marymb, Valueseeds is just a clearing house for overstocked or out of date seeds from thompson and morgan. Ive always had excellent germination from them however. (only problem with valueseeds is they do not update quick enough =)... Then they do and you want to buy everything! Thanks everyone for your suggestions! Alot of companies Ive heard of or used, but there were some new ones out there! My quick observations on some... Though im not expert on seed companies! Im placing a order with baker creek this year for the first time, they got alot of stuff! Ive done Johhnys and Pine tree in the past, I like pine tree alot, Last year I had a mixup with Johhnys about some fortex beans I wanted... IM ACROSS the state for goodness sake and they wanted to charge me 2.95 or something like that to ship 4.00 in beans. Anyways, I have no issue with thier seeds though, MY ONLY problem is anyone in maine carrying thier seeds are mostly north of me, for some reason there isnt alot of places in Maine carrying a MAINE company seeds. I do not order from burpee online... I can get thier seeds from walmart and lowes here, for cheaper , and sometimes more product in it. Go figure =). Ive done swallowtail seeds in the past, I might try them again this year to get those elusive fortex beans I wanna try.... Thank you again everyone!

Ugg...that Davis book and his lack of knowledge about horticulture/crop production. He may have a handle on health, but he's missing a lot when it comes to crop development. First, Dr. Davis is a medical doctor with no background in horticulture. Second, the "mutant" wheat he goes on about is 1- not created by Monsanto (it is BASF and some educational institutions) 2- it's Clearfield wheat which is naturally resistant to certain herbicides early in it's growth by this forced chemical mutation hybrid 3- Clearfield varieties are planted on about 1m acres...out of the 62m acres of wheat planted. Third, the mutant genes came from a French wheat variety called 'Fidel' which was naturally resistant to a specific class of herbicides, but was not a commercially viable variety in the US. The crossing process used was used to speed up crossing these traits, not because it wouldn't be able to be done naturally. Texas A&M actually did most of the heavy work on this cross in conjunction with BASF. Also, this didn't happen til the late 1980s and it didn't hit the market til the mid/late-1990s. Fourth, his notions about wheat protein diversity are off base. His claim that modern wheat varieties only contain 10-15% protein compared to older varieties is just bunk. Variation from 7-25% are quite common in older varieties and are all over the place. His claim that wheat was "left alone" for 200+ years up until the 1940s by breeders is simply bunk. Fifth, Monsanto isn't the beginning, nor end of the world, but it seems to be the only corporation some people are aware of in the world. Wheat is a complex crop cultivated over many thousands of years for different purposes. From a genetic point of view there are diploid (2 sets of chromosomes), tetraploid (4 sets of chromosomes), and hexaploid (6 sets of chromosomes) varieties out in the wild before science even had the means to determine chromosome content...much less mess with them. The genetic diversity is wide in scope I can't speak on the medical stuff he claims...such as linking wheat consumption to autism and schizophrenia, though there's a lot of people upset about those claims, too.

My desire to avoid GMO that have been modified to resist glyphosate is not out of ignorance. I am also not against genetic modification. In fact, on Friday I toured a lab at MSU that was working on the genetic modification of many crops, including blueberries. The ways plants can be genetically modified is vast, but the ones on the market have been modified in very few ways, one primary one is to be resistant to glyphosate in order to facilitate more use of that herbicide. The lab I visited was working on the genetics of cold tolerance. The main obstacle to other types of genetic modification in plants is the cost of the basic research--who is going to pay for it? The blueberry industry does not have the vast resources of Monsanto. And Monsanto invested in all that money in genetic research they thought would be most likely to benefit their company. I have no problem with that either, but don't argue it was for the betterment of civilization or for the health of the human race. And if you've ever really delved into the scientific studies on some of these things, you will find that we don't know far more than we know. Certain questions are not asked and not studied because there is little funding to do so. DDT was deemed safe for many years. But then it was found that the long range effects of it were significant because it didn't break down and built up in the environment because it adhered to fat cells that accumulated in the tissues of animals, including humans. That was not extensively studied in advance. DDT is still used in some countries because they don't care if it does that, they feel the benefits outweigh the costs or else they don't have a choice. But pests developing resistance to herbicides and pesticides is well known and studied, it is the same process by which bacteria and viruses develop resistance to antibiotics. This is why integrated pest management is preferred and disease prevention is so important. Integrated means pest management is built into the way you do business. And planting thousands of acres of the same crop year after year is just inviting pest trouble, not a system that is designed to be unattractive to pests, just the opposite. So if you farm using this system, you are forever tied to chemical pest control. I'm not picking on farmers, they have a right to do business as they see fit, but I want foods labeled if they have been modified for resistance to glyphosate. There are many industrial uses of corn and soybeans that do no involve eating them, so they can grow their thousands of acres for that if they want, and for the folks who don't mind eating food that has been routinely sprayed with glyphosate. I am not even sure how much of the corn or soybean crop even goes into food. It's odd to me that folks lump all genetic modification together and then argue that "genetic modification" is safe, when actually we are talking about the widespread use of Bt toxin insecticide and glyphosate, not the genetic modification process itself, which as I started this note by saying, can be used to do a multitude of things, but currently is limited to resistance to a few types of pesticide, which then allows their widespread use. OK, don't label it as genetically modified then, label it as "modified to resist glyphosate" or "modified to contain Bt." So I want to be clear, I am not concerned about the process of genetic modification, which humans have been doing one way or the other for thousands of years, I am concerned about the specific modification that allows for resistance to glyphosate and also engineering Bt toxins into corn. That one is a problem because Bt is actually an organic pesticide because it breaks down readily in the environment. Using it in such a widespread manner, increases the danger that its effective lifespan will be shortened. I know organic farmers who are totally against this Bt corn because they fear it will eventually take one of their most effective tools out of the equation by speeding up resistance. I'm not even concerned about Bt or glyphosate, it is just the widespread use of them, or in the case of genetically modified corn and soybeans, the mandatory use of them.

I have a similar vase..yours is more refined I'd say..I like it more than mine. mine is blue with elephants..it's definitely a floor vase, big with a relatively narrow opening. I put there stems of pothos(i think) ,right in the water, and they grow like crazy. Pothos doesn't care whether light or dark or water or soil as long as it has something.. granted you can keep there big branches too or say, sunflowers when it's season..but pothos can be there all year round. (my vase was a mistake actually, from first month of owning a house here..I was hunting everything warm blue to match exactly the bed..)) it was a very set color palette. 3 colors, blahblah.. in a few months i felt like I'm suffocating..in this perfectly coordinated room... I still like the vase though. Brings memories. It just lives in another room now. Pothos likes it there. And regarding these elephants-I'm actually very tempted to count how many zoological species I have around the house..I should make a list lol..)