For your begonias in pots - you can put them away without cleaning. Pot and all. In spring, when the new shoots start showing through shake out the old mix and repot. The shoots arrive before the roots. They're a lot like Cyclamen in that regard. If the tubers are very small - say you've bought at the end of the season - try to keep them a little bit moist otherwise they dehydrate beyond recovery. (In this zone they overwinter in the garden with not much except leaf fall as mulch. There's usually lots of rain. The frosts aren't crackers, maybe up to -7C. That's shown me that total dry is not that important unless you expect deep chilling in your storage area.) Store them with a tag or similar so you don't have to wait until you get buds to remember what the colours and forms were. It's a pest finding a cascade where you expected an upright!

Jim - I'll bet those large broccoli were grown over near the Salton Sea - or the San Joaquin Valley perhaps. That is one of my favorite places to be in the winter time - the Sea-I mean. It is a great place for bird watchers - white pelicans, snow geese, etc., that winter there. The "Sea" also has a very interesting history as well - how it came to be, and what it's future will become. As long as it is used for agriculture run-off, I doubt if it will have prospects as a recreational or real estate venture. My cole crops were great this year - but come to think of it, we had some pretty cold weather here for about a month or two - as they say "unseasonable" for Ca. Whatever it was my cole crops were exceptional this year. (I was trying to take most of the credit tho - heh, heh). Bejay

This is an exciting year for me.... Before wintersowing, I used to spend so much money on geraniums (the annual geraniums) and would store them in my unheated garage for the winter. I would snip the blooms and keep them in their pots (or pot them up if they were in a huge planter) and hope for the best. I've always had pretty good luck, but worried all winter because they looked so "sad"... but would always perk up in the spring with a bit of warmth and some fertilizer. Now.... I am ready to put my geraniums away for the winter and this time I have about 25 MORE! I sowed geraniums from seed (inspired by another wintersower) and now I am not worried about them overwintering. Hey, if we get unusually cold weather and for some reason they don't last in the garage - I'LL SOW MORE next spring. Wintersowing forum... gotta love it!! Carrie

Mina lobata or Ipomoea lobata thrives in the heat, from what I've read. It's definitely too late to start one from seed, but if you can get it locally, and if it's a nice size, give it a shot. At least the migrating hummers will get to enjoy it. I grew it a few years ago and I recall it blooming in September and went thru frost. I left the vine & seedpods up, but it never reseeded. I tried again the following year, but the woodchuck mowed it down. I'm trying again this year, in a new spot that gets ALOT of hot sun. It should do well there eventually. Definitely worth it, even if it's a late season bloomer. I grew a cardinal vine last year and neglected to get rid of it. I left about 2' up and just as I was getting ready to rip it out during spring cleanup, I spotted green growth on it. It was against the house, so that may have let act as a perennial (and that's a first for me!). A must have for the hummer garden. If you have the tolerance for heavy reseeding, I would recommend a thug, Ipomoea coccinea "Orange Noah". It's probably the least attractive of all morning glories (large foliage compared to the tiny blooms), but the hummers go crazy over it. I've been trying to eradicate it from the area shown below, but it's impossible. I relocated a few seedlings to a fence between my yard & the neighbors. They have an unruly, unpruned Rose of Sharon, that surprisingly, the hummers like. The vine grows up my fence and latches onto their ROS and the hummers are extremely happy.