I'm not a pro at this, but I will try to help a bit. If you take a leaf and look at it, you don't (Maybe you do) but leaves are cast on the back side so that the 'veins' are 'embedded within the leaf. So you need to make a mold of the leaf, as if you were casting it the first time. I have used kids modeling clay, rolled out to about 1/4 " (small leaf) pressed the backside of a leaf into the clay, and carefully cut around the edge of the leaf. Then I carefully removed the leaf. I lightly -Very lightly sprayed the 'clay leaf' with Pam cooking spray. I then proceeded to apply my silicone in THIN layers. (You can smooth with an icecube) It tends to be slippery from the oil, but you can get it to work. IF the silicone sticks to the clay, it can be gotten off with a bit of dishsoap when you wash the mold when it is cured. Takes awhile for the silicone to set up, especially if it is too thick... OR If you have a leaf done, and painted, oil it up and apply the silicone. That works too. You really have to try and experiment.....making a POP leaf isn't the easiest thing to do......but it can be done with patience. spray your leaf with Pam then Brush on a thin layer of POP. Let it dry and keep adding layers. Removing the leaf from POP has always been my problem Good Luck...... Marcia

This is a very good question and I'd like to see if somebody more knowledgeable can help us both out. My assumptions are ... 1) That you can sow tropical seeds any time of the year as the equatorial sun shines at about the same brilliance all year round. However, I have reservations that overall, there are changes due to changes in trade winds caused by more temperate zone temp shifts caused by seasonality that might even affect tropicals. 2) That you might be able to fake seeds out by growing them indoors at spring-like temps and having perhaps kick-started them with Giberellic Acid. What do I know for sure? Well there are some seeds like Gingko Biloba that need to experience a successive temperature shift, from cold and gradually to warm. If you plant them in warm, forget it; they are not going to germinate. But you can still fake them out by using your refrigerator to keep them cold for 3 to 4 weeks. That's what they say. I tried it and my Gingko seeds still haven't germinated. Stratification? I'm not sure how important layering the seeds between deposits of mulch which replicate fallen leaves can be. I think it's more to do with the temp cycle. But anyway, if your seeds aren't tropical and germinate at any time of the year, there appear to be ways to fake any seed out and coax them into germination. What happens after that, depends on how good your indoor environment provides for what they need which I suspect doesn't have to be much more than room temps and appropriate soil and water requirements. Finally, some seeds, even in their native soil and locale, can be sleepers, taking months or years to germinate. I suppose even the experts don't have a clue how to motivate these. But yes, if someone wants to chime in with some suggestions beyond my assumptions, please do. I'm sure Missti would be as grateful as I.

I always wait, normally my germination isnt effected , I throw them in the fridge on the bottom shelf and they stay there, I start purching some seeds now till sept-oct time frame.. BTW the longer you wait, the cheaper alot of the same crosses are later. Im not saying wait, some sellers only have limeted stock on some crosses, some made dozens and dozens and will sell small batches for a few months, as you get to know the sellers, you can gauge when to bid on what. Some are fairly honest and tell you upfront, that this will be 1 out of 3 batches ect , (ruby who keeps certain crosses will tell you this from time to time) Silverkelt

Lynn, I see that you and I still like many of the same tomatoes. LOL I think you will like Jubilee and Jaunne Flammee'. Both are really great performers in our heat, but your heat probably is worse than ours. Heatwave is iffy. It does produce in the July and August heat but the flavor is a little lacking (but you know that I say that based on my "heirloom-preferring" tastebuds). In your soil and your growing conditions, it may taste better than it did in my soil and growing conditions. I do think Heat Wave II tasted better to me than the original Heat Wave. Brandy, Sorry if I confused you by referring to seeds sown directly into the ground as wintersown. On GardenWeb, winter sown does refer to seeds sown in containers and exposed to the cold temps. To me, though, anything I plant in the winter in wintersown, which probably would drive the people on the wintersowing forum nuts! LOL If you want a good explanation of wintersowing, go to the wintersowing forum here at GardenWeband read Trudi's FAQ. It is very informative. I sow larkspur, poppies, etc. into the ground anytime between November and February, depending on when I get around to it. This seeds will sprout in the cold and form tiny ground-hugging rosettes. You won't see much vertical growth, but they are making roots all that time and, when the spring conditions are right, they start to grow like crazy. (Lots of cool season weeds, by the way, grow exactly the same way....germinating in fall or winter's cooler weather and flying under the radar until spring). Some plants don't like to be transplanted, and for me, poppies and larkspur are two of those. (I have transplanted poppies before, but they aren't crazy about it because they have long taproots.) So, wintersowing them in containers doesn't work because they get mad when you transplant them into the ground. As far as the purple coneflowers and hollyhocks....I tried numerous times to start them indoors under lights. I was able to do it with the hollyhocks pretty easily, but the coneflowers just didn't want to sprout. Yet, they would reseed readily in my garden. So, I wintersowed some a couple of years ago and had great results. As for the hollyhocks, there is no reason to take up a lot of space indoors under lights because I can direct sow them into the ground (if it is not a rainy winter) or in flats. They transplant easily and are pretty cold hardy. I seem to get higher germination rates with the ones sown outside than I do with the ones sowed inside. I love hollyhocks and have them every year. However, if a really, really wet rainy year, the seed often rots before it can germinate because I have horrible, slow-draining red clay soil. Your problem with hollyhocks last year probably had more to do with the excessively wet weather, the lack of sunshine as it seemed to stay cloudy FOREVER, and the late cold spells. Those three conditions caused lots of problems with plants here that are usually pretty easy to grow. Between "the cold" and "the wet", a lot of roots were stunted and the plants just didn't grow. I noticed this weekend that hollyhocks are already sprouted in my garden. They are small and low to the ground, with 2 or 3 leaves about the size of a nickle or so. You could direct sow hollyhocks in the ground now or wintersow some in a flat or other container. My main challenge with wintersowing is that the cats like to lay on any flat I plant anything in, even if I have lids on the flats! The dogs, of course, like to walk on the containers, and the wild things, like racoons and possums, like to paw through the soil looking for whatever. Also, if I am not careful, the wind carries them all away, even when I think I have them in places where they are sheltered from the wind. Dawn