Hey Devi, Welcome to the forum! Always great to have new folk arrive! I'm not in E TN, but I hate to see queries go unanswered... I've grown annual sweet peas commercially, so my experience may or may not be helpful to you. I start them in a cold greenhouse, meaning it gets down to about 34 but doesn't freeze. As you may know, lathyrus loves cold, most soil. You just want to avoid lots of freeze-thaw cycles. Some folks soak seed before sowing, but I never have and haven't had any problems. I do, however, use inoculant, which, oddly, no one tells you to do with sweet peas. Like all other legumes, the rhizobia help the pea roots uptake nutrients. I sow into the final container if possible, as pea seedlings resent transplanting; if you're careful and bump them up before they get very big, transplanting is OK. I use ProMix BX and incorporate a charge of granular fertilizer, my favorite being Flower-Tone (97% organic and great for all herbaceous plants). Mice love to raid the pots for those big fat seeds, so if you have mice (and you may and not know it, particularly in a garage or basement) it's a good idea to put screen over the pot/flat until the peas are well up and growing. This is a hungry species. I topdress with Flower-tone when they're about 1 ft high, and again as they're setting buds. The peas should be blooming in May/June if you get them going now. They hate hot weather, so they basically fry by the end of June. England is their kind of climate, actually -- or the Pacific Northwest. In terms of varieties, I've never grown the knee-hi types ('Snoopea' et al) so can't speak to those. I select for flower color, size and scent and have found performance is generally OK over a wide variety of colors and series. Spencers are good, and Floribundas, and I've had particularly good luck with a series called the Winter Series. I buy seed commercially, and I'm not sure what's available to the homeowner. I have grown a few varieties offered by Thompson & Morgan over the years, and a pink one called 'Rosemary Vesey' (IIRC the name right) did quite well. T & M's sweet pea seeds seem to offer no germination issues, unlike most everything else they sell. Culturally, I give 'em full sun. Moving them into part shade about mid-May prolongs their life a bit. Early in life, though, they need high light or they get weak and stretchy. Bud set seems to be initiated by high light and increasing day length. Never started them in mixed containers. It may work, but I'd be inclined to start the seed in a container and carefully transplant int into the mixed pot at about 6" tall. But then, my aim is always to produce marketable containers, so everything has to work very predictably for me. Hope this helps. Marty

This is a new reply to an old post, but there are native live oaks in the area roughly between Ft. Worth, Abilene, and Wichita Falls, Texas that should work beautifully in your area. For some reason, nobody has developed commercial cultivars from this area. Live oaks, especially along the northern margin of their range, can vary in their characteristics. The ideal would be one with dense foliage that stays dark green all winter on a non-stoloniferous tree that branches With strong crotch angles. For commercial growers, it would probably require two trips to western North Texas—one in February/March to identify trees with the right characteristics, and once again in September/October to collect acorns. Maybe ten years of field trials would be in order after that. Of course this would be more of a long-range project than collecting an annual or perennial, but it could fundamentally change the landscape in Tennessee, Kentucky, and the Eastern Seaboard up to Philadelphia or maybe New York.

I haven't grown Lafter, but a friend in Arkansas grows it magnificently. Zack remains ho hum in less than full sun. Jefferson Rose is interesting and a healthy little thing, but I think it needs full sun. Also, I worry that the original plant was found growing in a crack in a concrete sidewalk in Texas, and I'm growing mine in acidic clay soil. I am so tempted to transplant it and put some good old east TN limestone rocks around it, to see if it prefers hot roots and alkalin microflushes after rains.

Frances, I worked for a cotton seed company testing germination for several years. I do not remember any commercial cotton growers near Knoxville, but if you can grow Hibiscus, you can grow cotton as an ornamental. It is actually a tender perennial, so you might consider growing it in containers. It's really a pretty plant - the flowers open white and then turn pink the next day. If you try to plant your seeds now, you probably won't have much luck. They frequently need a few months to "break dormancy". In the wild that's most likely the plant's natural defense mechanism to keep them from germinating too early only to be killed by cold weather conditions. Cotton is needs consistently warm temperatures to germinate, so if you plan to plant it directly in the ground, I'd wait until late April or early May when you can be guaranteed not to have any more cold weather. Your best bet would be to start the seed in pots so you could move them inside if the night temperatures dip into the 50's. Cotton seed is extremely susceptible to fungal contamination, so cotton seed manufacturers treat theirs with an anti-fungal mixture. Since your seed is still in the boll, your best bet would be to remove as much of the "lint" as possible from the seeds and soak them for ten to twenty minutes in a 10% bleach solution (1 part bleach + 9 parts water) to sterilize them. Don't forget to wash your hands really well before handling the seed and don't dry it on paper towels or newspaper or you'll undo your sterilization process. Just pour off the bleach solution and plant the seeds immediately in containers in sterile soil. Your seeds should germinate in three or four days and you should see sprouts in less than a week. They'll bloom in mid-summer and you should have bolls by fall. Good luck!