I'm in!
Spring is slow coming to zone 6A, and I was the proverbial grasshopper, and not the ant. So I have shamelessly added early bloomers like strawberries and gooseberries, all 17 of my emerging lily sprouts, budding chives and a mail-ordered fig tree photo to the database, and purchased 5 tickets. My cat, Inky, helped by inserting himself into a few photos, and earned me 2 extra gift acorns from a generous member. I don't know how the zone 5 and lower members can earn enough acorns to participate in the early swaps, except to photograph houseplants, indoor seedlings and dormant twigs.
This year, I'm going to hold off on posting all my flower photos, so like the industrious ant, I will have some saved to post during the winter to earn acorns for March and April.

Diana, the photos you enter for the database don't have to be your own plants or your own landscape. You can take plant photos in your plant nurseries, or at your favorite botanical gardens, or even on your drives out and about. Good luck!

There are more ways than just adding a photo to earn acorns.
https://garden.org/special/aco...

Sent you five (used the rest already ).

Thank you Karen and Sue. I had posted some plants I could positively ID from my Quail Gardens (So. Cal.) trip in January, but they seemed to have lost many of their tags. My nearest botanical garden is over 2 hours away. The nearest "nursery" is Walmart, 45 minutes away, and their plants were mush last week after they failed to protect them from the frost. Besides that, the wild plants and those in people's yards refuse to identify themselves.
I'm not really complaining - I just needed to remind myself to hold out some summer acorn earnings for the following spring.
You never know - one of my 5 tickets may be a winner!

Like Sue said, there are so many ways to earn acorns. If you've grown plants in the past, find those plants and post some good comments about them to help others. You can also look in your local papers or online, and post plant events for your area or for any area, for that matter.

Karen, I'm not much of a plant expert, but maybe I'll come up with something useful once in a while. There is a native plant society meeting about 1 1/2 hours from where I live. I cannot ever get to their meetings, but I could post them.
Thank you so much, Debra and Ursula. I didn't mean to beg for acorns, but I will certainly put them to good use.
I wonder if there are some whose gardens are under snow now (personal and botanical), whose nurseries are just now thinking about opening, who might find scrounging for acorns even more challenging, who could use some, even if they are not new members.
I will share 5 of my newly acquired acorns with each of the first 3 requests from zones colder than 6A.

Diana if you have some interesting plant photos but don't know the names, post them individually here and others can help to identify them for you.
https://garden.org/forums/view...

Also Diana you can post pictures from previous years as long as they haven't been posted before.

Frenchy21 said:Also Diana you can post pictures from previous years as long as they haven't been posted before.

I'm sure many will benefit from that suggestion. When I joined last year, posted everything I had from the last 3 years. The rest had already disappeared with a cell phone that fell out of my pocket into the Pacific Ocean. Then my phone died (just as they were about to shut down the "cloud" backup service, as luck would have it) and took the rest of my pictures with it. Fortunately, I had sent family and friend pictures back to them. Also, I had posted my best dog and cat pictures on the "Mindless Chatter" thread in the iris forum, where I go back and view them occasionally. Given my luck with phones, this site has been very beneficial: I had posted most of the flower photos that were on that phone in this database before the phone kicked the bucket.
I have used the plant ID service, and found my 2 cacti and one probable orchid ID (but it is not in the database, and I hate to ask for a new addition for a maybe). My oak couldn't be IDed due to lack of acorns - how ironic.

Wow, this post has been very informative. On ways to earn se acorns. I have been in the hospital 3 times since last fall so have fallen behind on my gardening. I didn't realize I could use past years photos. I have s bunch saved on my computer and no I have never posted them before. And I just remember lots of others from vacations a few years ago. How much more time on the not s raffel raffel do we we have left?

Hi Colleen, I wondered what had happened to you! Hopefully you're well now!
The buying window closes at 7pm Central time on the 19th. The drawing is the next day. Good luck if you enter!

Agoo said: How much more time on the not s raffel raffel do we we have left?

"ticket buying window will close on April 19th at 7:00pm Central time"

@Agoo
Glad you benefited from the information shared here. I know you didn't ask for acorns, but you are the first to respond from a zone colder than mine, you've certainly had some set-backs and the drawing is less than 4 days away, so I sent you 5 acorns.
That's great that you have lots of photos to post - you'll need acorns for May, too, unless you win the 100 acorns!

Thank you all for the info on the raffels. Also, thank you DraDion thank you very much for the acorns

Don't forget comments - they will get you an acorn and are a great addition to the database.

lauribob said:Don't forget comments - they will get you an acorn and are a great addition to the database.

What? You mean when you comment on a database photo, you earn an acorn?

I have hundreds of acorns but can't use them in the raffles as I'm outside the US.

joannakat said:

What? You mean when you comment on a database photo, you earn an acorn?

No, not on a photo, on a plant entry.

https://garden.org/special/aco...

@kniphofia -Sue, you (and others) are always most generous with your acorns. I know how nice it was to receive some from you when I first decided to play NARR. And then imagine winning 3 NARRs in a row. It's crazy! Now I'm happy to just toss acorns. It must be my inner squirrel.