lavender

Thanks! I'll let you know how it goes. My garden hasn't done particularly well the last few years. Too dry, too wet, not hot enough, too cold at the wrong time. Good thing we have a supermarket.

San Marzano has been my tomato of choice for canning for many years. In a good year they can get as big as 5 inches. For a few years a hybrid San Marzano was available and they were even better but I can't find them any more. It will be interesting to see how the seeds from Italy do here. I think that most open pollinated tomatos change after growing a few years in a different region.

They climbed up all of the plants last year rather than making the nice hanging vines that they made two years ago. That is why I've banished them from the pots downtown. They don't show up well when they are climbing all over the other plants. They should do well on a trellis. They say the vines will get up to 8 feet. I'd say the ones in the pots the year they cascaded were abut 3 feet but those pots don't get all the water they should.

If you have any trouble they can live in my greenhouse for awhile. I didn't plant any this year so the window ledge is open. I have another idea for those downtown pots. Last year the black-eyed-Susan vines grew up instead of down. The year before they vined beautifully. Mother Nature is quirky.

Starting to plant seeds today. I had to sterilize my medium as it came infested with fungus gnats. I have 500 celery seeds. Any takers? Germination rate is 60%. Germination rates on the packets are awfully low this year.

Stick them in now and you will have flowering vines to put in your pots. They flower rather quickly. I put them in 4 inch pots and they were blooming by the end of May.

No, no! The chickens don't smell or at least I have no idea either way. Penn State fertilizes its planting areas, which are just about everywhere in State College, with manure which apparently isn't thoroughly composted. I guess it comes from cows because that is what it smells like. It's been awhile since I smelled it so maybe they have stopped using the stuff.

Nah, it would be like an apple being male or female. A flower can be male or female with both on the same plant or each being produced by a seperate plant. Zucchini has both male and female flowers on the same plant but only the female flowers produce fruit after being pollinated. A flower can have both male and female organs so each flower then produces a fruit like a tomato. The seeds are the actual babies with the pepper or the tomato being the "cradle". OK, gator guess I was the one who was spoofed.

Somebody has been spoofing you. Smack him good. http://extension.oregonstate.edu/question-of-the-week/are-there-male-and-female-peppers

Penn State is an agricultural college. How could State College possibly ban chickens? You hit it at the right time of the year when the college spreads its manure the whole town smells like down on the farm.

Know someone who gives non-laying chickens to the Amish because she is too sentimental to kill or eat them. I'm sure they take good care of them until they die of natural causes.

I'm fairly sure that dye is less expensive than chicken feed. Not as heavy either. Met a fellow in the supermarket today who was telling me about his chickens. Said he has over 100 of them at one time and they lived on the farm all by themselves with no human companions. He apparently had a couple of helpful uncles. His last words were, "Don't ever buy a farm." And if you are wondering why I was discussing chickens with a complete stranger in the supermarket that is the way it is around here.

Me. I make Easter baskets too complete with homemade chocolate Easter eggs. I'm weird that way.

We get free range eggs from friends and neighbors and the brown eggs that their hens produce are great for dying at Easter. They take the colors much better than the white ones from the grocery store.

key

Might give it a try if I can find seeds. Still haven't ordered. Must get to it soon. Keep buying off the rack when I find something interesting but for the staples I go catalogue.

I have always read that celery grows in "muck" soil whatever that is. Does it need a lot of water to grow? I don't know about onions but leek seeds have very low germination rates after the first year and they send you enormous numbers of them. They can take a long time to germinate. If you are going to start onions indoors you should probably get started real soon.

Here is a planting chart for zone 5 for veggies. I'm putting it in at the end because when I paste links in nothing registers after them. Check your seed packets and see if they say open pollinated (heirloom) or hybrid. The former are ok to save seed from. You might get some cross pollination if you grow more than one variety of the same thing close together. Hybrids won't come true but you will get something. It might be great or it might not. If you are just saying that you saved bought seed from last year plant away. Most seeds are viable for a couple of years at least. You are good to go on the black eyed Susan vines if those are the ones you got from me. They were from saved seed. I've always had good luck with non-hybrid tomato seeds saved from the garden as they tend to be self pollinating. Peppers are self pollinating too. Ditto cucumbers. It isn't that they can't cross pollinate but they don't usually unless you intermingle them. Squash and pumpkins are a whole nother story. Don't save seed unless you only plant one variety. The second generation will produce weird stuff. I like to get my flower seeds in by the middle of March ( indoors of course). That way they are nearer to blooming when I put them out. There are no hard and fast rules just guidelines. Much depends on the weather. http://www.ufseeds.com/Zone-5-Planting-Calendar.html

Dogs don't much like slippery surfaces so gator might have something with the carpeting.

Plant peppermint and prepare to have it take over the world!

Immortality is the least problematic of the two. It always blooms and seems to be immune to iris borers. I almost lost Autumn Tryst to the borers a few years ago but it has come back. Time to divide it again. If I don't keep moving them the borers seem to invade. I've got a yellow one that is so temperamental that it only set buds once in the fall, never in the spring, and the cold got the buds before it bloomed. Frustrating.

These were blooming up until the snowfall. I took the pictures just before it snowed. They bloom both spring and fall and are both very reliable bloomers. The withstand a frost and the buds will still open even if the opened flowers are nipped. A bad freeze does ruin them. Autumn Tryst was full of buds before it snowed. It blooms a bit later than Immortality in the fall. The white one is Immortality and the other is Autumn Tryst.

I hope he owned the property when he inscribed all of this "graffiti." Especially, since it was apparently a site of archeological interest.

Excellent article that reminds us that when we mess with Mother Nature there are often unforeseen consequences. Providing what are better conditions for hatching eggs or growing plants also provides improved conditions for disease and introduced predators. Brings to mind the woman who was starting an organic farm and thought that she could raise seedlings in the soil from her yard. She probably would have been OK but she decided to do it indoors. It made the bacteria and fungi in the soil so happy that they cheerfully killed off all her seedlings. The old gardener that put her right did a lot of head shaking. Nature has a balance. Unset it and be prepared to intervening again and again to reach a new balance.

We get the moths in the house frequently. They are fairly large and shaped like an arrow. Spend all their time trying to mate with the light bulbs or whatever they are doing. After a rowdy night you have to sweep them off the floor in the morning.