Seedlings

If Willard Horner Sr. and Willard Jr. can produce successful crops of eggplant on 15 acres, it seems illogical that my gardening partner and I can't manage to keep even six plants in good shape through the summer. When we started gardening 15 years ago, it was a breeze. We had eggplant coming out of our ears. We fried it and froze it until we never wanted to see it again. During the last few summers, however, the plants have looked wonderful until about the beginning of July.

Tomorrow is Arbor Day, and in the spirit of this annual celebration of tree planting, groups and municipalities are urging citizens to "green up" their communities. In the name of Arbor Day, tree enthusiasts will be selling seedlings. Their greatest hope, nature and man willing, is that the seedling sold today will be a lofty shade or fragrant flowering tree in years to come. "When you plant a tree today, you're really planting it for future generations," said Robert Montgomery Jr., chairman of the Abington Township Environmental Advisory Council.

Across 10 snow-covered acres of the New Jersey Pine Barrens last weekend, 75 Brownies and bikers, Pioneers and students - all volunteers - dug into the drenched soil and planted 10,000 yellow pine seedlings that they hoped would become 70-foot trees. Eight Brownies from Eastampton's Troop 332 planted 500 of the foot-high, one-year-old seedlings. Three AT&T Pioneers, members of a service group of retired and veteran employees, teamed up to root more than 600 of the wispy, leggy seedlings.

Q: We have two cats, and I need some suggestions on how to get them to leave the houseplants alone. A: Give your cats their own plants and make yours harder to get to. That way you can both be happy. For your cat's chewing pleasure, always keep a pot of tender grass seedlings - rye, alfalfa and wheat - growing in a sunny spot. Parsley and thyme are herbs that many cats enjoy smelling and chewing, and both can be grown indoors. Catnip is a natural, but the herb is so appealing to some cats that they just won't leave it alone.

Although the 20th anniversary of Earth Day is not until April 22, the State Forestry Service isn't waiting until that time to celebrate. Begun two decades ago to make people more aware of the environment, Earth Day is frequently celebrated with local cleanup efforts. But in the Lebanon State Forest in Pemberton and Woodland Townships, Earth Day will be marked by planting trees - up to 200,000 of them. To get all those seedlings planted, state forestry officials are asking residents and groups to help them Saturday at the Lebanon site.

Early morning is the best time to hold teachers workshops because that's the time of day when teachers are best prepared to learn, some educators say. But what to do with the students while their teachers are in the classroom is often a headache for working parents. After studying the issue for some time, the Wallingford-Swarthmore School District thinks it has found a scheduling solution: a child-care program called the Seedlings. "When we asked George (Slick, the superintendent)

When Alice Szarek showed up for a meeting with a basket full of pepper seedlings in late April, I figured I had to find out more about her gardening activities. "Our family," she said, "is mad about peppers. We use them fresh in salads, stuffed and fried, but most of all, we love to char them on the barbecue. I even freeze a whole lot so we can have them throughout the winter. " Szarek has been growing peppers in Bucks County with her husband, Bob, for several years, but this year things got out of control.

Sow seeds of petunias , tender geraniums, impatiens and begonias indoors. Warmth is essential - 75 degrees day and night is recommended. Good light is necessary, too. A system of fluorescent lights that can be moved up and down is best. Try to keep the tops of the seedlings 3 inches from the lights; as they grow, raise the lights. (Alternate strategy: Place the seedlings on a stack of bricks or cigar boxes; as they grow, remove a layer at a time.) Sow leek seeds in a flat. Cool potting medium is OK. When seedlings are an inch or so tall, thin to an inch apart.

Penny Harris, a painter, flower arranger and gardener, is passionate about poppies, and around this time of year she's getting ready to sow seeds for next year's crop. "Poppy flowers come in so many beautiful colors," says Harris, "and the tissue-paperlike texture of blooms makes them especially appealing to me. " In May and June, if you visit the garden that Harris and her husband, Nick, tend in Chestnut Hill, you'll hear several other reasons why Penny Harris loves poppies. "Look what happens when there's a breeze - those poppies look just like butterflies," she said.

Tasha Nero saw a worm wiggling in the dirt yesterday as she tried to plant a flower in front of John Hancock Public School in Northeast Philadelphia. The 10-year-old and the worm ignored each other, content to let the other do its and her thing. "I am not afraid of worms," said Tasha, a fourth-grader. "The worms help the plants grow. " Promoting a policy of peaceful coexistence between worms and girls is not a benefit that the Philadelphia Board of Realtors considered when it began a program in 1987 to teach schoolchildren the value of beautifying property in a neighborhood.

