What do you do now? Have patients, tend to the weeds, and watch for pests. In my opinion, you probably want to water two or three times per week for the first week, then down to twice a week for the next week or two then, as mudflapper says, once a week should be just fine unless it gets hot. I would increase the frequency of the watering for these first few weeks only because your seedlings need to develop their roots for a bit. However, you should be checking on your soil moisture several inches down. If it still quite moist don't water! When you do water, make sure you are watering deeply (ensure that the water is soaking the soil down to six or eight inches), then trust that the roots will get there. Have patients! Trust the slow release of your fertilizer, but watch for anything strange with your plants, especially off colors. If you get anything that is off color, check back here. If you start to see pests, take a picture and check back here. If other strange things begin to pop up, check back here. Have patients! You will, most likely, start to see some positive changes in many of your seedlings in a few days and most of them within a week. You will see some really dramatic changes at about two to three weeks. Steve Oh, did I mention that you should be patient? It's difficult, but try.

Forgottenone: If my garlic is any indication, you've got it backwards on the flowering. All of my softnecks produced scapes and none of the hardnecks produced a scape. WJB2: for future reference, wait until your plants have lost their bottom 3 - 4 leaves (dried up and turned brown), stop irrigating and when the ground is dried and not wet enough to stick badly to the bulbs then, lift the plants with a turning fork and carefully remove them from the ground. Now it's off to cleaning and curing as described by others previously.

Paula, You have to realize the sad, sickly plants stay home as "back up plants" in case hail or some other disaster strikes, and I only bring "the best ones" to the Spring Fling" to give away. Diane, Speaking of getting better, I hope your infected finger is improving, and I hope the infected finger isn't your green thumb! Leava, Doesn't it seem peculiar that we often talk about what a stress reliever gardening is but then we forget to mention all the times it brings more stress into our lives? lol I was just trying to provide a balanced view of gardening in case anyone here is laboring under the misguided belief that it is all fun and games. : ) Let's face it, none of us has a Martha Stewart type of estate with a staff of gardeners, landscapers, etc. We all live right here in the southern plains in the Real World! Dorothy, I second that suggestion! I always buy a bag of Epsom Salts in the springtime "just in case the pepper plants need it" but, really, they never need it....but I do! Gardening, like aging, is not for sissies, you said, and that is so very, very, very true. The cow incident happened to me 3 or 4 times and then by the time someone came to help me herd cows, they'd totally disappeared without a trace. Wily cows who are good at escaping from a pasture often seem to have an uncanny ability to put themselves up again. About the 4th or 5th time I saw cows that then disappeared before anyone could get there to help herd them, we figured out they were escaping from a downed fence at Ranch A about 1/2 mile from us as the crow flies (but much farther by road), traveling through Ranch B's pastures, coming through that ranch's broken water gap gate onto our property, and then traveling through our creek until they reached the woods beside the garden. If the cows hadn't left hoofprints on the creek bank one day, the whole neighborhood probably still would be thinking I was losing my mind and seeing imaginary cows. Rancher A fixed his fence, Rancher B fixed his water gap gate and I haven't been visited by an entire herd of cows since then, although plenty of other animals, including goats, have managed to find their way to my garden. If I didn't have a fence, needless to say, I wouldn't have a garden. I now know why country women's hair turns gray. Dawn

Yes, especially now that I have been able to germinate the green Sugar Apple Seeds that I was sent by two very nice women from this site. Andrew