Patreesh, There are several synonyms for Salvia patens, none of which are listed in my copy of Deno. Some Salvia are tricky, and require alternating warm and cool temperatures, and some species require light while others prefer dark. Hopefully someone with direct experience can provide you with some specific information. I usually put my seeds under lights, under a humidity dome, as soon as I plant them. But I have no experience with salvia or carnations. Bubel says that Salvia splendens (Scarlet Sage) needs some light to trigger germination, so cover slightly, if at all. Parks Success with Seeds says Salvia annual species says alternating temperatures between 68 and 86 F, with no cover for red flowering salvias which need light for germination. I don't know about Salvia patens. ZM

For a couple of years I had a garden spot away from my house, with no water supply available so if I wanted to supplement rainfall I had to haul gallon jugs of water. To make my watering efficient, when I planted my peppers & tomatoes in the spring, I dug down and buried empty gallon plastic jugs, one between each plant. I had poked 4-5 holes in the bottom of each, of course, and left the caps on until later in the summer. Once the weather warmed, and after a good soaking rain, I mulched the beds 4-6" deep with chopped leaves, being sure to cover the tops of the (so far empty and still capped) bottles to protect them from the sun since I had found that the plastic degrades and becomes brittle when exposed to the sun. (In previous years, just cultivating around the bottles inevitably resulted in my breaking the tops off by midsummer.) When the weather reached a point where I actually needed to water, I cleared the mulch away for the moment and poured a gallon of water into each buried bottle. I set the cap loosely back atop each bottle to keep the leaf debris from falling in and clogging the exit holes in the bottom, then pulled the mulch back up to protect the plastic. I did not care about how long it took for the bottle to empty-- it seemed like a gallon or two a week per plant was sufficient, and the best part is that by burying the bottles the water went right down to the root zone where it was most effective. As for using wall-o-waters, since I had gotten some free from a friend, I tried them last year with 3 really early tomato plants I started specifically to experiment with. While they survived a good bit of frosty weather, in the end the plants I had started weeks later and planted out a month after the first ones when the weather had warmed quickly caught up to the wall-o-water ones and all the tomatoes pretty much bloomed & set fruit at the same time & rate. So my conclusion is that it was satisfying to my eager gardener's soul to be out planting early, but it really made no difference in overall plant performance. I have found the same to be true with early plantings of such things as peas and salad crops, too. Early plantings may survive, but later plantings quickly catch up and may even surpass earlier ones that have been stressed by the weather.

Yes. If they are further away than you should increase lighting. The light falling on any given square inch falls exponentially with distance. So, for example, the intensity (brightness) of said square inch with the lamp 12 inches away may be 400 lumens, will, at 24 inches away, may only be 100 lumens. Four of those 65 watt pigtails should be bright enough. They may grow new spathes but keep in mind that flowering of any plant depends on many factors including watering, nutrient use, pests and pet (or even kid) damage. temperature and lighting.

Well, kumquats are the most cold hardy of the common citrus, you know, the type of varieties people can go down to their local nursery and actually buy. These other cold hardy varieties are much more obscure, for some reason. Maybe this is a subject most people don't know about. Or maybe since the fruit quality isn't as good it's automatically assumed no one will be interested in these varieties, after all they don't taste as good as citrus from the supermarket, and are often very seedy. And more small yards, and people having to work more, gardening isn't as popular as it used to be, people are focusing on low-maintenance plant options, which citrus is probably not. (people having to work more I mean more women having to have careers to support the family, and delayed retirement, and if they're not working more likely they have a shortage of money, or may not have their own garden to plant things long-term) Anyway, an unfortunate state of affairs. The Ten Degree actually came about from a Clementine x Yuzu cross, and maybe it should actually be called the 11.5 degree tangerine, it's definitely not as vigorous growing as Yuzu. And the flavor does leave something to be desired (kind of kerosene-like aftertaste) but I think there may be potential for a second generation cross. Some of these are difficult to hybridize because the seeds are almost all nucellar (true to type) so you have to pick another seed parent that is not nucellar. One of the reasons why I'm growing so many pomelo seedlings, but kumquats would also work. The keraji is interesting. All three of these Japanese citrus varieties, Satsuma, keraji, Bloomsweet grapefruit (i.e. 'kinkoji' ) , share in common the same parent, according to DNA studies that have been done on these varieties in Japan. (description of this parent if you're curious it's basically a sort of fragrantly aromatic tangor-like fruit the size of an orange, but I suspect it descended more directly from pomelo rather than orange. It's called 'kunenbo' which translates as "nine year mother". perhaps one could probably draw an analogy here to the ancestry of a Page mandarin. but now i'm drifting too far off topic... ) In the case of keraji, it seems likely to be a (kunenbo x sour citrus) x kunenbo backcross, where that sour citrus was something similar in appearance to Sudachi (which we know is also very cold hardy) , so it's likely keraji's cold hardiness comes from both parental sides. (Japanese DNA study indicates that original sour citrus was called 'kubachi', and then the first cross with kunenbo resulted in the variety called 'kikaimikan', obviously none of these obscure varieties are available outside Japan) In the case of Sudachi, it's almost certain that variety descended from Yuzu, but the sour citrus ancestor in this case (referring to keraji) could well be descended from C. tiwanica instead. All of these citrus varieties, without exception, so far named in this post I've been able to look up pictures of, so that's how I can give a visual description. It's all a bit complicated, but it's interesting to take a look at the ancestry to get some idea where these obscure varieties are coming from and how they're related to other citrus cultivars we may be more familiar with. I know it's a little too much information, but I posted this all here for some people because it's unlikely you'll be able to find this information here anywhere else.