Topics for March
Mary Sue Ittner (Sun, 23 Feb 2003 08:22:25 PST)

Dear All,

Here is the early announcement of the topics for March. I have promised
introductions for some other topics in the wings, but March is not a good
time for the introducers so I am including in March some topics that I can
easily introduce without a lot of research and which I hope a lot of people
will help discuss.

March 1 --Allium with Mark McDonough
March 2 --Favorite Sources of Bulbs and Seeds
March 3 & 4--Bulbs for Mediterranean Climates

Please start thinking ahead of your contributions for these topics.

Lauw had suggested that I split up Mediterranean Climates into cool and
warm. But the more I thought about it the more conflicted I got. He added
citrus trees as an indicator for warm and olive trees for cool. As I
thought about it, it seems to me that you could divide them by rainfall, by
winter temperatures and by summer temperatures. So my compromise is to have
it be a topic for two weeks. Hopefully we will hear from South Africa, from
Australia, from Northern California, from Southern California, from France,
and from any other place that has a microclimate with a mild wet winter and
a moderate to warm dry summer. This will be a continuation of what we
started with Bulbs for the Pacific Northwest where participants share what
can be grown in the ground without a lot of special care. I am giving you
all extra warning on this so you can think ahead about describing your
garden and what you have been successful with. I'll explain it again when
we discuss it.

Boyce Tankersley is willing to start us off on a topic later called Bulbs
for the upper midwest USA/south central Canada. I'd like to do this once a
month until we have exhausted the possibilities. So I welcome volunteers
for other areas (Continental?, the Southern US?, Northeast?). It seems to
me that a natural extension of Robin's topic for the upcoming week would be
a discussion of Bulbs for the UK, but perhaps that is too broad as well. If
you are willing to start the topic of Bulbs for your area in the hopes of
getting others to share what works for them, let me know privately.

Mary Sue