Free Tomato Seeds From Campbells

.
.
Campbells is giving away free tomato seeds until June 21, 2009 or while supplies last, as a part of its Help Grow Your Soup campaign .

Campbell's will also make a contribution of 100 tomato seeds to National FFA Organization when you request yours. You have to enter a code from the label, but I'm sure there are many already scattered across the net if you don't have any in your cupboard.

Have patience as it's a flash program and mine took forever to load. Then again, I have a dinosaur of a comp, so your load time may vary.

This came at an awesome time for me as my stash of seed isn't so much a stash any more. This year's garden will probably clean me out of saved seed.
Now I'll be able to grow some toms next year, at least. Yay for preserving spaghetti sauce! (and anything else I can get my hands on. lol)

Seeds Sown And A First Haircut

...

No, not a haircut for a kid (the last first one of those was 17 years ago). For the onions.
:)
They're so cute!

I sowed the cole crop seeds today:
Broccoli
Cabbage
Brussel Sprouts (I'm hoping the weather cooperates for them a bit better this year)
and Cauliflower

There's still two more weeks to go before I can get the pepper and tom seeds started.
~sigh~ It's so hard to wait!
Crap - they're already getting these plants in the ground down south.
Yes, zone envy rears its ugly head. Even Flighty is seeing lots of green!
My ground? White, frozen, undigable and depressing.

Total WS jugs to date = 21 (yes, I'm a slacker)

A quick aside:
Trudi, at Wintersown.org, has changed how people have to go about getting the free seed offer. As of tomorrow, March 1, you have to print out a dated page and send it with the SASE postmarked within a week of that date to get them. Really, I understand her reasoning and people who take advantage of these offers suck, but what are you suppose to do if you don't have a printer? (like, right now, I have no ink, and at $20ish a pop, I won't be getting any soon!) This may leave some of those that are very deserving of these offers with no way to get them.
:(

Oh! And I'm going to do the 'Hay Bale Gardening' this year as an experiment. Our neighbor is getting rid of a bunch of them that are already degrading, so yay! I can't wait - like I need something else to obsess over.

...

December 18th Is Free Shipping Day

Thursday, December 18th, 2008 is Free Shipping Day.
It's a day when participating merchants give free shipping to online shoppers with guaranteed delivery by Christmas Eve.

All you procrastinators get to save some bucks.

Hmmm, where's all the gardening stuff? (I guess you could always give gardening books). Come on guys, get with the program and get on the bandwagon! Shopping for seeds, bulbs, tools and supplies with free shipping - what could be better?

lol, this from someone who doesn't even shop online.
Have fun, y'all.

Books Online

.
I've been searching around on Google's book search a lot lately. It's a fantastic thing for people, like me, who can't afford books or who don't have easy weekly (or even monthly) access to their local libraries.

I've been perusing this today: Perennial Combinations: Stunning Combinations that Make Your Garden Look Fantastic Right From The Start

I read through some of this one -- A WOMAN' SHARDY GARDEN
BY, HELENA RUTHERFURD ELY, 1903 -- and, my, how some things have changed and some stayed so much the same!

(before reading this excerpt, keep in mind that these prices are per hundred)

It will be seen, from the following list, that such borders can easily be made and planted at a cost of less than thirty dollars.

Tulips
$0 .80
Narcissi
.65
Daffodils
1. 25
Hyacinths
4 .00
Peonies
1 .40
Columbines
1 .50
Delphinium Formosum
1 .25
Delphinium Coelestina
2 .50
Phlox
1.50
Tiger Lilies
.60
Auratum
.85
Lilium rubrum
. 85
Lilium candidum
1 .50
Japanese Iris
1 .25
Iris Germanica
1 .00
Chrysanthemums
1 .50
Flower seeds
1 .00
Three days' work, at $1.50 per day
4 .50
Manure
1.50

Total
$29.40

In 1903, that was a ridiculous amount of money to spend on flowers!

"Many people have the mistaken idea that a flower garden, however small, is an expensive luxury."

And yes, in 2008, for many, it still is. Obviously, this woman had never had to worry about putting food on her table. Well, socialites didn't in that day and age, did they? Heh, I suppose they still don't, but just how many of them are into gardening in this day and age?

Now, if Google would only put up some fun things like The After-Dinner Gardening Book.

And More Free Seeds

Join the Hunt for Bees. By watching and recording the bees at sunflowers in your garden, you can help us understand the challenges that bees are facing.

Join The Great Sunflower Project and they will send you some free seeds to get you started.

There are four steps:

Sign up and plant your sunflower
Describe your garden
Time how long it takes 5 bees to visit your sunflower plant
Enter your data online or send us your form

Win $50 Worth Of Seeds

Midnight Gardener:
"The seed giveaway is officially underway.
Every person that signs up for my forum will be entered into a drawing for fifty dollars (US) of seed."

