Losta ways to grow starter plants. I have a variety of things going including tomatoes, peppers, herbs, artichokes and hummingbird flowers. I started mine in mid Feb. For pots I use 12 oz. stryofoam cups filled w/ metro mix 360. All the pots(70+) are in a shallow clear "sweater" tote box (with a clear lid to start). The tote boxes are portable & make bottom watering easy. They are under flourescent t8 lights 24/7 with a fan on 12 hr/day. Everything looks great and the tomatoes have thick stems. I like to have good sized plants to put in the ground asap. I plant my peppers deep and tomatoes extra deep. Also, I like to put a few "experimental" plants out early with a Wall o' Water. Last year they made it through some late snow...I just got a variety of black tomato seeds from a GW member a few weeks ago, so those are putting out their first set of true leaves now. Next year I will get an earlier start on them... My advice: I would start them now. As mentioned by others, you won't need light or more water for the first week. Just keep them covered. Temperature is the key.

The title says it best - both circumstances are bad. So given the "lesser of two evils", to me it has to be too dry. There are so many bad things related to gardening in too wet conditions based on when this occurs: How do you prep? How do you seed? How do you do maintenance? How do you harvest? Everything is a hassle, everything is a mess. Not to mention diseases, rampant weed germination, soil compaction, root rot, rotting root vegetables, poor harvests, poor keeping qualities of produce, etc. A too wet situation has no positives whatsoever that I can see, related to home gardening. Gardening in too dry: I take "too dry" to be different from "drought". If the situation is severe, long term drought than what is the point in even worrying about a garden - it will be toast no matter what you do. The problem is that too dry usually goes hand in hand with too hot - the double whammy that stresses and kills. And pests and diseases can easily damage and kill stress-weakened plants as well. But there are positives such as fewer weeds germinating, root veggies come out clean, plus some veggies thrive in the heat (my peppers LOVE it). Mulching, target watering, and strategic use of removable shade can still get a person a very good harvest under too dry conditions. My question is: When will cisterns come back into wide use? Around here every old house had a cistern in the basement to collect rainwater for household use. None are used anymore, and new houses obviously are not built with them. I collect rainwater in cisterns for gardening use because it is better water for plants than well water, I am not stressing the well supply, and I can use it to get over the dry spell "humps". I have around a 6-8 week supply. If I use up all my rainwater then I consider my situation to be in a drought and all bets are off - I may start using well water or I may just decide to pack it in for the season. Usually I will cut back and just focus on the critical stuff being grown mainly for seed stock. My nightmare is: Having to someday rely on home gardening as a primary food source and having either of these two evils occur. Food for thought, so to speak. Have a good day.

Usually skip this subject since I've no experience with sprays besides some traditionals like sulfur & copper used many moons ago on fruit trees. Given my ignorance & the range of opinions, hesitant to even stick a toe in these waters, but (here we go) feel the need to share some thoughts. We all acknowledge we can't grow some roses as perennials in the open garden due to intrinsic climate & site unsuitability, available space & individual practical considerations at any given time. We intentionally eliminate some roses from consideration for not meeting our bloom & growth preferences. Of those we do select, some will self-eliminate despite our care or be rejected down the road for not living up to expectations or no longer appealing as our tastes change. The most critical of my criteria for choosing any rose is its reputation for health & vitality in conditions similar to my own. Gardening more than 50 years in typically humid & fungal prone locations zoomed this to the top of the list long ago. Heavy physical reactions to all the "-cides" except elemental since childhood prohibits their use, as does my philosophical worldview. So I garden the old-fashioned way, pre sophisticated chemical compounds, by necessity. From my point of view, the health potential of any plant is expressed by positive response to its environment - nature vs. nurture - and the availability of the elements & conditions it needs to thrive tilt the odds to favor this expression. We all know moving a shaded rose into more sunlight often "cures" its blackspot outbreak, athough fungal exposure hasn't changed, and that roses sometimes outgrow these outbreaks with maturity. Believe boosting the plant's immune system by helping nature provide those essentials allows it to function optimally on its own, so concentrate my efforts on these aspects. (Same principles as human health. Incidentally, fortify my immune function with the internal products of plants' immune systems - essential oils - borrowing from the plants as it were, the core of traditional botanical medicine.) When we first came to this garden 16 years ago, it had been installed & maintained by a college groundskeeper for 7 years on heavy-duty chemical prevention principles. Extensive shrubbery had been maintained with yearly chunky woodchips atop that of prior applications - 6" worth suffocating the soil without deteriorating though covered in sour-smelling fungus. Couldn't find a worm wherever I dug outside the woods & not a bug, good or bad, in evidence besides mosquitos, flies & chiggers. The few roses were dwindling away under this treatment, bare shadows of their potential. Reversed that trend with organic husbandry & the worms returned. Fed the beneficial microorganisms that fed the worms that till & aerate the soil & the soil web reestablished itself to create an environment in which suitable plants can thrive. For years now, the gardens have welcomed a wide variety of inhabitants that appear to have found an interwoven balance with which I'd be loath to meddle. Beneficials & birds keep the ruffians in check most seasons with an assist from the hose. One year the garden club girls (one fellow joined as I was leaving) spent an entire initial meeting exclaiming about decimation the Japanese beetles wrought over the Summer. Apparently no one believed my surprise & report that only a few spotted here that season not far from their gardens, or they might have wondered what could be different here... Many roses brought in over the years, some with blackspot or mildew from travel stress, so likely a mix of farflung varieties present. Most got over it, as have those which arrived this humid rainy season, including a spotted Buff Beauty bought locally. Fungals show up here & there in small bouts with minor fleeting consequence (knock on wood). Still not brave enough to intentionally choose roses not known for their good health, some of those with mixed reviews doing well. Those among the dear departed were dispatched by deer, storms, cold, neglect & seeming suicide. Shovel pruned 2 for RRD. In my book, really not a bad record for all the years & varieties attempted. Saved a lot of bucks & effort counted up over time, alternately spent on new plants & garden stuff. But then, an admittedly lazy gardener relying on simple methods to support health, the weather gods (as do we all) & beneficial energies... Longwinded way of saying it can be done - growing roses naturally in the humid fungus-ridden Southeast - by way of encouragement to those considering a change of method & solidarity with those already doing it, too. This post was edited by vasue on Sun, Jun 22, 14 at 21:37

Assuming you will not get in trouble I would take the tree to the office from september 21 to march 21 and keep the plant at home with a CFL during the spring and summer. In sumer the sun rizes and set north of the east and west and must rize very high towards noon before the sun crosses to the south. Even then the angle is so sharp the sun will not make it through the low-E argon vapor barior glass and your tree will suffer. In the winter months however your tree will get sun the entire day at the office as the sun is low and will make it through the glass. I sprayed my tree 3 to 4 times a day all winter and I felt great so go ahead and spray. While the tree is ver important, you still come first Steve