Tom, I got my seeds last week...thanks a million!!! ;o) I was calling some of our local nurseries before I received the seeds to see if anyone had a Wafer Ash & I found a tree locally. When I called, the nurseryman said he thought he had one but it wasn't in very good shape & I could have it for free. I said, "YES, I'd LOVE it!" Not realizing that he was referring to a 25 gallon tree! It is almost 8ft tall & looks like "Charlie Brown's Christmas Tree"!!! IT's HUGE!!! It is alive & he said that it has been in the pot way too long. It had a year on the pot of 2006. It also had a price of $225 marked out to $50...I can't believe he gave it to me!!! What a blessing! I took it home last Thusday thinking I could get it in the ground this weekend & it has now been raining for 4 days straight! Maybe this week some time, I can play "hooky" from my work & I can get it planted...it's supposed to rain next weekend, too! I have a BIG hole to dig...LOL!!!! I've included a link to the picture of it...it only has about a dozen leaves on it...the GST cats must have eaten the rest at the nursery! ;o) Here is a link that might be useful:

Adding some heat seems to speed things up. I use a 40-watt incandescent bulb placed about 6 inches from the soil or a ziplock baggie--for the greenhouse effect--placed in a sunny window. Sometimes I just set the baggie outside in summer. If you have a seed mat you could use that too. I use moist peat as the media, with the seeds around 1/4 inch deep or so. Prolly the fastest germination I've had was about in a week--Palestine sweet lime if I recall correctly. But it can take a while and I agree with having some patience. I do tend to soak the seeds overnight in water and I have peeled away seed coats, but I can't really say if that helped or hindered or made no difference. HTH.

I plant that many in each container so that i get at least one per container. I decided to skip the small peat starter kit method. I went straight to the 3" starter pots. Then after a while (probably another week or so or when they start getting true leaves) I will decide which is the strongest looking in each container and I will cull the rest. I will end up with one per container and I will keep 20-30% more containers of plants than I plan to end up with in case a couple die along the way. I can always give away the the extras. I built in "unpreventable loss" all along the growing process. But I am not going to have much loss at the sprouting stage this year. Last year I planted 4 or 5 bhut seeds in a single 4" container and didn't have the heart to just keep one so when three popped up, I carefully dug out two and moved them to seperate containers. I would suggest doing this early like around the time they are getting their first true leaves. If you wait, the roots get too big and inter-twined. But this year, I wont be transferring any. I planted at least three containers of each variety I want to grow. Of those, I will probably wind up with just one or maybe two. The others I will give away if they make it. I basically planted three times the number of containers that I want to wind up with for each variety. For example, I want about 4 Sweet Banana pepper plants so I planted 12. Bruce

Just read that elderberries are one of many berries that bluebirds eat to survive in the winter so I will be putting extra effort into growing these. I have a bunch of Eastern bluebirds t that show up here every fall and spend 5-6 months here before they move north. I plan to also order some dried mealworms to feed them. And some nijer seed for all the little goldfinches that have arrived. Any one else here spoil the birds?