Bruce I wish you good luck in your experiments. I see you are in zone 8 and I am considerably colder here in zone 6, but I might give you a little unsolicited advice about the peppers if you don't mind? Peppers are sensitive to the cold. One year, I planted too early, and a freezing night was forecast. The plants were still small enough I could cover them with wide-mouth quart glass jars and a blanket over that. They lived through it and I thought I dodged the bullet. But when everyone I knew was complaining about having so many peppers they couldn't keep up with them, I had only one or two small peppers on each bush. The plants lived through to the fall, but still not much to harvest. Since then, I've been very careful not to set out my peppers until early May, which is when I plant my sweet potato slips. Normally, my peppers don't yield much through the heat of the summer, and the heat wilts the plant every afternoon. But as long as I keep enough water on the plants, they make it to fall and then they go crazy. I shared my sweet cheese peppers last year with three of my neighbors. We all got enough to freeze for this winter and maybe the next. My jalapeno's, I shared with one other neighbor, and he and I canned up a lot of nacho-style pepper rings. I made enough of those that I could share the finished product with another neighbor, who doesn't can. I think most of us miss getting our hands in the dirt through the long winter months, I admit I'm looking forward to getting my little plants started. Another summer, another adventure, on the way!

OMG Camp, I can see this graphically in detail. Bummer. Bamboo broke my opal, not my teeth. Wintertime is not a time for me to staY inside. We have a different kind of winter. No bugs and no snakes and no 100º+ so heavy garden chores are much more pleasant. It is time to do my woods restoration.. That means chainsawing thinning out of control Mountain ash Juniper. Creation of slash berms on slopes, wildlife piles, protect young red oak, madrone and escarpment cherry trees. clean out catalog nests in bird boxes. take photos and create a long report for the county to keep my tax exempt. I have been working on it for 4 days. Tomorrow I need to complete the report and get it to my overlords. I live in fear till it is done. I did get some seeds planted the other day.

