(zone 3~4) Sorry for the late response after your prompt one, my last semester of college was a rough one and I don't get online much now that I am out (hopefully....still waiting on the diplomas to be mailed out). Anyways, I should clarify a couple of my statements. Yes, Chester takes a lot of damage in this region my plants are young but the person I got them (I'm in a cold valley and she is on a hill) has had flowers every year that I have been there (said she had no damage at all a few years ago when we had an extremely warm winter). I have dozens of flowers on Triple Crown this year which is comparable to Chester but sadly my Darrow has yet to produce a single flower and I have had it planted longer. Part of this is the effects of erect vs semi-erect habit (Chester gets a little more protection from snow than Darrow does here). Darrow may very well be more hardy in your region than Chester but for me it is not. I'm actually tempted to try some zone 7 trailing brambles (have tayberry/boysenberry/newberry), with mulch and snow cover (if were lucky enough to keep it through the winter like we have the last two years) they could be brought to flower, all ya need is one, if the cross works.... For self-incompatibility I am mostly pulling from memory of a bramble breeding book I rented for a summer and have not physically confirmed this with wild types. But I believe the reds had most of the self-incompatibility bred out of them. Also, since blacks generally only have limited primocane fruiting it seems likely that the ancestry of Niwot's wild black raspberry parent had a cultivated red in it's background or even a wild red somewhere which lead to the self-incompatibility of its sibling release (the first wild purple I remember finding had/has pretty decent primocane fruiting have used it in a fair amount of my crosses). The germination rates I mentioned of 30~50% is with scarification and several months of stratification i peat moss. However, before my last post I had planted some stratified but unscarred open pollinated blackberry seeds, all were under-ripe which may be of importance. Prime Jim and Prime Ark 45 seeds were also froze and frosted numerous times (which keep them from fully ripening). Black Satin had a poor but acceptable level of germination for this discussion, Prime Jim was the worst of the three with only 3 germination out of a couple hundred seeds but Prime Ark 45 had several hundred germination out of one to two thousand seeds perhaps a 10 to 15 percent germination rate. So it can work but genotype may play a big roll in germination rates of scarred seeds. The ripeness and frost/freeze would also play a role. Also for long-term storage seeds would not kept "moist" or be stored in peat moss but I would think that the proper humidity level would be crucial (think they have been stored for 20 yrs).

Gary, If you're online and see this, do you know why the sweet potato industry failed here in Oklahoma? Soil? Rainfall? Nematodes? I'm just curious because they seem insanely easy to grow here in my part of OK, especially down closer to Thackerville where the soils are mostly sandy and everyone used to grow melons commercially. I have such heavy clay that I can't grow a large number of sweet potatoes, but I do have one band of sandy soil that I generally reserve for sweet potatos. There are several of your varieties I want to try, if you have any of them left after you supply the trial with slips....and, if you don't, I'll order them from you next year. I'll e-mail you about a sweet potato order in a few days. For the rest of this week, I HAVE TO focus on potting up my small tomato plants. They are getting too crowded in the starter flat and are muttering things and plotting behind my back everytime I walk out of the plant room. If I don't get them potted up soon, I will have a rebellion on my hand. : ) And, everyone--I said I'd start a thread with a list of heirloom tomato sources/resources here in OK, and I will do it tomorrow. I promise. Today, my best-laid plans derailed when a neighbor stopped by to visit and you know I just had to catch up on all the local news, and it was mostly happy news and we just couldn't stop talking. Dawn

Jay, I have noticed I forget things a lot more now than I used to, but I'm going to blame it on information overload from the 24-hour-a-day TV news cycle and the internet. Well, others will blame it on my advancing age, of course, but I never forget the REALLY important stuff like ordering seeds of tomatoes, etc., so I haven't commpletely "lost it" yet. Ezzirah, Take care of those fingers....you'll need them for seed-starting in a couple of months. All we talk about all winter long is what seeds we have, what we want, and what we're going to buy for spring. As soon as spring planting is done, we talk about the seeds we need for succession planting. By the time we're through talking seeds, you'll have 50 catalogs sitting in a basket, a stack or a filing cabinet. They're great, though, for boring days when it is (a) sleeting or snowing and you're stuck inside, (b) too hot to step foot outside and you're stuck inside, (c) raining cats and dogs and you're stuck inside or (d) a,b, and c above all in the same day because this is, after all, Oklahoma and we have all 4 seasons here, sometimes in the same day. Susan, Yes, the ones you mentioned are on my list....and so is viola Frosted Chocolate Sorbet and a few others, including Chocolate Vine (which I know can be invasive in some places, but with my landscape's tendency to flood with 50" of rain one year and then burn up with only 20" of rain the next, not much lives long enough here to become invasive). The plants that can tolerate wet, soggy clay for weeks at a time can't take the droughty summers or vice versa. Well, except for bermuda grass, and you know how I feel about it. I've always grown lots of plants with dark foliage and flowers, and I've always loved chocolate daisy, and I grow lots of veggies with chocolate in the name, including Cherokee Chocolate tomato, Chocolate Habanero pepper and Chocolate sweet bell pepper, so I thought it would be fun to combine all of them in one area and have a chocolate garden. I'll start a post on ideas for a chocolate garden later. Right now, fire dept. duty calls. Dawn

I very recently identified amaranth and purslane as two greens I want to add to my garden. My Asian neighbors (who speak very little English) have enviable swaths of amaranth growing in full sun and full shade. I'm on the hunt for seeds :-)