Oh no...I will be passing one of these shops on my way upstate tomorrow. Had planned to stop anyway (love their candles, papergoods, etc)and I will have to be very careful not to over do it on the seeds! They also sometimes have good deals on begonia tubers. I bought a wisteria vine last year that was small but grew nicely this past summer. Cheap prices.

I should note, we used on clay, if you have sand they might be a bust

I seem to be learning something new every day. Bakersfield is indeed hot and sunny most of the time. We're basically a desert here. I've recently noted that the concrete of the patio absorbs heat, heats the plants and is in effect responsible for withering some of my saplings and preventing germination of some seeds. That happens even with the window screen coverings blocking some of the sunlight. It's like you need to mist constantly to lower the temperatures, but I can't do that right now. I moved all the seed starter cups into shade and to my delight, some of them started sprouting within a day after the move. Just getting them into the lower temps of shade turned them on! You've got to be observant when you start planting seeds and especially with variety. Read up what others on the web have written about propogation of particular seeds on the web. It helps. If I showed you another picture today, everything except for established seedlings has been moved into shade along the fences, building and between those climbing rose bushes and remarkably, with better results. My Canna x Generalis seeds responded almost immediately after being moved to shade and before that, I just could not get them to germinate, even though other people seem to be saying that they are easy to germinate. I've read some stuff about certain seeds, for example, Cyclamen seeds, where the author of the article describes placing the seed starting medium in dark containers under stair steps in deep shadows to get them to germinate before bringing them out into the sun. And Cyclamen are not mushrooms! Go figure?

Thank you very much for all your interesting comments. I appreciate them all. ThatâÂÂs why I post here and share ideas. There is so much to learn from othersâ views. Mind you, there are two topics to be discussed; one has nothing to do with the other. First topic, I have to agree that blowing on food is icky. As a matter of fact, there are even laws against blowing on food (Sneeze guards are required for food establishments, for instance). Perhaps I should have been a little more clear, in this method, you are not really blowing on the food like you are blowing on a trumpet. The real mechanic is to pressurize a column of air inside the tube and let the air pressure dislodges the meat ball from the adhesion to the metal casing. The tube isolates the mouth from the food. Very little pressure is used and there is no actual blowing. However, if you feel even that little air movement is not acceptable, the alternative solutions are plenty. You can get a very long large diameter vinyl tubing from Home Depot, it is not expensive. Or you can use a bicycle pump. Or you can use an empty soda bottle, Or you can cut a hole in an old tennis ball and use that to squeeze air ------. But why spherical meatballs (second topic)? Why not? Why climb the Mount Everest? You know for making cocktails, there are many people enjoy having spherical ice âÂÂcubesâ in their drinks, not only that, they want the spherical ice to be crystal clear. It is not a very easy thing to make crystal clear ice balls. I understand there is a company that sells them for $5.00 each. For all others, there is nothing wrong with odd shaped and cloudy ice cubes for their mixed drinks. Surely meatballs can be more than just almost round small bite-size meatloafs. It is not because odd shaped non-uniform meatballs are shameful or bad taste. Perfectly round meatballs are fun to make and there are many recipe possibilities one can try to come up with. They are very nice and impressive for appetizers for a party. Try Google Image âÂÂmeatball appetizersâ and imagine all those recipes with perfectly round meatballs. I wish I could find the pictures I have somewhere on my hard drive of round meatballs I had once made with an egg yolk inside, and round deep fried crab meat meatballs each with a fancy skewer and a thin slice of white truffle. And I Agree with FOAS, if the end result is not what you want, the tool is a total waste of your money. dcarch Here is a link that might be useful: Having a ball This post was edited by dcarch on Sun, Jun 9, 13 at 11:02