Q: We have two cats, and I need some suggestions on how to get them to leave the houseplants alone. A: Give your cats their own plants and make yours harder to get to. That way you can both be happy. For your cat's chewing pleasure, always keep a pot of tender grass seedlings - rye, alfalfa and wheat - growing in a sunny spot. Parsley and thyme are herbs that many cats enjoy smelling and chewing, and both can be grown indoors. Catnip is a natural, but the herb is so appealing to some cats that they just won't leave it alone.

The fifth graders at Elwood Kindle Elementary School in Pitman spent months digging up the history of the chestnut tree before planting two seedlings bred specifically for longevity. But it was much quicker for someone to yank the fledgling two-foot trees from the ground and uproot the environmental project. The two chestnut trees, planted in May as part of a fifth-grade science project and national competition, were discovered missing Friday after a student scheduled to tend them visited school grounds.

  SEQUOIA NATIONAL PARK, Calif. - On a clear day, the view from Beetle Rock in Sequoia National Park extends west for 105 miles across the patchwork of crops in California's agricultural heartland to the Coast Mountains and the Pacific Ocean beyond. The problem is there are few clear days, even at 6,200 feet. The Sierra Nevada forest that is home to the biggest and among the oldest living things on earth - the giant Sequoia redwoods - also suffers a dubious distinction.

Sow seeds of petunias , tender geraniums, impatiens and begonias indoors. Warmth is essential - 75 degrees day and night is recommended. Good light is necessary, too. A system of fluorescent lights that can be moved up and down is best. Try to keep the tops of the seedlings 3 inches from the lights; as they grow, raise the lights. (Alternate strategy: Place the seedlings on a stack of bricks or cigar boxes; as they grow, remove a layer at a time.) Sow leek seeds in a flat. Cool potting medium is OK. When seedlings are an inch or so tall, thin to an inch apart.

Question: My six rose of Sharon shrubs drop so many seeds, which ultimately germinate into hundreds of little seedlings. I try to cultivate the ground in the bed every couple of days. I put down Preen. I put down mulch. It takes me hours to weed this bed. What else should I do? - Marie Klincewicz Answer: Ah the fecundity of Hibiscus syriacus, also known as rose of Sharon or, in my Southern youth, althea (accent on the first syllable). Get ahead of the seedlings by deadheading the plants before the seeds mature - remove the seedpods when the flowers fade, or some time in the fall.

Trees die, but promises live on. More than 300 years ago, a peace treaty of friendship was formed between William Penn and Chief Tamanead of the Lenape turtle clan beneath a picturesque elm tree in what is now Penn Treaty Park on Delaware Avenue in Fishtown. Although there are no historical records of the meeting, the tree, famous from a 1771 painting by Benjamin West, stood as a beacon of equality and togetherness until March, 5, 1810, when a storm pulled its roots from the ground.

Pity the poor dandelion. Loathed by lawn-lovers and farmers, dissed by plant experts, even cursed by home gardeners, it is, in the words of Nicole Wilson, "definitely a loser. " Which makes this audaciously romantic young artist love it all the more. Wilson, 21, sees beauty and metaphor in this horticultural outcast and, with the luxury of time and youth, spent weeks pondering the impenetrable: How to make the unloved loved? How to help others see beauty in the unbeautiful?

The sights and sounds of Puerto Rico come to the Camden Children's Garden during the annual Festival de Aibonito on Saturday. From noon to 4 p.m. visitors can learn through activities such as creating their own Taino body stamps, Vejigante masks, and "Greetings From Puerto Rico" postcards. Visitors can also plant seedlings and take them home to grow. There will be a dance performance by La Estaci?n M?gica, a group from the city of Aibonito in Puerto Rico. Festival de Aibonito, noon to 4 p.m. Saturday at Camden Children's Garden, 3 Riverside Dr., Camden.

For most local gardeners, late spring signals a full release from winter's purgatory. In comes the daily ritual of watching for the first peony, the first rose, the first hovering hummingbird. For me, after seven years of gardening - much of it marked by a neophyte's craving for every new plant I came across - the season just lays out evidence of chronic overpurchasing. Some plants have died; many flourished. I have a bleeding heart that now attains the size of a small apartment building each May and then drops seeds that go forth and multiply.