I'm so itching and twitching to respond to this post on you RR thread Diana, but, I'm being a good girl since I haven't traded with the person "Doing my best to do things right. Sorry that I have mailed some seeds not in a bubble envelope due to not having one available and wanting to get seed out at once so I would not get behind. Most seeds sent were flat so thought it would have been ok and when printed on envelope to "Hand stamp" what more can you do? Have learned my lesson, and with some people, learned that you just can't please them no matter what you do. Like I said, lesson learned." BUT. this is just bull crap. Flat seeds should be fine, my arse and marked hand stamp? Who is this character kidding. I got one of those envies several years ago, flat seeds, marked hand stamp. Whoopy. the seeds where flat to start with, that is true, money plant seeds are flat, but those crushers in the PO, don't care that the seeds are flat, fat, round or anything else. When they are done with the envie, there is pulverized dust left, even with the flat money seeds. Every seen what those crushers can do to marigold seeds? Yup, dust with them too. What more can you do? How about a bubble envelope and do things right. forget about getting them out fast. Just a stupid, stupid answer and nasty to boot. No thanks, that one isn't gonna be on my trade or BEAP list. Seeds go out in bubblies only, trade or BEAP and they come in with a Bubblie or bad review is posted. I'm with you Diana, and standing my ground as well. Fran

Hi Kim: A couple of years ago, I asked the same question: "How do you store all your seeds? I'd like to have a system that will allow me to find what I want fast." A friend from the Wintersowing Forum described her system. I liked it, and tweaked it to meet my needs. VEGETABLE SEED Sort and store seed packets by season / soil temperature when seeds are sown (cool germinators and warm germinators) and by food type (e.g. leafy greens, root crops). I use ziplocs. "Warm TPO" holds tomato, pepper, okra, and eggplant seeds. "Warm - SBC" has seeds for squash, beans, corn, cukes, gourds, melons. "Cool - Root Crops" holds seeds for beets, radishes, turnips, carrots, onions. "Cool - Greens" has seeds for kale, collards, lettuce, peas, and other greens. These four categories correspond to the main waves of seed sowing. I store the seeds in each category in gallon ziploc bags and label each bag (Cool - Leafy Greens - kale, collards, mustard, cabbage, broccoli). For some vegetables (e.g., beans, tomatoes) and flowers (e.g., zinnias, poppies, cosmos, sunflowers), I have a ton of seed. When I have many packets (like tomatoes), I put these seeds in a separate sandwich bag, label it (stick on label or 3 x 5 card), and put it inside the large gallon ziploc. This system makes it easy to find what you need. As my seed addiction grew, the system grew with me. I started with quart ziplocs for the four categories. Now I use gallon ziplocs for the categories, and individual sandwich sized or quart ziplocs for some vegetable seeds within in a category - tomatoes, peppers, beans, peas, etc. HERBS I grow a few herbs, less than vegetables or flowers so I store all herb seeds (warm and cool germinators) in a one quart ziploc bag. FLOWER SEED If you have flower seeds, the system is similar. You store seeds by sowing time /soil temperature (warm or cool) and type (perennials, annuals). The four categories correspond to the sowing seasons. Hardy perennials (HP) are sown in cold months, may need cold stratification. Hardy annuals (HA) are sown in Feb-March (in warmer areas, we can sow hardy annuals in the fall). Tender perennials (TP) are sown after your last frost (for me, that's March, you may have a later date). Tender annuals (TA) are sown after your last frost. Inside the main category bags, you can sort things further (Tomatoes > Container" or "Tomatoes > Main season" or "Hardy Annuals > Bee food"). I doubt you will have so much seed that you need to sort in that much detail soon - it usually takes years to amass so much seed. I used to grow a lot of perennials from seed- one year, I planted seed for 2,000-3,000 perennials. That was one of my big mistakes - it's easy to plant seeds, but it's not so easy to transplant hundreds or thousands of seedlings. Last year, I was expanding the vegetable gardens. That took all my time and energy so I didn't sow any perennial seed. This year, I continue to expand the vegetable gardens but I want to grow some perennials. I may plant the young perennial seedlings in vegetable garden beds. Hope these notes help you! Pam

Hi Bill! You and I must have read the same article. I never had trouble with peppers in my zone 8 garden in Fort Worth and I always planted them just about the same time I planted tomatoes there. Of course, with it being zone 8, the nights were warmer when I planted tomatoes than they are here, even though the daytime temps were about the same there as here. The first couple of years here, I had a lot of trouble with pepper production. I started planting the peppers later and later (in comparison with the tomatoes) and got better production. Then I read an article similar to the one you read, and planted even later (after that light bulb went off in my head and I said "Aha!"), and got even better production. Who knew that a temperature change of just a few degrees made such a difference? So, even though I start some of my peppers at the same time I plant my tomatoes, the peppers stay inside on the light shelf for at least a month longer than the tomatoes. The tomatoes, for example, have been hardened off and are outside all the time now. (Today they are all on the screened-in back porch to keep them out of the rain which is coming down in torrents.) The first round of peppers have only been outside a couple of times to soak up a little sun on the warmest days, and I started them the last week in January. Since I transplant my peppers later nowadays, I like to have them as big as possible when I set them out so they have a chance of blooming and setting fruit in May before it gets too hot. Even if I don't get a lot of summer-ripening peppers (some years I do, some years I don't), I do get tons of fall peppers. I don't know why the effect of cool soil and air temperatures on peppers isn't more widely known and publicized. Last year, with all that rain, I couldn't even get my peppers into the wet, soggy, water-logged ground, so kept a lot of them in 3 to 4 gallon containers and got surprisingly good, though late, production. Dawn

