If your dad plans to move locally (not hundeds of miles away and into a different growing zone) could he rent/trade for part of a friend's or family member's veg garden and get the bulbs in the ground as usual but in labelled rows? I know you said 'hundreds'; however, could he separate out the late-season bulbs (think N poeticus, for example) and pot them up? That way he could 'easily' trans-ship the potted group to the new yard; and dig up the early flowering species and varieties 'in the green' for moving to his new yard. That would give the person who has let him use their yard a freshly dug patch for the coming season of veg planting. As your zone is getting toward 'crispy winters' he would probably need to rig some sort of outdoor shelter to repel frost/snow for the potted set - bales of straw could be useful, with a weatherproof cover over and tied down. Late planting is probably not going to work too well because of having to wait for the ground to warm up/dry out. By which time the air temps will collapse the flowering season, and trigger the onset of dormancy in the bulbs.

I've not tried storing Amorph pollen, but Philo pollen is somewhat similar and I store that in the refrigerator (not the freezer). The reason is because the pollen is naturally moist and I have my doubts about viability remaining after freezing. On the other hand, I will try freezing Alocasia pollen because it is dustlike and naturally dry. Even when I keep the pollen in the refrigerator, I store it with some silica gel to keep it dry. LariAnn Garner Aroidia Research Here is a link that might be useful: Aroidia Research

hi mark, glad to hear you did well, but i am not surprised, you are a genius at growing anything! now how's that money tree going? get any seeds yet? :) i am NOT a fan of mel bartholowmay (sp?) and his square foot gardening. i know people swear by it, i swear at it! for some things it's ok for others it is a disaster. maybe i did it wrong, any guess what a 4' X 4' square of bush string beans planted 2 or 4" on center looks like? it's a horror show. that said, i'm a big advocate of using 4' sq beds for some things. my garlic did fantastic! i grew garlic in '95 and '96 and it was a small amount, 1st year ok the 2nd was not good so i gave up. this past fall i allocated 4' X 12' for garlic (same as onions). i used my 6" onion planting guide to plant the garlic. i had 10 or 11 rows of music, 5 or 6 rows of german white, 2 rows of georgian crystal, 2 rows of an unknown hard neck i got at a health food store and 2 rows of softneck from stop and shop, the cloves for the sn were HUGE. of the hardnecks, 3 or 4 plants grew funky, maybe 2 or 3 never came up. of the sn, 1/2 did not come up and compared to the hn it did poorly tho ok. i dug it all about 7/25 and dried it in my shed. i trimmed the roots and stalks on friday. i did very well! i did have a problem (only with german white and only 8 or 10 bulbs with about 30+ that are fine) so i went to the farmers market looking for the farmer i bought my garlic from to ask about it but he was not there. so far i have not been able to get him on the phone. i did ask a few farmers why happened and the concensus was that i watered too much. my problem was that only the german white had 8 bulbs that had a white mold or fungus around the stalk within the bulb. the cloves were firm but looked water logged, a sort of translucent pearly grey color. the other 30 or so german white were ok. all the other garlic was ok from what i can discern. i did mulch with 5-6" of 1 or 2 year old shredded leaves, removing all but 1" in late march (which was too late but that did not harm anything). i thought that the leaves introduced the problem but then all the garlic should have had it. these guys told me they do not water their garlic, it rains enough here in the spring and summer to suffice. all the sources i read always said to keep it evenly moist but i 100% discount that now. unless we go for 3 weeks without rain, i will not water garlic again. however, if you saw the size of the hardneck bulbs they were selling you'd laugh. my german white has some cloves that are so huge that 1 clove is 2/3 the size of their entire bulb! i am not kidding you. my music cloves are just about the same tho i think the german white has larger cloves while music has larger bulbs, more cloves per bulb. my bulbs are about 2.5 to 3" in diameter, theirs were about 1.5 to 1.75"! so like i wonder about watering, you know :)! still, one guy told me garlic originated in siberia and they have wicked dry weather so the no watering does make sense. i harvested about 160 bulbs out of about 175 cloves planted. i used 48 sq feet of garden. to compare, i used 120 sq feet for potatoes. i grew 13 superior and 13 yukon gold and got a WHOOPING, SIT DOWN, HOLD ONTO YOUR HAT, 15 pounds of superior and 16 pounds of yukon gold and i use a soaker hose around the seed for adequate water. prior to that, my potatoes were often hollow or very small, so the soaker hose helps. garlic requires only cutting the scape and virtually no weeding with 1" of mulch. digging is easy. potatoes require work to plant, 2 or 3 hillings which is a lot of work in the heat, usually a lot of work killing colorodo potatoe beetles tho i saw only 12-18 this year and no larvae and the digging to get the potatoes is really hard work especially with a soaker hose in there. so i wasted 120 sq feet again! this fall i plan on planting at least 100 sq feet of garlic, NO potatoes, i may plant 125-130 sq feet. i plant 6" on center. i know from experience that if you crowd onions you get small bulbs. my red wings and copra are much larger now that i space them 4" on center vs the 3" i used to use. i suspect garlic is the same. i gather you used 6' too using the crw? storage is something only time will tell. i don't know what to make of the taste of all my garlics. georgian crystal is mild. the others are not like grocery store garlic which is HOT and SPICY. it is what i am used to. some of my cloves have been hot but most are so so. not sure what to make of this. but it is organic, it will be free once i grow enough to plant and eat for the whole year. this is why i need to buy garlic cuz i'd have to plant too much of the harvest based upon the amount i want to plant/grow next season, maybe 3/4! the guy i buy from charges just $4 a pound and he is organic!!!!! one of the guys i talked to at the farmers market told me he wholesales his to whole foods and he is organic and he gets $6.50 a pound, wholesale!!!!! so i gotta find the guy i dealt with last summer for about 30 pounds of garlic and that'd be $120! but i think that would allow me to have enought to plant and eat all year. yes, it was very successful and i am very pleased with the results. garlic is easy to grow. the hardest part is cutting the scapes when it's 90 and humid but anything is difficult under those conditions! as a side note, ever grow grandfather ashlock (i'm on tomatoes now)? i tried it this year and it is 1 heck of a fantastic tomato rivaling earl's faux! tom's yellow wonder was the only other new variety i grew this year and it too is quite good. i am not a fan of yellow tomatoes but tyw is very good. the 1st 1 i ate i would have thought it was a red tomato it had such good flavor. they are huge too 1 to 3 pounds. tom

Hi Don, Most seeds can be saved for quite some time with no special treatment as long as they are cool, dry, and dark. An example would be tomato seeds will keep very high germination rates for at least 5 years kept cool, dark and dry. I would think in Alaska that would be easy. In case you or anyone is wondering just because seeds are stamped with sell by dates of the year they are sold for does not mean they will not be good the following year or a few years later. The date is a safeguard for the seller and the buyer. You as the buyer knows that the seed were tested for germination(rates vary depending on the type of seed) being by looking, in general, you can't tell old seed from new seed. So you will be able to grow plants from the seed you buy if properly planted and followed any special needs a seed may have. The seller is protected in knowing that you can't complain a year from now if you wait to grow the seed. A seller can't tell if you are going to keep that packet in your car or some other inappropriate place to store seeds which would make them loose their viability much quicker than would occur with good storage. All that being said, you can store seeds in jars in your freezer for very long term storage. Purchased seed would be dry enough to put in immediately, home collected seed would take some time especially big seeds like beans. If you freeze seeds, you must remember to let the container come completely to room temperature before opening or you will kill the seed. Hope that helps, Remy