We have had excellent success with the following procedure: 1. Mix a 20:1 solution of water to hydrogen peroxide. We use distilled water. Haven't tried tap water, so can't say if one is preferable over the other. 2. Using 10 seeds from one cross as an example, I place the seeds in a Ziploc baggie and pour in about a half cup of solution. You want to have enough solution to give plenty of moisture to the seeds. 3. Label the baggie with the cross information so you don't lose track. 4. We try to find a warm place in the house to put the baggies. In my experience, room temperature is a tad too cool for best germination. If you can find a spot that is in the low mid 70's, I think your germination rate will be good. 5. Check regularly to see if seeds are starting to sprout. When I see the white of the root tip showing, then I plant. 6. I plant each seed in its own cup. I use the large red plastic cups you can get at Costco. I drill 6 drainage holes near the bottom of each cup. I fill the cup with potting soil (We use Pro-Mix) to about a half inch from the top. I poke a hole in the soil mix with a pencil to a depth that will allow the seed to be about its own length under the soil, and drop the seed in, rootlet down. 7. Keep the soil moist. Water with diluted fertilizer every other week. There are probably a lot of variations on this schedule out there. We grow our plants under flourescent 4' shop lights with a couple of different wavelengths of light. Lights are on a timer so the plants get light for about 16 hours per day. I keep the lights a couple of inches above the plants as they grow. 8. I used to start the plants at the end of January, but I found that since I can't really get them out in the ground till mid late May, the plants got too spindly. Last year I started them at the end of February and they were nice and stocky by planting time and went into the ground and continued growing with no shock. Hope this helps. Del

I'm not quite sure what you're doing. Did you peel up all the sod, & turn it over in place? If so, I would mix the soil & manure and put it on top. A friend of mine puts the soil down, then the manure on top, instead. She says the nutrients will wash down, anyway. I think it tends to dry the manure out too much, but that's just my opinion. You can plant onion seeds directly into the ground as long as you can keep the soil uniformly moist so they don't dry out when they're partly sprouted. You might try covering the onion bed with some burlap, and spraying it several times a day to keep the soil moist underneath. As soon as you see sprouts, remove it. Sue

It looks like everything isn't getting enough water. The amount of water a plant needs is highly dependent on the soil that it's in, and how much heat/sunlight it gets. That soil looks like it's very fast draining so you may have to water more than 1 time a day, and for longer periods of time (try to keep the flow low). The perlite mixed into the soil makes it drain really fast and the roots dry out shortly after the soil does. I have a lot of plants in containers and I use an automatic watering system for them. They get 10 minutes of water every morning from 1/2 gph emitters for 1 gal containers, and 1 gallon emitters for the 2-3 gallon containers. Anything larger than that and I use variable emitters. In summer, I change it to 8 mins, 2 times a day. You can get one of those timers for your hose and just leave it on real low for a few mins each day for these. As far as if everything is savable, everything except maybe the first picture has a really good chance of being saved, and that first plant might be savable but I'd give it a lot of shade for a few days and definitely give it regular and long watering.

Telephone books are a thing of the past here :-) And are invalid for listing any cell phone numbers or names as well, which are now far more common than landlines. And one also has the option of omitting any addresses for any white page listings, should they still be available and used.