If they are Cheerfulness: they prefer a deep and even heavy soil that holds cool and damp over the summer. They also tend to 'dig deep' with their bulbs and the bulbs grow to a fair size. They are well-insulated against above ground temperatures by this depth. Agree with calistoga - no chilling required. They quite like the occasional topdressing of old compost with some added blood and bone, or bone-dust (If you don't have wandering creatures such as dogs) and the clumps can stay undivided for years, unlike some others. They usually start into root growth in late summer, though they won't show above ground for a while to come. The leaves are usually a dark green, rather than the blue-green of many of the other types, and they last for much longer (probably until your May-June) but are usually gone before the worst heat of summer. Can you give them a half day of sun - preferably morning? If your spring season tends be be short and you're into full summer fury before the leaves have gone you could give them a touch of shade by moving a container to cast shade or using a sun sail, or similar. It would be worth the experiment to see how well they actually can cope with summer temps while they're still in leaf before you provide protection. The other thing you could try is to feed them with tomato food while they're in full leaf as the extra potash might be what they need to set the coming season's flower buds deep in the bulb. And check your soil's pH level. They are tolerant of fairly acidic soil but may appreciate a touch of lime.

Hello, I am interested in your elderberry seedling, and Japanese anemone. Looking at your list, I have globe artichoke seeds that I got from a man in Siena, Italy. Take a look and see if there is anything else you'd like. Thanks Ellie

Thank you everyone. All things considered I feel pretty good for a week post op and I'm behaving quite well. doing only what I'm supposed to do. Drippy, those chipmunks are not funny and they sure aren't "chip and dale" either. Never mind the garden bed destruction that they create, the holes that they dig can be dangerous if you get your shoe or foot caught in one of them and go down. A year ago I did just that and tore ligaments in my ankle. The little boy that used to live next door got his foot in one when he was 4 and broke his leg. Now if that isn't enough insult here's more to add insult to injury. An article in the newspaper a few weeks ago said that chipmunks are a major carrier of deer tick now, more so than even deer and that could be the cause of a massive increase in the number of Lyme Disease cases being reported. Not that i needed an incentive to do everything I can to get rid of them, but that sure added a whole new layer to doing it. Then a friend called me last week the day before I went to the hospital to warn me that she was working in the gardens a month ago and she unknowingly disturbed a chipmunk that jumped on her arm and ran off. She didn't notice that she had a tick on her arm till the next day because it had attached right on top of a birthmark. 2 weeks later, bingo she has the classic bulls eye rash on her arm and has lyme disease. Chipmunks are not very smart. They can't swim, but will be more than happy to dive into water to get sunflower seeds and drown in the process and that's fine with me, right along with eating my datura as well. e-mail me if you want some info on chipmunks that like to dive for sunflower seeds. Bonny, the livingston daisy was WS by a friend of mine. There are 3 of us that share the WS for 3 gardens. We cane up with the idea to share it all after a couple of years of all of us sowing the same seeds then coming to my spring plant swap and all having the same extra seedlings. Didn't make sense so we split it up now. We end up with the same number of containers, more of each kind sowed, but the total variety is split between the homes and we end up with an even bigger variety of plants for the beds. Vera the color of that viola is beautiful. If you have any seeds for trade in the fall, I'd love some and will send you some of mine. PV, sow those seeds for next year. No matter how many of them you have, sow all of them cause they are a funny seed to germinate. My experience with them has been strange to say the least. My first seeds where from valueseeds.com. got 3 packets, 30 seeds in each packet and sowed them in early March. just sprinkled on the top of the soil cause they are small and tannish in color. Out of those 70 seeds we got 6 seedlings. Not a very happy camper that there, but I collected every single one of the seeds I could get my hands on from the plants and it was a ton of seeds, more than 1/4 tsp. Next year we sowed every one of those seeds, and I kept thinking OMG, what will I do if thousands of these seeds germinate. Well, no such luck, we got 20 seedlings last year. Figured ok, better than the year before and we will always have to sow every single seed we get. So this past year I had more than 1/2 teaspoon of seeds. We sowed 4 mushroom containers of seeds, the 10 ounce size container, put each one in a ziplock baggie and put them out in mid April this year. just an experiment to see if a later sowing would make any difference in the germination rate. They began to germinate on 4/29 the exact same day as the prior to years, and they where slow. But this year we saw how the seeds germinate. they swell to at least twice their original size and all but germinate 1 seed at a time. honest. But there was a huge difference in this years germination. We had mushroom containers totally covered in seedlings. so many that we couldn't separate seedlings and planted hunks of them every where. My neighbor across the street still hasn't planted hers out yet and the entire container is covered in flowers and seedlings covering the container. We have to have thousands of seedlings this year. On top of that, we have seedlings of the viola popping up all over the place in the lawn and my neighbor has several popping up in her yard as well. Doesn't make any sense to me why on the third year with the seeds, second year of collecting seeds we have mass germination and the prior 2 years including the first year from commercial purchase the germination was very poor. Fran

OT: This is a public service announcement: Google translation is hilarious. I speak English, French, and a smattering of German and Swedish. And I learned long ago not to trust Google, lol. Elan Languages is somewhat better, but even they can't be trusted for accuracy past "hello, how are you?". All of the translation sites are great for translating *words*, i.e. vocabulary, but grammar and syntax are beyond them, lol. They are VERY literal-minded :P Colloquialisms...forget it. Now if you want to translate a block of text FROM a foreign language to your own, you can usually make out the basic meaning. But never try to translate from your native tongue to someone else's for the sake of communication, lol. Oh, the stories I could tell... Elan at least has a staff on hand, and for a fee will do an actual translation. Google is a good source of comedy. We now return you to your previous broadcast...