The seed giveaway rules:
1. You must be a registered forum member to be eligible to win.
2. You must make at least on post during the duration of the contest.
3 There are no age limits for entering.
4. You must use a valid email address when creating your account.

There is no cost to enter this drawing, it is completely free.
The winner will be chosen May 1st, 2008.

And Even More Free Seed

Free Seeds from TreeDazzled

Currently we are shipping giant sequoia (sequoiadendron giganteum) and sugar pine (pinus lambertiana) seeds. However, the seeds on offer may change without warning.

Wish I could grow them here.

More Free Seed

I adore Burt's Bees. They sell all natural items, of which I've received free samples, and loved them! If I could, I'd buy everything from them exclusively and skip the drug store entirely.

And now they are trying to do something good for the bees by giving away free seed. Go request yours!

Free Candy Bar

I hate chocolate, but for all you weirdo people who like it here's the link for A Free Nestlé Crunch Crisp

Offer good daily between 9:00am-5:00pm (PT) whilesupplies last.

Free Seeds

I waited to see if I'd get them before passing on the link.

They arrived yesterday, so here's the link for some free Peppermint and Chamomile seeds included in Celestial Seasonings Herbal Expedition Kit.

Oh - and 12 more milk jugs out, so my Winter Sowing container count is now at 48. Woohoo!
:)

The Willow Garden

When I came across this site a few days ago, my nose instantly threw itself to just inches from the screen.

The Willow Garden - What a beautiful Nova Scotia garden! I can just imagine strolling slowly along those paths, exclaiming and drooling over bloom after bloom. The Rhododendrons are absolutely stunning!

All the gorgeous photos remind me that this fluffy white crap will eventually retreat to somewhere and all will be green and blooming once again. And the pics on the Garden Developments page engourages my patience quota, of which there seems to be so little as of late.

Maybe it was envy overload, but once I reached the Saved Seeds page my brain came to a standstill. "They are FREE to good homes." Huh? Whatcha mean free?

I assumed I must have been reading something wrong. Yup, I was thoroughly confused. I couldn't imagine the expense they would incur in such a 'sharing' endeavor!

Off went an email. Sharon responded almost immediately, assuring me I had retained my reading comprehension skills. They were, indeed, free.

So here I am, patiently (ha!) waiting to start some more experimenting this year. Wow, I might actaully end up with a landscape worth ahhing and oohing over. Or at the least, one that is finally something I'm proud of.

If you have the time, give this site (and all those fabulous pics) a good look-see. It's worth it!

Simply Simple

The first and simplest emotion which we discover in the human mind, is curiosity.-- Edmund Burke

I believe him. I'm obviously more simple than the average bear. And sometimes (ok, 90% of the time) it's my downfall. I can't help it...I want to know why, when, where and how that plant grows. Ick, I sound like a garden reporter. At least, thanks to the internet, I don't have to haunt the library, only getting the 'experts' views on everything. I can get hands-on-been-there-done-that from real people. With pictures even!

I discovered a casualty in the front flowerbed this weekend; the white rose my SIL bought me at a Dollar Shop sale in the spring. Though the magnifying glass didn't uncover much forensic evidence, I suspect the local no-gooders. Why are they messing with me, for Pete sake? I'm not the one dressed in orange, stealing stealthily through the naked woods with gun slung across my back to have an 8 point trophy adorning my living room wall! I'm quite happy to leave their heads attatched to their bodies. Maybe just knock a few teeth out.

There was only one decimated cane, but still, it broke my heart. So, in it came and promptly got pruned into 3 cuttings, plopped into some potting soil, sealed in a soda bottle, wrapped in an enigma...

I'm crossing my fingers, though I don't hold out much hope. Hey, it's still sending out leaves, so there's hope, right? Right? (I am soooo ignoring you nay-sayers right now).

SIL informed me yesterday (yes, the same that buys me plants I love, which either get destroyed with no evidence of why, or defiantly croak on me, also with no evidence of why) that someone in town had a huge gob of potted mums in the trash pile for Monday's yard waste pickup.

Say what?
D gave her the 'Why do you have to tell her this stuff' look and sighed. Of course, she smiled triumphantly and proceeded to tell me where. Now, if I had been driving we would have made it in time, but no, D had to dawdle and I missed the pots. The neighbor dumped the mums upside down uncerimoniously and swiped them to use as protection for...something.

But - I got the mums! Happy dance! Woohooooo! All mine baby, all mine! Broken and trampled, but mine.
The bad, bad wasters (I can't help it - they are!) left a bunch of gourds and pumpkins too, in perfect condition no less, but I wasn't sure if they were the cooking kind or not. Can you cook and consume any pumpkin? See, now I think I should have snatched those too! And I could have made bird houses and feeders from the gourds!! Damn!! Can you hear me smashing my head on the desk? Well, there wasn't any more room in the trunk anyway?

I wonder what time the town starts the pickup in that area...