THANK YOU ALL for your wonderful responses to my post! I always enjoy sharing my experiences and photos with you all and getting your feedback. It sures helps with the winter blues to chat about roses and you are all treasured friends. For those who wanted to know how I went about the seed-starting operation, I kept it pretty simple, and anyone can do it. After collecting the ripe hips in the fall I immediately dug the seeds out of the hips, making sure to get all the pulp off the seeds and clean them well. I soaked them for a day or two in water with a little bit of hydrogen peroxide in it then put them between moist paper towels which I then placed in plastic ziploc bags. They stayed in the refrigerator for 3 months. I did not have any sprout during that time so I simply sowed them in peat pots using packaged sterilized seed starting mix. As for the flourescent lights I used regular shoplights suspended about 3 inches from the pots. I kept the lights on for about 16 hours per day/ off for 8 hrs. I had some germinations in as soon as 1 week after sowing which surprised me, but most seeds took about 2-4 weeks to germinate. As the seedlings grew I just kept adjusting the height of the lights, but made sure they were only inches away from the seedlings. I wasn't sure how well the seedlings would do just using regular flourescent lights but they didn't seem to mind that I didn't splurge on the more expensive grow-lights. Because the set-up was in my basement, the temperature was fairly cool but not cold. So that's basically it, nothing fancy or too scientific, just a lot of hovering over the pots and hoping and wishing. Thank you Patrick & Jim for the suggestion and encouragement to join the RHA. I did pop over there as a lurker during my seed-growing upon occasion but haven't in a while since I no longer have my setup going. Someday I hope to get back into it because I truly enjoyed it. For now, my mom who has Alzheimer's is living with us so that I can care for her and my grown daughter moved back in, and I lost all available space. It's a hobby I know I will get back into when space allows. Once again, many thanks for all of your words of encouragement. Celeste

99% of hosta do not come true from seed... so you cant get the momma plant.... about 95% will be just plain old green. .. which is just fine if you want to cover some space ... the other 5 % would be blue or yellow ... if you wanted to come up with some multi colored hosta... you would need seed from a streaked mother plant ... seed is ready for planting in fall as soon as it is ripe... and a vast majority of peeps play with them during the winter undr lights ... use the search function and you might find at least a couple hundred posts about that ... some sow them out doors... and just have fun good luck ken

Cmpman1974 I totally had the same bunch of of Whatcom's "scotch bonnet" seeds just last year. Yellow Squashes, huh? Mine did very well, but weren't what I wanted or anything I plan on growing again. Amast13, Not sure if those "bhuts" are something else, but I can confirm known seed shenanigans on their part. Any pics?

Hi there! Any one out there with experience with the GE Space Saver Microwave or newer version PEM31SFSS? We have a 30" wide base cabinet and will be doing a custom 30" cabinet above to house the microwave. It will be between the fridge and the end of the cabinet run/wall. Cabinet depth therefore doesn't matter too much, as it can stick out whatever depth, but we don't want it to seem to claustrophobic at the end of the kitchen. Hence why we are considering this model, but I read some rave reviews and some crap reviews so I'm not sure what microwave to buy and build the cabinet for... Thanks! Paige