Janinilulu,

I didn't forget about your prize seeds email. I have been busy with last minute planning. I'll send you a list when I have time to go through my commercial seeds and send you a list.

Lisa

RickCorey said:We got our "daily drizzle" back a month or so ago. It won't be at all dry here until next summer.

Good luck!

How nice. We won't see rains again until march/april. We get so little rain. I guess that's why we're drought tolerant around here, lol.

The rain we got was negligible, too little to measure. A general moistening of the air for a while did little to help, but helicopters carrying water from farmer's ponds and municipal reservoirs has helped a lot. We are still under a 'smoke inhalation' warning, but it doesn't look as bad as it did outside. FEMA is supposed to be in the area.

My internet service has been out most of the time. I don't know if that is related or if the city utility company has more important outages to worry about right now.

Lisa, I am excited for you, and relieved for you, too. Managing and surviving a daughter's wedding should merit a nice long day at the spa, or the creek, or the quiet woods, when it's all over.

Alana, I'm glad it's getting better.

Lisa, she's right. Good luck with the wedding and pamper yourself afterwards.

After months of planning. My daughter is now married!

I now have more time to start adding seeds to the swap:)

Ah Lisa. She is beautiful!

If you missed it, flwrs4ever62 has posted the 9th annual "Secret Santa Swap" on GW/Houzz.
If you are not a GW member or have never joined her swap, it is a swap about giving, although receiving is also involved.
http://forums.gardenweb.com/di...

Congratulations Lisa and a beautiful bride she is!!

Beautiful! Congratulations Lisa!!

She IS beautiful Lisa. Love the dress!

Lisa, what a beautiful sight - wishing them much happiness

Alana, it seems a lonnng time since you posted about those fires and smoke in your area - how are you doing now?

Karen, it's still bad, the smoke that is, and high winds are expected this weekend, so we are under warnings about that and the spread of fires that are contained. I guess I'm getting used to it. There is still a "smoke inhalation warning" in effect, but when I look across at the mountain on the other side of the river I can see it.

The frustrating part is that arsonists keep setting new fires. What is wrong with people?? One guy confessed that he wanted likes on facebook so he set fires and then reported on them from the scene he created as if providing a service. As a result homes were threatened and the resources to save them were diverted from other fires.

It's in the 70's during the day, but that is supposed to drop this weekend with the arrival of the winds that bring a slight chance of rain. So far they are not predicting much rain, but I'm hoping that changes. I drove to Sevierville and the smoke was consistent into Knoxville.

Alana, that is awful! It is insane that someone would do so much damage for facebook. That is just unbelievable how........ugh......

I have a question about saving seeds from my butterfly iris dietes grandiflora. I harvested a pod this morning and some of the seeds were already sprouting. 14 of them have not sprouted and I am wondering if they are still o.k. to save for the swap. I put them in a bag with a humidity pack and potted up the spouting ones.

Alana, I'm so sorry to hear of this. I saw on the news tonight this expected to go on into december. They said they can't get ya'll help because usually fire season is over by now and all the surrounding areas have their hands full already. Plus the college students who do the bulk of the volunteering have already gone back to school. I really hate this for you. I'll be praying for you all over that way.

Lisa, what a beautiful wedding that must have been if it was near as pretty as your daughter. Congratulations to you and your family on your new son in law!

If the Dietes seeds are hard they should be fine.

That's interesting Karen. I volunteered to fight fires in Appalachia when I was in college a few million years ago, but had no idea that students were the volunteer base. There are people from several states helping, but we need rain. There is a 40% chance for Sunday. These mountains hold many little pockets that defy weather systems so we won't know until it gets here.

As habitat is burned woodland creatures are being forced out of their normal preparations for winter. I hate this for them in the long term.

I'm with Audrey. That someone would do this for likes on FB is insane.

I'll continue to pray for y'all Alana. We've had smoke down here from the NC fires. I was living in MT the year Yellowstone burned and it's so scary to have wildfires near you. I'm sorry you're going through that.

I have a question about the swap. If I have 200 seeds to share is it better to list 4 offers of 50, 5 offers of 40, 10 offers of 20? I want folks to have all the seeds they need but also want to share with everyone who might be interested. I just got an order in from Seedaholic and they were very generous with some of their seeds. Great datasheets on each seed too!

Seedaholic has some nice varieties! Expensive shipping from Ireland to WA state, though!

I didn't see the quantity of each packet listed online.

I think it would depend on what the seeds are. 20 seeds of say morning glories would be plenty but 20 seeds of sweet allysum wouldn't be enough. For me I certainly wouldn't use 20 tomato plants but others would.

It depends on what kind of seeds. It seems like 20 is a minimum for most seeds, more for smaller seeds and sometimes less for really large seeds. Or seeds like lettuce, you wouldn't want to give someone just 20 seeds. 20 seeds is my usual for tomatoes and peppers. 100 seeds of everything is just too much and not necessary for this kind of swap since you will probably be getting quite a variety of different seeds. My eyes are always bigger than my ability to plant everything!!

For me, for annual vegetables, it depends on how expensive they were. I'd like to supply an "eatable" amount, but that can get expensive, for example with beans.

If enough seeds for direct-seeding a 5-10 foot row cost me less than, say 40-60 cents, and I got a big enough packet to make more than 6 trade packets, I'll do that. That goal is to supply someone who wants to eat it for many meals. Say a $5 bulk packet divided 10 ways.

(Note that a $2.50 packet will seldom be big enough to divide 5 ways. Big year-end packets can be a great deal!)

Once I got a whole OUNCE of lettuce seeds inexpensively, so I made some TEASPOON-size packets, which I think would supply most people for several years. That was based on "these are very affordable".

But if the seeds are more expensive, and 50-60-cents-worth only make a "sample size", say 30-50 seeds, I'll make up smaller packets like that. More than enough for someone to TRY the variety to see if they like it. If they want to make more servings, they would have to start in cells and transplant, instead of direct sowing and thinning.

Recently I got some seeds in a much smaller packet than I expected, so that 27 hybrid squash seeds turned out to cost $4. Before then, "20 seeds" was my bare minimum size to trade, but I stretched a point so I could make two trade packets instead of just one, $4 trade packet. Hopefully, squash make such big plants that it was a "fair" size.

So my packets usually vary between 40 and 400 seeds, depending mainly on my cost.

If they will have low germination, more seeds.

If it's a perennial and they only need a few plants to establish the "patch", fewer.

Self-saved, it depends on how many I have. If I have a cup of seed, I'll divide it into teaspoons or tablespoons. If I only have a pinch, I'll make up some pkts with mini-pinches.