sizes, that would be better. Typically, you want to use some material that will enclose the leaves (sides and top), prevent them from flying away and also allow some moisture to get thru in the form of water, snow, humidity. But not so much that it causes fungal issues. So burlap and chicken wire should be fine. Burlap probably helps more with ice and salt issues. You also need to be able to add more leaves by mid-winter because some settling will occur and make the leaves go down and maybe expose the ends of the stems to the cold.