Just to make it clear-the seeds in the list are my own seeds and I am only looking for Lagurus ovatus and Amaranthus tricolor seeds. Thanks :o) Robbi

I still feel like a newbie but been here awhile, welcome! That's quite an ambitious list. The only ones we have in common as to exact variety are bachelor's button and the wallflower. I'm not one of the better WS'ers, did read a lot of faqs and followed directions to a point the best I could at the time and just did it. What I wanted the most didn't germinate but most of the rest did my first year. This is only my 2nd year because I wasn't motivated last winter. One, you are bound to get something on that list and probably a lot. Two, suggest you hold back some of the seeds you want the most so if they fail, you can have a second shot with spring sowing in containers (different method) or trying again next year. Before I got the courage to try WS'ing, I was having pretty good luck spring sowing with a strategy I worked out myself, just more work, sometimes necessary for me.

I have grown them for the past 8 years or so. They are one of my absolute favs! Deadheading will prevent them from going to seed, which doesnt sound like something you really want to do in order to collect seed. When I grow them, I want them to go to seed ASAP so I can IMMEDIATELY sow more of them for the next crop. You can get 3 crops a year here in zone 7 NC. My first ones bloomed in early May. I already have new seedlings coming up for another crop of these beauties in July, because I sowed more a couple of weeks into May. Really, you can sow them continuously all Summer to experiment. I cant get enough of their innocent beauty. They make terrific cut flowers or as everlastings (dried) if you cut them soon after bloom. I stick them in my hair when I make a French braid. Just cut a 2 inch stem and insert into the folds of the braid in the back of your head. The ladies in the pew behind me in church last Sunday really enjoyed it! Email me to discuss if you'd care to. I love this flower.

Rebecca, I understand about plants that do their own thing despite what we think that ought to be doing. I think every gardener has at least one type of plant that behaves bizarrely in their garden. I do think that morning glories and moonflowers just behave that way sometimes. I had trouble getting them to sprout in the soil here the first few years, though I have no idea why. Admittedly, it was awful red clay and we were in drought, so maybe the soil, even though I was amending it every year, just hadn't reached that right point yet. Now, and you just have to laugh, they reseed everywhere with wild abandon and have become a royal PITA because I want a few dozen morning glory plants to grow along the south and east garden fence of the front garden and enough sprout to cover every square inch of the garden in morning glories. They sprout irregularly too, so I am yanking out MG volunteers literally every single week of the garden season. I've never grown them in the back garden for fear they also would run amok back there, but this year some Grandpa Ott's popped up back there, perhaps planted by the birds, so now I am sure I'll be yanking out millions of them back there too. It baffles me that they were so hard to get started in the early years and now you cannot stop volunteers from sprouting and growing to save your life. And, in that same way that tells you plants have their own minds, we have had Milky Way and/or Blue Star morning glories pop up in a crack in the concrete near the garage for over a decade. They get no irrigation, no food, no care, no compost, no mulch and no relief from the hot summer sun beating down on them and the concrete---and they come back every year and grow like mad. I guarantee you if I had built a bed for them back there and tried to grow them on purpose, there probably wouldn't be a single one there. These are plants that know their own mind. Nancy, Hydrangeas do not do well at my end of the state---we are just too hot and too dry for much of the summer most years, but your soil and weather up there is very different from mine. There's a lot of plants that grow really well in eastern OK that don't grow well in other parts of the state, and I think hydrangeas are one of them. It isn't really the 95 degree days or 100 degree days that get them down here, but in those years where we have a lot of days over 105 in combination with little to no rainfall, you can just see the life leaving the hydrangeas even if you're doing your best to keep them well-watered. I started out with a lot of hostas our first year here, and the deer taught me they were deer chow, so we have none now. Daylilies do great here as long as they are within the fenced garden where the deer cannot reach them. Crinum lilies are an unstoppable force of nature down here and they don't care how hot and dry it gets. They bloom in the worst of the heat. Will they eventually wilt and die back to the ground if we are hot and dry for months on end? They will, but since their root clumps are the approximate size of a Smart Car, they surely do not die, and I've never had deer eat them either. The crinums will just sit there dormant and wait for better weather so they can green up again and regrow. I have had crinums in the same spot for over a decade and need to dig them up and divide them but don't even know if it is possible at this point---it might require the use of a backhoe or some other form of earth-moving equipment. Speaking of hungry deer and the lengths they'll go to in order to eat....a friend of ours a couple of miles north of us had to release two deer from the hog trap (these hog traps are not big enough for the deer, but try telling the deer that) the other day. I guess the bait in the hog trap was too attractive to the hungry deer, they crawled in and couldn't get out. That happened a lot in 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014, but hasn't happened since. I guess the fact it is happening again shows how much the autumn/winter drought has hurt their winter food supply. Kim, lol at the cartoon. Dawn