Ga. agriculture department offers seed help

Q: Do you have a seed exchange to recommend for annuals and perennials (not including vegetables) that will do well in metro Atlanta?

JON McKENNA, Tucker

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WALTER REEVES/Special

Coneflower is one of the many common garden flowers whose seeds are easy to collect and exchange.

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• Listen to Walter Reeves Saturday mornings on NewsTalk 750 WSB-AM from 6 to 10. Call 404-872-0750 to ask questions.
• His Web site, walterreeves.com, contains thousands of answers to lawn and landscape questions. Watch "Gardening in Georgia" each week on GPB. Details at gardeningingeorgia.com.

A: I recently talked to a lady in Armuchee who has sold flower seed through the Georgia Department of Agriculture’s Farmers and Consumers Market Bulletin for several years. She says she does it mostly as a hobby because she is “crazy about flowers” and likes to correspond with other gardeners. I found more than 50 listings of flower seed the last time I looked at xrl.us/MARKETBULLETIN.

Q: I’m planning a 1,000-foot-long nature trail for my Eagle Scout project. You say on your Web site that I need 20 cubic feet of mulch for every 10 feet of a 6-foot-wide trail. How deep will that amount of mulch cover?

DANIEL CHEN, Katy, Texas

A: Oh, Daniel! Your math teacher would be distraught to know you couldn’t figure this out. In simple terms, 2 cubic feet of chips will cover the trail 4 inches deep and 6 feet wide for 1 linear foot.

Actually, I think I erred on the excessive side when I wrote my comments several years ago. I now think you could get by with 1 cubic foot of chips per foot of trail, which would make a layer 2 inches thick. An arborist’s chip truck usually holds about 10 cubic yards. I’ll let you do the math on how many truckloads you’ll need.

Q: Over the years we have had a lawn and pest control service and used a mosquito spray around the house. Have the plants or soil been permanently contaminated?

CATHERINE VECCHIO, e-mail

A: I don’t believe there is any contamination. Most modern pesticides have a relatively short half-life (the time it takes for them to break down). If you have concerns about edible plants being affected, soap and water will usually remove pesticide residue.

Q: I want to sell two beautiful, well-established laceleaf Japanese maples. We are moving but cannot take them with us. Do you know of any place to contact?

FRAN ALFI, e-mail

A: According to Japanese maple expert Norm Mittleider, there is a very small market for buying existing trees, no matter how beautiful. Your best bet would be to send an inquiry to several of the larger landscape companies listed at www.maltalandscape.com to determine their interest.

Be prepared to send detailed pictures of the trees, if requested. Unless a company is doing a custom design requiring very mature maples, it will probably not be interested in incurring the moving expenses involved.