Patti, I know you have had a lot of answers and I probably missed that along the way, but please describe in exact terms what you mean by "A TOTAL DISASTER". Did the seeds fail to germinate at all? Did they start to germinate, then died off? Did they die when you transplanted them to the ground? Depending on the answer, you should then find the cure. If they all failed to germinate, then maybe the seeds were old / not viable. If they germinated, but then died down, maybe the ventillation slits were not big enough? Or you opened the lids too early in the year and a blast of cold did them in? If you transplanted them to the ground and they died afterwards, could it be we are talking about plants that don't like to be transplanted (poppies, etc.) and they died of shock? Or were eaten by the slugs? (happens with my lupines *every single time*, sigh...) I'm not familiar with ws in a climate as cold as yours, but I think it's important you identify the root cause of the problem and fix it before you try again, so as to avoid being discouraged. I have been wsoing for about 4 years now with varying degrees of success, but overall my impression is that the method works very well, especially for perennials, shrubs and trees. I have started crape myrtles, vitex and a birch tree, plus herbaceous perennials, via this method with success. Until I discovered wsowing I no longer bothered to sow anything, as direct sowing is very iffy in my garden and either the slugs, snails or birds destroyed all that was sowed. Wsowing does give me a lot more control about what I sow. The only thing that is not so good for my particular situation is the fact that by the time seedlings are good to go in the ground we are already having hot and dry weather, which sometimes prevents them from performing as good. As a rule of thumb which I discovered by trial and error, I now tend to avoid planting anything in the ground from May to September, even nursery bought plants. I find that our long dry Summers stress plants beyond belief and many struggle to establish and die. As WSowing usually takes a while to grow seedlings to an acceptable size before the end of April, I will occasionally loose a plant if I plant it out later than that. But in my view this is not a failure of the method, it's a characteristic of my climate which I have learnt the hard way... Hope you have success with your WSowing this year. Eduarda

I've been preparing the fall garden, too. I direct seeded radishes, romaine, amish deer tongue lettuce, wrinkly cress, 4 types of heirloom carrots, 2 heirloom beets, several types of onions, celery, 2 heirloom cabbages... I think that's all. Oh, I have French breakfast radishes coming up around all the slower growing stuff, so we'll have plenty of those. I'm about to plant purple hull peas, and I went ahead and started 4 varieties of winter squash, broccoli, 3 types of brussels sprouts and spinach in some of those little portable greenhouses. It may be way too early for the spinach, but we'll see. We're having a very mild summer, so I thought I'd give it a try. If the rain holds off, I'm going to plant several more cucumbers this afternoon. Aside from the cherry and currant varieties, the tomatoes didn't do much this year. Too much rain, I guess. I pulled some suckers from the healthiest plants, and we'll see if I can get anything out of them in the coming months.

Planted out: Poppies, Sweet William, Rose Campion, Larkspur, Hollyhocks, Columbine, Coreopsis, Gloriosa Daisy (only ONE sprout came up) Sprouted but not planted: Cleome, Echinacea, Amaranthus, Snapdragons, Petunias, Verbascum, Breadseed poppy, morning glory (most got killed by frost), and butterfly pea (again, ONE sprout). Also DH has one KY Coffee tree sprout up. No signs of life from: Poached eggs, Gerbera daisy, shasta daisy, salvia, celosia, catmint, Catalpa, Osage Orange tree, and 6 other flats of Ky Coffee tree. Some flats I know dried out or were eaten by dogs. Also have direct sowed: Foxglove and Bells of Ireland (no signs of life yet) and Cosmos (sprouted good, but then died). All in all, I'd say that WS was a pretty good success considering that basically I put the containers out on the deck in Jan and ignored them until March. I'm not very good at remembering to water.....

After exchanging addresses you can mail your seeds. The seed packs are carefully wrapped with bubblewrap and placed in an envelope or you can use a padded mailer to send them. You need to cushion them in fat packaging so they don't go through the PO's automatic mail sorting machines. Always make sure that your email address is included with the seeds. If the trader needs to contact you later on the email address is right there for them to use. Always write your return mailing address on the outside of the envelope. The post offive will charge a bit more for mailing a fat letter, it is because the letter gets out-sorted into "hand-mail". It's too fat to go through their high-speed mail sorters. The width should always be over a 1/4" thick to keep a letter out of the mail-sorters because these high speed machines can crush the seeds to powder. It's courteous to let your trader know when their seeds will be on the way. If you've promised to mail on Monday, but something happened to delay that then email the trader to let them know when the seeds will be mailed...and keep that date! A good trader is a responsible trader. Good traders use bubblewrap or padded mailers to assure that the seeds are not crushed during their trip through the mail.