Hi Desirai, With respect to your zinnia that died unexpectedly, I have had that same experience from time to time. I usually "perform an autopsy" to see what went wrong, and I have found that usually the problem is a bacterial stem infection that started from a small wound in the stem near the soil line. In a few cases, I have found that a stem borer larva entered the stem, so I split the stem to find the borer (and killed it). Fortunately this sudden death problem is fairly rare. "Do you think I could plant now and get some growth before winter? " I do. Zinnias usually form a main stem flower bud in about 6 weeks from the time they come up. Green seeds are slower to germinate because their living seed coat is impermeable to water, but the coat will die and become permeable in about two weeks. So your green seeds could be starting to bloom in about 8 weeks from the time you plant them. That's about 2 months, so they should be in "full bloom" in about 3 months, which would be some time in September. I don't know when you can expect a first killing freeze, but since you are Zone 7b I would guess that your first killing freeze would be in late October or possibly in November. In other words, if you plant your green seeds now there is a good chance that you will be able to see their blooms, pollinate or cross-pollinate those blooms, and harvest viable green seeds from them before your growing season ends. As I mentioned before, you can speed up the germination of green seeds by "breaching" the seed coat to allow immediate contact with soil water with the embryo inside. I use an X-Acto knife to cut the seed coat to do the breaching. My favorite method is to cut the petal off of the seed and then pull open at least one of the "side wings" of the seed. I prefer to use a curved blade like in the picture. First I cut the petal away, closer to the seed embryo than in the picture. Then I place the knife into the edge of the seed so as to just "miss" the embryo (grin, X-ray eyes could help here) and, letting the knife blade anchor the seed, I use my fingernail to pull the seed a little ways from the blade. The knife blade holds the side wing stationary and my fingernail pulls the seed open a bit. It takes a bit of practice to get the hang of it. Any technique that gives the embryo access to water works. If you should accidentally cut the root tip off of the embryo then it can't grow, but if you accidentally nick the cotyledon part of the embryo, it probably will grow with a small missing part of the cotyledons. Whatever you do, be careful not to cut yourself with the X-Acto blade. It is razor sharp. And work on a surface that you don't mind nicking. A cutting board, plastic or wood, would work. I use an inexpensive folding TV tray from Walmart that has a plastic surface. It cost less than a good cutting board, and is handy for a lot of things. If you have questions about any of this, don't hesitate to ask. ZM

Hi Mister.Guy, " I was extremely satisfied with soda-bottle "half-gallon" DIY pots, by cutting the top off at the label, slitting the cone top up for drainage, and stuffing them upside down back inside the bottle with some holes cut in each of the little bottle "feet"." I also used the bottoms of 2-liter soda-bottles as pots. I am a little confused by how you made yours. I just cut the top off and drilled drainage holes in the bottom of the feet. This is an old picture of one being used to grow a zinnia from a cutting. I really liked their indestructability, transparency, and the fact that they didn't cost anything. But I quite using them because they were prone to tipping over, and their circular cross section didn't have as much root volume as square pots. I don't know if it is feasible for you to post pictures, but if you could, pictures of how you prepared the soda-bottle pots would be helpful. From what you said, I wondered if you had figured out a way to solve the tipping problem. "In the summer, temperature and humidity has been a real hassle for me, and I've seriously considered a dedicated outdoor greenhouse/shed for plants. " How about just growing the Summer zinnias in-ground in the garden? For many people, a greenhouse is too hot in the Summer to be habitable by plants (or people). "Fortunately, with zinnias, you get several tries a year, even out in the yard, if you're fast with the green seeds, and I have four or five beautiful large plants in the yard I am gathering seeds from to try a new less eco-friendly, death to anything but plants approach in my indoor growing space." Yes, I agree wholeheartedly with that. But I am curious about the details of your "new less eco-friendly, death to anything but plants" approach in your indoor growing space. I think we are thinking in a very similar way on the indoor growing of zinnias. I fought a running battle with thrips all last Winter. I look forward to bringing some more powerful weapons against them this Winter. Perhaps we should discuss our various problems and solutions for growing zinnias successfully indoors. I don't recommend indoor zinnia growing because it isn't easy, but if you are doing it, then we may have a lot of things to talk about. ZM

Hi Alex, " I can't even get into the garden! There's a heavy pile of snow/ice gluing the gate shut. " Clearly you have a much more arctic climate in Michigan than we here in Kansas. The top few inches of our soil have thawed, although it is still hard frozen a few inches down. I am hoping that our soil will thaw some more this week, because there is an area of my garden that has a lot of rocks in it that I want to rake out before planting it. Right now the rake teeth just sort of "bounce off" of that still frozen layer. Incidentally, you have mastered the "blockquote" thing quite well. There are a couple more HTML things that are easy to use, and handy sometimes. They are "b" for bold and "u" for underline. In these examples, as before, I will use square brackets to indicate the HTML, and let angle brackets, which you don't see, cause the actual execution of the HTML. Sometimes, [b] if you want something to stand out a bit [/b], you can use the "b" command, and [u]if you really want to emphasize something[/u], you can use "u" to underline it. You can [b][u]combine the two[/u][/b] if you want, or [I][b][u]use all three [/u][/b][/I]. There is another HTML command, the "font" command, that is somewhat more complicated, and somewhat more capable. You can use it to [font color="red"] change the color of your text,[/font] but I don't usually have a need for colored text. Incidentally, there are an amazing number of colors at your disposal. I just picked red because it is a simple example. You may or may not have noticed that I used the "font" command to change the typeface of this paragraph, up to this point. I used the [font face="Georgia"] command. Most, perhaps all, browsers let you set a default typeface, and this forum itself probably controls its fonts as well. I sometimes enjoy diddling with details, but I hope the phrase "the Devil is in the details" doesn't apply to me. Back to the weather, we are having a nice sunshiny day here. I know your weather will improve and sometime this Summer, when I am sweltering in three-digit heat, you will be much more comfortable. More later. ZM

Remodelfla, I knew we were kindred spirits. Until we got new windows 2 years ago, I had placemats (bought on clearance, but cute enough) on the diagonal on rods over my doorwall and large kitchen window! My mom still asks me if I'm not going to put them back up because they looked so nice. I diplomatically reply that I was tired of the look and prefer to keep them bare for now. Florantha, I think the second treatment looks nice as long as you want to cover the view (at least for the most part), but I think the lace is what makes it look charming. What kind of tablecloth are you thinking of using? Mnerg, you definitely aren't alone with having lots of pics that are waiting to find homes on the walls. No way that's getting tackled today, however. :(