Hmmmm ... I guess it may depend on location, since some of the ones people have listed as NOT blooming the first year have bloomed in their first year for me - Dianthus, Asclepias, and Rudbeckia. I did have to wait for the following: Aquilegia Belamcanda chinensis (Blackberry Lily) Echinacea Geum Shasta Daisy Gaillardia Kniphofia Penstemon Hey, after looking at snow for two months or more, I'm happy to look at some green, blooms are just icing on the cake! Bonnie

They are probably small because of the cool temperatures, I won't be adding fertilizer for another three weeks or so when nights are warmer...they will already have some nutrition available from the container medium assuming you didn't use an actual sterile seed starting mix in your WS containers. Your all purpose 10-10-10 will be fine but dilute it to about 1/4 the strength from the package directions, then work up to half. I normally stop there, and use half strength even for mature plants in containers.

This is one of those things I've worked on myself, with unsure success. Unsure, because for the most part the successful growth has been in areas where the plants might have actually been reseeds from a mother plant and not me at all. Mostly when I have had success with fall plantings, it has been moving babies or divisions of established plants to new locations. I'm looking at our weather right now and realizing this would be perfect: it's wet and cool now. What's it like where you are? You might hit the nurseries in the next few weeks and see if you can pick up some end of the season bargains. A little more money than the seeds, but better chance for success! - Still...some of my reliable reseeders are Annuals: shirley poppies, catchfly, nasturtiums (if I push them into the ground a bit for winter protection). Perennials: columbine, the mallows, centaurea montana, rudbeckia, liatris, johnny jump-ups and violets.

Sorry, I read as far as Buffalo and stopped since I went into clueless territory! :-) 40 degrees is incredibly hot for any lawn (for us Americans, that's 104 degrees F). It's no wonder you're having issues! Regular heat of that level is a recipe for dying, heat-blasted grass and massive fungal infections from trying to keep it cool enough to survive. What are your winter temperatures like? Fescue might not have been the best choice for you (or it might have been a very good one, I'm not sure yet). Wikipedia's page on Maitland gives the following: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maitland,_New_South_Wales#Climate But I'm not sure how accurate that is (but the city is beautiful!). If correct, you live in an extreme southern temperate climate that's more arid than most of the southern US. Your record lows are more compatible with warm season grass than cool season. Fescue is cool season and going to be a constant struggle in that climate. Also, the timing wasn't great. 12 week old grass simply can't survive summer weather here in Pennsylvania (30-35 C) much less 40. Planting in very late summer, just as temperatures start to drop would have been best. This is the equivalent of a spring sowing in a harsh climate. It might be wiser to consider Bermuda or another warm-season grass, but I'll let the experts on warm season grasses weigh in on that.