Awesome Skybird! I will definitely try the "liquid lightning" treatment. I will also be "winter sowing the seeds, well, actually my plan for the Abronia seeds is to artificially stratify the seed in the fridge for about two months, then give them the acid bath then "winter" sow them in March or April hoping the catch the last 6-8 weeks of our freeze/thaw cycle. I might try the more "traditional" scarification (sandpaper/emery board) on some of them, but all the resources I've found on this species has said that it does not seem to improve germination. If I don't get any sprouts of these guys this year, I am fully prepared to wait it out. I've had Palmer's penstemon seeds that I gave up on pop up the following spring in the bucket I dumped the cups out in the year prior. You are right though, SOMETHING triggers these plants to grow, since they do it all the time without any help from us. But, a few species of sand verbena are endangered (this one isn't) which could be a side effect of poor reproductive rates. Others, especially species and populations from the low deserts in California and Arizona, might grow and flower only once or twice a decade during "super blooms." It would seem even mother nature has a trying time with this particular genus. I love your story about the sweetgrass. If you ever feel like you want more, but don't want to wait, you can buy started plants from Prairie Moon, but I think the fact your persistence and patience paid off and you successfully grew what is widely regarded as a "difficult" seed is far and away more satisfying. I think that is part of the attraction for the sand verbena for me. Grasses are typically divided into two groups, the C3 "cool season" grasses and the C4 "warm season" grasses. From your description of it "looking dead" in the summer, I suspected yours was the former and it turns out, it is! Sweetgrass will actively grow in the cooler temperatures of spring and fall and go dormant in the heat of summer. I wonder if you tried putting it outside earlier in the year (like March) or even leaving it outside over the winter (it should be plenty hardy enough) if you would see more growth on it. According to the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) it starts active growth at soil temperatures of about 40 degrees. If you DO decide to put it in the ground, I also wonder if it would be kept in check by the fact your garden might not be as wet as it typically grows. The Maximilian sunflower that I got from you a few years ago has not spread in the "potters clay" (as you call it ;) that I have it in at my mom's house. It has formed a nice clump and spread MAYBE a foot out from that and I think I planted it in 2015(?). Sweetgrass would be a great plant to have out here, unfortunately I don't know how well it would hold up to the jackboot of rampaging cattails. I haven't found a single plant, even the ones often touted as "strongly rhizomatous" "not good for small landscapes" "could be invasive in a garden setting" that don't get out competed by cattails. Even the prairie cordgrass, which has some of the deepest, strongest and overall toughest rhizomes I ever ever encountered has been reduced to just a few small spots in their wake. Why I'm growing the buffalo gourd, I think it's a cool and unique plant. We're all used to seeing pumpkins or butternuts in the vegetable garden, but to see one growing out in the middle of the dry prairie sprawling in all directions with its huge, blue-gray leaves and big yellow flowers is not something people would expect to find. It's also beloved by our native squash bees (Peponapis pruinosa). While it does have vines like the dastardly bindweed, its a much BIGGER plant (if you look carefully at the second picture, there is some bindweed in the lower-left corner) and doesn't spread through rhizomes. Instead it had an enormous, tuberous taproot. It is edible, well at least it's not poisonous and while the stringy flesh is very, VERY bitter, you could roast and eat the seeds and they apparently just taste like pumpkin seeds. Also, don't forget that cactus are my favorite plants and I have purposely planted Yucca glauca on more than one occasion. I have gone a little crazy with my native seed plans this year. Trying to make up for my abysmal gardening year last year coupled with the severe onset of winter-induced cabin fever has lead me to have some pretty grandiose plans. Luckily most of my seed is stuff I've collected over the years and have on hand, but I have to admit I went a little overboard on purchasing a few as well (including ordering some started plants to hedge my bets). Now the only thing is carving out the time to do it. I think overall I will be winter sowing and artificially stratifying something like 25-30 different species (give or take a few). The thing is, I've never had very good luck with the whole winter sowing thing. My penstemons always wind up drowning no mater how fast draining I think think I've made my mix and other things always seem to sprout WAAAAY too early in their little "greenhouses." I also get extremely spotty germination with this method (which is one reason I plan on starting what will seem like a metric tonne of seed). But they wont be in little "mini greenhouses" this year. Last year I converted a bunch of the gazillion CRW tomato cages I have everywhere into low tunnels covered in landscape fabric. So I'm putting the seeds in starter pots/cups and setting them under these low tunnels. No plastic covering that will trap heat and trick seeds into sprouting to early and the weed fabric will let water from snowmelt and rain pass through as well. I will probably have to take a more active role in supplementing water since there wont be a true "lid" to contain the moisture though, but that should help alleviate the damp off which I have had problems with with winter sowing as well. But the fact is I don't have nearly enough indoor space to grow plants and all of it will be taken up by stuff that really does need it like tomatoes and peppers. Like you said, these plants germinate and grow outdoors in our climate and weather all the time without our assistance so that's what I'm counting on. Besides that, I have TRIED to start native grasses and perennials indoors in the past and while many of them self sow with reckless abandon in the garden, I have never successfully raised a single little bluestem or hummngbird mint or purple coneflower from seed inside under lights. All of them have keeled over well before transplant time. I, too, love starting seeds. Watching the creation of life from but a small hard speck is nothing short of miraculous. “Acts of creation are ordinarily reserved for gods and poets, but humbler folk may circumvent this restriction if they know how" wrote Aldo Leopold, "To plant a pine, for example, one need be neither god nor poet; one need only own a shovel. By virtue of this curious loophole in the rules, any clodhopper may say: Let there be a tree - and there will be one.” I do have to admit that taking care of indoor grown seedlings for weeks and weeks however is not my favorite part of gardening.

The brown late winter/early spring look due to leaves on the beds is the common one here! It is a good time though to look at things without the distraction of color, so you see more clearly what needs to be done to improve structure and layout - for instance, it has become very clear that the euonymus on the iron arbour in the front needs to have two more of the euonymuses planted (one for each side) to cover the back part of the structure as the front two are not likely to ever cover the back section of the arbour. Hopefully the right side of the arbour will fill in more this year. I am still not sure whether the euonymus on the arbour will ultimately be too much work or not, but we like the look so we'll continue with it for now. Adding two more plants is now a priority item for this spring. In the backyard, at this point my biggest worry is whether the sod we had replaced on the lawn is going to return well this spring! The grass always looks pretty ratty at this time of year, so we just have to wait until it gets warmer here before assessing what work might be required. The little bulbs under the pines are speaking of spring.... I am also one of those people that enjoy having 4 distinct seasons. But, at this time of year, I want full spring to come as soon as possible as the brown stuff is getting a bit boring to see - and the thought of the clean-up effort required is a bit more intimidating the older we get :-)