i have mixed hot pepper seeds that im offering on this forum, if you want some please email me, i can send you a list of some of the possibe species you may get thanks your friend joe

I have not been on here recently due to illness and Christmas chaos. I am starting to do better, and want to pick up where I left off. I have been furiously filling seed packs (one can do that while laid up), and am almost ready to do a mailing. I will be taking up the offers of respondents here. **REMEMBER** If you, or someone you know, is in need, please contact me for a Care Package. The best way is directly at Robin282mt@verizon.net Thanks so much to all of you, Robin

Sara, I have struggled with the weeds ever since moving to Oklahoma in 1999, and have finally determined that mulching is MORE IMPORTANT in the veggie garden than anything else I do, you know? I see a lot of people in our area who till up the ground and plant a garden in the spring--say about April. The garden looks great as you are driving by. All that lovely brown or reddish-brown soil and all those tiny green shoots in rows. It looks great by mid-May. By early June you see weeds creeping in. By late June the gardens have as much weed and bermuda grass visable as row crops. By July the weeds and grass have won and the veggies are virtually abandoned by the homeowners. Then the same thing happens all over again next year. I can't understand people doing all the work each year to start a garden and then letting the weeds take over. So, every year in my garden I mulch and hand-pull weeds, and every year the weeds are less and less of a problem. Mulching is definitely the key. Now, if I could just "transplant" my weed control success from the veg garden to the rest of my landscape! Susan, I wish the swap were in late June or early July so I could bring bushels of tomatoes and corn and beans! Since the swap is in April, though, about all I can bring is a few letover tomato plants that I didn't have space to plant. If I had planned ahead and planted a lot of cool season crops, I might have had some to share. But I save almost all my space for warm-season stuff, and those plants aren't producing yet. Love-lies-bleeding is very slow to germinate. I always soak the tiny seed in water and sprout it in pots to get it started. I transplant it while it is tiny. I haven't planted any the last couple of years because it usually reseeds itself nowadays. The problem is that I grow 15 or 20 kinds of amaranths/celosias/cockscombs, so I never know for sure just what has reseeded until they get a foot or so tall. Until then they all look alike...well, all the red-flowered ones look pretty much alike...and all the green-flowered ones look pretty much alike, etc., etc. I do love the double blue Japanese morning glory with the picotee edge. I planted it two years ago and it was gorgeous. I haven't tried it since. Simply a space problem. And I do love Grandpa Ott's. It is so beautiful. I noticed that even Wal-Mart has seeds of it now, so guess it it one heirloom that has won full acceptance and has, thus, been successfully saved from extinction. I am waiting for that first ripe tomato. Every day I go and look at the 2 plants that have one fairly large tomato each. I stare at them and try to will those tomatoes to grow faster and ripen sooner. Those big fat green tomatoes stare back at me as if to say "we'll get ripe when we're good and ready and not before". I guess I don't have to tell you that the day they are finally ripe we will have BLTs for lunch AND dinner! Dawn

Ciao Steve- Nasturtiums are in the watercress family and are quite tender. You'll see when you grow them that the stems have a fleshy water-filled quality to them. They do not like cold weather. I start mine inside about 3 weeks before I plan on planting my tomatoes and transplant them a week after the tomatoes, so that should give you some idea of how warm they like things. Any frost will spell disaster for them. Use them as you would watercress. They can be put in salads, used as garnishes, and the big leaves can replace any lettuce use. Have fun with them.