My advice, and I've seeded a lot of KBG and other mixes, is this: don't put too much down. It's tough to tell when that is, but I'll try to give you a guideline or two: 1. Go get your toothbrush, and set it on the windowsill, with the bristles sticking upward. Imagine that that's your grass, three weeks after seeding. If your seed comes up that dense, every last grass plant will die, except for the ones on the outside edge, about fifty of them, that can actually get some sunlight. The rest will die. No sun. Too closely packed together. Too much seed got put down, too close together. You even got germination, eh? Too bad. They'll all die, except for the ones that are able to get some sun. So in this example, that's TOO CLOSE TOGETHER, or too much seed in one place. That's obviously one extreme. Let's go to the other extreme. If you plant just a handful of seed, to where the ground is barely speckled with some seed, but you can see all the dirt, with a few white flecks (the grass seed), it's too thin. Each plant will likely come up, and be healthy. But you'll have bare spots, even after the grass sprouts, and the fact that KBG spreads out (over a year) won't make up for the fact that you've got a thin lawn there, and could have done better. That's the other extreme. Here's how to find the middle, that successful middle ground. Keep in mind that this is an APPROACH, a way to get started. Bestlawn's advice, just above, is correct: if the seed maker wants 5lbs of seed to cover about 2000 sq feet, you should measure out 2000 sq ft, and decide that that package will be fully used, in that staked out area. But here's how to get started. You, or somebody in your family, enjoys fried eggs. More than that, you or they enjoy pepper on those eggs. Not scrambled, but fried, over easy. When you put pepper on those eggs, you don't DUMP the pepper, you sprinkle it, moving the pepper shaker, so that a nice, evenly distributed amount of pepper is all over the eggs. You look at it. If there isn't enough pepper, you sprinkle it again, very evenly, perhaps even more lightly, but you're adding more pepper, and when you're done (with that application), you'll look at it. Again. If you moved too fast, you'll even more lightly sprinkle the pepper, evenly, and then you'll look at those eggs, until the pepper is JUST RIGHT, as Goldilocks said. Here's the deal. Don't tell me you don't like pepper on eggs. Somebody does, in your family, or circle of friends. Fix the eggs. I want you to, with the pepper eater at your side, lightly, lightly, sprinkle the pepper on those eggs, evenly, to the VERY POINT, that the pepper eater says "NO. No. That's too much, and I'm not eating those eggs. I could have lived with it, last time, but this last bit you put on there, hey, it's just too much, and I wouldn't eat the eggs. I'm not going to do it. Gimme some new eggs, or take these away." That's it. Take a very good look at those eggs. With evenly distributed black spots, the pepper, and now imagine that that's your dirt, with a bunch of evenly distributed white spots (your KBG seed), at about the same density. Nicely, evenly spaced, but you're only going to apply it up to a certain point. That's it. YOu're there. You're done. Move along, and seed somewhere else.

Hey Kat, I've had a lot of success with other plants which also prefer a cold stratification period by simply placing them into a gallon sized freezer bag along with a standard metro-mix soil or peat that has been ever so slightly dampened along with the seeds. Just let it sit in the fridge for 4-6 weeks. I recommend using sterile items such as a clean bag, new peat/soil and DI water if possible as 4-6 weeks is plenty of time for bacteria or other microbes to spread if there is any contamination.

