Hi Mary Sue, Many thanks for your advice. Can I assume the best time to repot these delphiniums is going to be at the end of this summer, before they wake up again? I'll definitely keep them in pots a year or two before putting them outside. Your comments about timing of seed sowing are interesting. Until fairly recently I've been a member of the sow as soon as cleaned or received school. I still tend to do this with my own fresh seed but have started holding back seed received at other times. Seed from Goteborg always arrives in February and I held this in the fridge over the summer and sowed it this September, together with seed received over the summer from Jim Archibald. This has worked and the seeds that I would expect to germinate in the fall are doing so now. Nothing would have been gained by sowing them as received, and they'd have had to come through the summer in pots. Ron Ratko's seed is harder to judge because in some cases I don't know the natural germination times and his seed usually arrives just after Christmas. I'm torn between getting germination and saving a year (but often getting poor first year germination, a short time above ground and a smaller bulb to nurse through the summer, followed by complete germination the following year) and holding the seeds back. In some cases sowing as soon as received works very well, e.g. Lewisia, some erythroniums. I think I need to be more selective. About 30 of 35 packets received from the Cyclamen Society and sown in November 2004 have just germinated, along with virtually all of my freshly sown 2005 cyclamen collections. Seed of Iris atropurpurea collected in 1992 gave me one seedling last year and two more this year, and a bunch of Iris koreana, odesaensis and attica, and some of my freshly sown Alliums are also up. This year I put my pots of Scilla lingulata vars outside in flower and got good seed set for the first time ever, and that seed was ripe within weeks, as is seed of Narcissus serotinus from this fall's flowering. The speed at which they ripen never ceases to amaze me! Best, J. John T Lonsdale PhD 407 Edgewood Drive, Exton, Pennsylvania 19341, USA Home: 610 594 9232 Cell: 484 678 9856 Fax: 801 327 1266 Visit "Edgewood" - The Lonsdale Garden at http://www.edgewoodgardens.net/ USDA Zone 6b