Hmm. Just found this section, all good to know. Sulfur - interesting, grocery vs certified, light or no light, etc. I purchased some seed potatoes this year from WalMart not good results. My solution with reasonable results is buy a bag of potatoes (5lbs more than I can use for cooking) then dump them out of bag into a serving tray I keep in kitchen at end of island. When some start to sprout I use them for cooking but peel thickly, allow peelings to dry for a day then plant-they grow!! Had a fire ant problem this year so I pulled mulch back and spread diatomaceous earth then recovered with mulch, seemed to work ants gone. This continuous planting works for me in Central Florida because of climate, I also replant some of the potatoes that are produced from the plants produced from peelings. Have noticed increase in grubs in my raised beds will be treating them with milky spore powder this year. I don't know where I heard or read that regular grocery stores potatoes may be treated to prevent sprouting so I wash all then dry before spreading on the tray.

Actually you would be better off holding off on your seeding until fall. Most of the seed that germinates with spring seeding will die off during summer because of the hot weather and lack of root system. That's not the case in fall. If you're going to go to all of the time, effort, and expense you would be better holding off and doing it right.

Reed, I am sorry the weather is being so hard on your plantings. Some years the weather is like this and some years it isn't. You learn to read the signs around you and plant/not plant accordingly. To me, one of the big clues for this year's planting season actually was last year's planting season. We were very warm very early last year. I put tomatoes in the ground about 2.5 weeks before my average last frost date and got away with it. That only happens once or twice a decade at our house, and never in 2 consecutive years---so I knew there was no way I'd get to plant them early this year. I waited and planted my seeds at the proper time instead of starting them early like I did last year. That helped a little bit but what helped the plants even more was that I moved the tiny plants out to the unheated greenhouse when they had only two true leaves so they would grow on at much cooler nighttime lows than they would have in the house. This helped keep the plants smaller and more manageable for a bit longer. It would seem counter-intuitive to do something to slow them down and keep them small but I have learned to do that in colder springs so that the plants and I aren't totally insane in mid-April when the cold weather refuses to go away and stay away. I also watch my trees and observe how quickly or slowly they are leafing out. The best tree, in terms of signaling that it finally is warm enough to plant, is a native pecan tree that sits to the immediate west of our veggie garden. It is not foolproof---even this tree occasionally gets frosted after it leafs out, but only about once every 5 years. If I put plants in the ground after it leafs out, they usually are OK. This year? That pecan tree still looks like it is mid-winter and I haven't put a tomato plant in the ground yet. I also have a couple of burr oaks near the house that are almost as reliable as the pecan tree. They are just now starting to flower. If you will watch trees in your yard and neighborhood over the years, they'll help you decide when to plant (or not to plant) the way my trees help me. To help your plants get through the late cold spell, you can use Wall-O-Water devices, floating row cover (the newest ones can give plants 10 degrees of plant protection), low tunnels made of PVC pipe or electrical conduit, etc. and you can put a heat source in the low tunnels. My favorite heat source is cat litter buckets or jugs filled with water to serve as solar collectors. I have saved every one of those we've bought since moving here and have quite a collection of them. I keep them stacked in the garage when not in use and they last for many years before they get old and brittle and crack. With buckets of water acting as solar collectors combined with floating row covers or low tunnels of 4 or 6 mm plastic suspended over hoops, I have gotten warm-season plants through temperatures as low as 19 degrees and have gotten cool-season plants, most of which will tolerate light frosts but not hard freezes, through nights with low temperatures as low as 9 degrees. All these techniques are things I learned to do after moving here because in Texas we generally did not have so many late cold spells. Even with everything I have done to slow down the tomato plants, they are now at the point where I need to either plant them or pot them up to larger containers. I likely will plant them sometime in the next 3 or 4 days and then will use buckets of water next to them as solar collectors and row covers over them if next week's cold spell arrives as expected. I never consider my plants "safe" from a late frost or freeze until after May 4th because we have had a late freeze or frost on May 3 or 4 at our house for 4 of the last 6 years, or maybe it is for 5 of the last 7 years. The key to success here with our spring cold fronts is to not let yourself get tricked by 70, 80 or even 90-degree weather in Jan-April. Early warm spells rarely last and very rarely mean the cold is truly over for the season. Spring weather in OK is usually a wild roller coaster ride until at least early May. That does not mean we cannot plant until then but it does mean we have to cover up plants every now and then. Watch the behavior of southern OK gardeners like Busy1 and like me . If we are not putting tomato plants in the ground down here, that is a sign that people further north of us shouldn't be putting their plants in the ground early either unless they plan to go to extraordinary lengths to protect them. I know that market growers have to take those risks because there is a big advantage to having the first ripe tomatoes at the market. For home gardeners it is not so necessary to put plants in the ground early. It is a sad truth that you can put tomato plants in the ground in late March and in late April in the same year and by late May or early June, the plants put into the ground in late April will have caught up to the plants put into the ground in late March about 9 years out of 10. Dawn

George, This has my imagination going. We eat at least once a week, but they never produce well. Given they are native to the Andes, I could see where the majority prefer a colder climate. It is said that potatoes have great diversity, but not in the potato seedlings available to us. Once of my dreams is to have enough room to test things like potatoes and quinoa. Andria OKC