what commercial supplier of heirloom seeds would you recommend? **** My experience is not as a customer b'c I think I've only purchased less than 30 packs of seed since maybe 1982, LOL, after I moved back East from teaching in Denver at the Med School, and back then, roughly before 1990 it was Seeds Blum and Gleckers and both are out of business, although I've been up close and personal with tomatoes since I was a kid back on the farm and I'll be 69 in June. Triple Sigh. But I've been posting online about tomatoes since 1989 and seen lots of feedback and I do know the owners of most of the more common seed sources. And most helpful was several years ago when here at GW I started Wrong varieties threads and there was a tremendous amount of feedback. And I continue to monitor these issues at the four places where I do read/post. There are several factors that go into choosing commercial sources and they include seeds that are true, seed age/viability, quality of information given about varieties, kinds of varieties offered, service, and seed prices, to name a few. it really does bother me when with any given variety when source A charges $2 for a pack of 30 while source B charges $4, all other factors being somewhat equal. And it really does bother me as well when some folks are attracted to a slick website and ignore what's really important as to all the variables I mentioned above. And no source selling OP varieties has a perfect record on seed purity just b'c of the nature of OP seed production. I also don't think it's critical that a site have pictures of varieties although it's fine if they do. With those caveats I'd suggest the following, somewhat in order: Tomatogrowers.com ( Linda Sapp) SandhillPreservation.com ( Glenn and Linda Drowns) Victoryseeds.com ( Mike Dunton) SSE Public catalog varieties ( seedsavers.org) (Aaron Whaley) Marianne Jones at Mariseeds.com Baker Creek, (rareseeds.com) ( Jere Gettle) Heirloom seeds ( in PA, heirloomseeds.com) ( Tom Hauch) And yes I do know all of the folks mentioned above and have interacted with all of them in one way or another, whether it's sending them varieties for trial or for some as fellow SSE members of yore, etc) And with those above there are close to a couple of thousand varieties available. If anyone wants to go beyond the more commonly offered varieties they should consider joining SSE, not just for requesting seeds from listed SSE members, and there's often a problem there in seed purity so folks should darn well know how to rogue out wrong plants and that comes solely from experience, from the Yearbook where about 4000 varieties are offered, but to help SSE with their mission of seed preservation in general. Lousy run on sentence but I'm sure you get my drift. ( smile) Every one of the above has had problems at one time or another with wrong varieties and/or low germinating seed, except for Sandhill where no seed sold is older than 2 years old, which to me is quite remarkable since Glenn lists about 400 varieties. And I should say that of late Totally Tomatoes has done a much better job but some wrong descriptions still bother me a lot. But they (Jungs) inherited blurbs from the previous owner Wayne Hilton and there are still lots of errors but it looks like most of the seeds are fine these days. I know Gary Ibsen at Tomatofest very well but I do have problems with seed prices there. Yes, I know he sells only organic seed but to me organicness is gained in how one GROWS the plants re edible fruits, not with organic seed per se which to me is more of a personal philosophy statement. Just my personal opinion. But to each his or her own. I'm hearing some good things about Skyfire seeds but don't know them as well. And for sure there are others but you asked me which ones I'd suggest to others as sources to maybe start with and right now I've listed those above. Finally, I've said it before and I'll say it again, each person should know the basic traits of every variety they sow seeds for BEFORE they sow the seeds. And that means plant habit, ind or det, leaf form, PL or RL, fruit color and size and shape. That's the ONLY way that a person will know if the variety they have is correct and it sure would stop a lot of wrong varieties from being traded, which happens quite a bit. Of course the possibility of cross pollination should also be recognized and there's an excellent FAQ on that here at GW, just click on the FAQ at the top of the page and scroll down. Carolyn, who has also decided to stay positive and NOT list the sources she would NOT recommend to others. Sigh.

Your suggestion that some seeds fell below the boulders is a good one, but I examined each seed &, when nothing happened, I did sort of a post-mortem. A couple were mushy mess, a few somehow dried out completely, and a few just did nothing. I probably should have left those that did nothing but I'd pried away the coat. Everything was on the surface of the media. I sprinkled some vermiculite on top, but I accounted for all of the seeds. I suspect I may have been overzealous in my spritzing, leading to rot, but I was trying to compensate for larger particles. Or, the seeds were not great, except my lone survivor. I had much better luck in the mid-Atlantic (of the US--Annapolis, not Bermuda!) and Miami. The climate here is not drastically different from that in Miami, so I didn't expect this much adjustment. But when one can't obtain the supplies to which one is accustomed, difficulties rise. I do not presently have any seeds left. KO & Rinoa both say that they can ship to Mexico successfully (customs officials are tetchy here!), so I'm going to place a few orders soon. I think I may wait until the night time lows are reliably above 70F/21C (they can sometimes dip into the upper 60s), so I don't have to bring anything inside to sit on DVRs. Gritty mix supplies are not available here. I can get reptibark. I can get gravel. Turface seems impossible. I used expanded clay instead. So, I may try germination in a more traditional (dirt) mix. Maria Elena gets good results in seed starter mix. I've yet to find that (the Home Depot here is limited & the grocery/department stores tend to stick all-purpose mixes) here, but I'm going to visit a few nurseries as well. And I should make an effort to stop insisting that practices that served me well enough in different locales will work here. Any thoughts on the one little guy in the pics above that did germinate? It has been in suspended animation for 10 days or so. I spritz him to keep his seed coat from drying out, so it will be easier to shed. Start fertilising? Stop covering? I want to take him out of the tray & put him into a yoghurt-cup-size container, but I have been thinking I should wait for the seed coat to shed first.