We overseed with rye for several reasons, but primarily for winter fire protection. We live in a rural area where winter wildfires are fairly common, or at least they have been ever since 2005. Prior to that, we never had them. Our DS is a professional firefighter and also a volunteer firefighter and my DH is the chief of our local VFD, and also is a certified professional firefighter in Texas for the last 32 years. (I have to point out he primarily works as a law enforcement officer but at the time he was hired, they all went through the fire academy and the police academy so that they were cross-trained and had the flexibility to do both jobs.) Because we understand the rate at which wildfire can move and because we often are away from home at wildfires elsewhere in the county and are not at home to protect our own home from wildfire, it is important to us to maintain a green envelope around the house and detached barn-style garage. It isn't that green grass won't burn, because it can and it will....but just that it will not ignite as easily as dormant bermuda grass. Our hope is that when a fast-moving grass fire comes this way, the green rye grass will slow it down and keep it from reaching the structures before a fire truck arrives. Most years, the worst and most fast-moving fires have not been in our specific portion of the county very often, but one year we had 4 separate wildfires within about a quarter-mile of our place in a two-week period and I was pretty much a nervous wreck after that....especially when friends call me on my cell phone when I am gone to a fire somewhere and say "Are you at home? It looks like your place is on fire?" At least having the green grass on the acre around the house and other structures gives us a little peace of mind. Secondly, I hate, hate, hate bermuda grass. I'd rather have bare ground. It is horrifically invasive and will creep and crawl into every garden bed of any type. We did not plant the bermuda grass here. Whoever owned the farmland we purchased likely planted it as pasture grass. When we bought the land, it looked like your typical mix of tall and short prairie grasses mixed with forbs and a bit of invasive brush. Then, after we mowed the grass down short right before the builder started building the house, we saw the bermuda popping up all over in the absence of taller grasses to shade it out. One of our old-rancher/farmer neighbors noticed it one day and said "Oh, great! You have bermuda. You won't even have to plant any." I said something like "yeah, great" but I was thinking something else entirely opposite of that. Part of the deliberate overseeding every fall is to weaken the bermuda so that it will be slower to grow and slower to move into the flower beds, shrub beds, etc. My main weapon in the battle to defeat the bermuda grass is to shade it out. We've been here 14 years, and the trees and shrubs (we have planted many, many, many of them) are shading out the bermuda grass now in some parts of the yard. When they do that, I plant ground covers in the bare spots. I won't be happy until it is all gone though. So my goal is the opposite of yours. I hate it and want to get rid of it, and you want to grow it. We have red clay...the kind of clay that breaks shovels when you try to dig in it. That sort of red clay in combination with bermuda grass is a horrible combination. When the soil is dry, which is most of the time in this state, you cannot dig out or pull out the bermuda grass. Did I mention I hate it? If your soil is red clay, you need a real tiller. A big rear-tine tiller. A really strong, sturdy, rear-tine tiller. We have a Troy-Bilt. Those little cultivators/tillers (we have a Mantis and a Troy-Bilt in that size and the Mantis is far superior in performance) are great for well-enriched and well-amended soil that is not strongly compacted or for native sandy-silty soil that is not overly compacted. We've been breaking ground out back for an additional vegetable garden plot, and I used The Mantis for most of it. It has worked just fine on most of that area. When I hit the red clay at the north end of that future garden plot, Tim rototilled it with the Troy-Bilt rear-tine tiller. Now, in the future, since it has been initially broken and will be well-amended, I will be able to use the Mantis to work organic matter into the soil, but when I tried to rototill the dense red and very compacted clay with it last week, both the Mantis and I were bouncing all over the ground and barely making a dent in it. We normally only use the big tiller the first time we break ground. The cultivator is great for mixing in amendments, but I'm even trying to stop doing that regularly because any sort of tilling (or digging) is not necessarily good for the soil tilth. You don't have to buy a rototiller and, in fact, I wouldn't buy one if I just wanted to use it for one project. I'd rent one for the day. Or, if you check the garden section or the handyman section of your local paper, you may find ads for people who own rototillers and who will come rototill up a spot for someone. Around here, they usually charge a little less than it would cost to rent a big rototiller for the day. If the soil that was dumped into the place where the pool used to be is fairly loose and not heavily compacted, then the smaller cultivator might handle it just fine. I love my Mantis cultivator but it is not up to the task of easily rototilling very dense and very compacted clay. It's great for everything else. Dawn