Now is the time to plan your garden

Now is the time to plan your garden

Nothing tastes better than than fruits and vegetables that you grow yourself and you can usually save some money also.

If you grow from seeds, the packages usually tell you when it is best to plant depending on which frost zone you are in. It also tells you how many days approximately it takes to bear something to eat.

A seed catalog usually has that information all in one place. Your county agricultural office may have a pamphlet. The internet has information. Sometimes the store where you buy seeds may have flyers or spare catalogs. A lot of information is on the seed envelope.

Some plants can be started indoors so that when the warmer weather comes and there is little chance of frost you can transplant into the ground. Tomatoes and peppers are good choices to grow indoors early so that they can be trnsplanted as soon as the frost is over in your zone. Some people will plant herbs or even tomatoes in a planter indoors and move it outdoors in the summer. Some tomato varieties can grow huge with tomatoes weighing several pounds each so be sure to read the envelopes.

Some types of plants you may have enough seeds for several years and they will stay fresh if you follow the instructions on the envelope. Some types of plants, you may use all of the seeds in a season or may need several packages of the same depending on the size of the planting area and how many plants you want.

Many people skip the seeds for the most part and start their gardens when the frost disappears with live plants bought at their garden center. Usually the plants are sold by the half dozen,

Now is the time to start planning your garden. If you are going to start seeds indoors you should purchase your seeds within the next couple of weeks. Follow the instructions on the envelope.

We have no eCommerce website right now

We have no eCommerce website right now

We closed our ecommerce gift shop VSQI Gifts as of Decmber 31, 2006 Our Internet provider refused to back up our logs which is something they have accomplished for us since we started in 2002.Not backing up our logs froze our website from any update by customers trying to place things into our shopping cart or even adding their name and address to our mailing list. We could not even update the website with new products or prices. The integrity of the Microsoft SQL server database which they used to store our products, customer, and sales information is based on the logs. When the logs are full, no additional update is allowed until the logs are backed up. The logs are used for backing up the databases and in case of failure for recovery. To see messages about the logs, please look at the previous entry in this blog.

I called tech support to back up the logs and they refused. I wrote emails and they still refused. I begged them and they refused.

Since 2002 when I began, I spent about $20,000 dollars with them for the website, website monthly service fees, thousands of catalogs and brochures, merchandise, shipping fees, and sales taxes to California and Arizona. I was in good standing with them and was even designated "Superseller" all of those years.

As you can imagine my Christmas 2006 sales hit rock bottom and this is the time when all gift shops depend on most of their sales for the year.

They are the 500 pound gorilla and they really did a number on my investment with them, and my other investments in the business such as internet directory fees, pay per click payments, ads in local shopper newspapers and VALPACK, business cards, sales postcards, promotional gifts, mailbox at a UPS Store, business insurance, rubber stamps, flyers, flea market table fees and transportation roundtrip, monthly cable internet service, business phone and fax service, post office fees, local Chamber of Commerce fees, and many others.

I also paid and attended a webmaster course and also a SEO course. i also joined the Kean University Small Business Administration and attended numerous seminars and consultant sessions.

As a gentleman I cannot tell you what I think of them or how mad I am, but I think you can imagine it. I think they origenally misrepresented or fraudulantly presented the opportunity with me as they said I did not have to be technical with the website. In 2002, they turned over to me a dead website. I called them and told them I had no visitors to my website. They told me I needed to register with search engines and directories and they could do it for me for $150. I agreed and waited a couple of weeks. I still had no visitors, but 'VSQI Gifts' was a searchable keyword at this time. The problem was no-one knew my company name. I called tech support again and asked when the search engines would index my sight so that potential customers could find me for my 3,000 products. They told me I needed meta tags and they could do it for another extra fee. I haven't generated any money and they are draining me of more and more of my limitted cash. I decided to take the webmaster course at that time.

I could go on and on about them, but I need to get on with my life. I am sorry we are no longer currently in business. We overcame major obstacles and learned plenty. I think we did well despite working on a shoestring. I do not know when, but we will come back with new merchandise from other vendors and a new website, I think we will be able to serve our customers with better merchandise and a better website experience. I want to thank all of our customers.

Please visit this blog for shopping advice and hopefully some fun things. We will let everyone know when we come back with our shopping website.