aquawise, columbine sounds good. Mixed colors? What can I give to you? Margez, all of those sounds great. I can trade you one flower type for one lettuce type. What do you think? onedaylily, doronicum, anemone sylvestris, geranium macrorrhizum = yes! Trade for 2 packs of lettuce and one pack of orange pepper? Shoot me an email: muffypuffie@yahoo.com

I often start perennial and biannual seed in July. Right now I have shasta daisy, sweet william, foxgloves, painted daisy already germinated and am waiting on delphinium, columbine, salvia and sage to get started. I find it much easier to get them started outside when the soil is already warm and the temps make germination faster. If you start seed in July you can expect the plants to flower the following year. Some perennial and biannual seeds are very easy and some are hard. I follow directions on back of packet as far as if the seed needs to be covered or needs light and some need to be frozen for a while, set them on wet miracle grow potting mix, water well, but gently and put in a shady place until germination starts and then I move them to an area that gets a few hours of morning sun a day. Once their first set of true leaves is out I will move them into a place that gets 4 or 5 hours of morning sun. When their second set of leaves shows up the seedlings will be moved to either a nursery bed in my veg garden or for some into their permanent spot right away. The bulk will go to the veg garden and those I might cover with shade cloth if it is very hot (it will be in Arkansas in August). The hardest thing is to keep the soil moist while germination is going on and when they are vey small. Sometimes I have a complete failure, but for some like shasta, sweet william, foxgloves, painted daisy, gillardia they are so easy you will get dozens of plants. Almost always I get at least a few. Well worth the couple of bucks the packet of seed costs. Hope this helps.

Kim, All the grasshopper baits that contain Nosema locuste affect only grasshoppers, crickets and any of their very close relatives like mole crickets. Nosema locuste is a singled-celled microsporidium protozoa that affects about 90 species of grasshopper family members and does not harm anything else---not humans, not other insects, not animals or birds or reptiles or amphibians. When the grasshopper family members ingest it, it causes a disease that kills them. It is not a quick kill, except for tiny early instar hoppers. It is a slow kill product, that will kill about half your grasshoppers within 2-4 weeks of the time they ingest it. Being a living organism, it works best in cool (but non-freezing) conditions, and can die if exposed to heat for too long, so I only use in in April and May. It also has an expiration date, so when you buy it, watch to make sure it isn't expiring too soon as the protozoans are very short-lived. It is most effective on the tiny hoppers at the 1/4-1/2" size. The illness can spread slowly over time. For example, grasshoppers are cannabilistic, so often living hoppers feed on dead hoppers. If the dead hopper is infected with Nosema locuste, the disease spreads to the living hoppers feeding on it. Even the hoppers who ingest it but do not die from it are affected by it. First, they are now carriers and spread it to other hoppers. Secondly, they feed much less---up to 75% less, so that helps your plants, and they also lay a lot fewer eggs. It is most effective over a long period of time if you use it every spring at the right time, as it builds up a good population of the protozoa that will kill the hoppers. There have been years that I used it and still had tremendous grasshopper problems and felt like it failed to work. But then I either visited friends, have visits from friends or went out on fires and discovered everyone else had many, many, many more grasshoppers than we did, leading me to understand that while it didn't kill off all our hoppers, it dropped their numbers significantly. Patti, I bet that was a huge shock. At least now they know the timing of the planting season is significantly shorter up there than down here. I agree, once a gardener, always a gardener, and people who can garden successfully in our crazy OK weather can garden successfully anywhere. Amy, It looks good and it appears to be working! Dawn

I start snaps for farmer's market cutting sales around the second week of March. I surface sow in plug trays with more than one seed per cell and remove the weakest one. Snaps germinate, as others have stated, in cooler temps. After I seed them I cover the flat with plastic to keep the humidity up. Only bottom water or use a mister, anything else can wash the tiny seeds away. I plant them out here in north/central Sask. around the second week of May, it is early as we get our last frost June 6 but snaps can take it. I like the plug trays to start flower seedlings. They are very small but for the first 2 weeks or so, until a good solid plug is formed, I can have 1000 plants in a tiny space. I know easily when to pot up, when I can grasp the plant by it's leaves and pull it gently out of the tray and all the roots remain intact ( in the shape of the plug, no dirt drops off). The plug trays need to be up of the table not directly on the surface, this allows the plant's roots to be air pruned. For cosmos, I have not done them in a while but my notes show that the year I had the best results I germinated them over a heat source around April 1st, and at about 3 weeks I pinched out the growing tips, and pinched again when I planted them to the beds. I sowed them directly in the 72's with no potting up. I found cosmos get lanky if kept too long in pots . Some plants just don't benefit from an earlier starting date, other's do.