Thanks Grand... I went crazy hybridizing petunias last year. I crossed the best; marked the stems to keep track of the pods and harvested carefully. Very happy with all the work I did...well, except for one thing. ..None of those seeds germinated! Sorry Grand, I just reread your post. You said BUY hybrids. You are no doubt correct about that. It's this variety of petunia, has to be. A petunia that is just plain easy and eager to germinate. I am not complaining. I love my volunteers. And there is a great feeling once the final volunteers have been relocated or given away. Of all the volunteers I get there are only 5 most sacred that I try to save every one:1. Yvonne's salvia, 2. Petunias, 3. Guaras, 4. Black-eyed Susans and 5. coreposis. (Well actually, also a certain Shasta and small flowered zinnia and Pentas :-) ). On the other hand I pull all Four o'clocks, and Maximilian sunflowers and most ruellia and Texas sage salvia. Thanks for the link, Bob This post was edited by bugbite on Wed, Feb 26, 14 at 14:49

Claudia, most of mine are on or beside the back deck, which faces toward the east (slightly southeast). Since they choose to come up very freely in the planters and pots back there I assume they are happy with that exposure. They do get direct sun for part of the day there but it is morning sun, not the blazing afternoon light. This year they also came up in my part shade bed for the first time and some even appeared under some towering cosmos where they couldn't have been getting much light. I didn't even know they were there until I cleared the cosmos a bit. I consider them a "bright shade" plant and wouldn't put them in full sun even though one has recently popped up in the front of my aster bed where it has full sun all day. Go figure. Probably the trick to having torenia reseed is not to be too religious about deadheading. It's one of the few plants whose spent blooms do not make me itch to remove them so they get overlooked when it comes to grooming. Heaven knows there are enough other ones that MUST be seen to! Since I absolutely love finding the torenia popping up all over that works out very well. If you don't mind that they are several generations away from named varieties, Claudia, I'd be happy to see if I can catch you some seeds. I have at least two purples with yellow - both have dark purple markings but one has a white background where the other is a lighter purple.

Dear All, thank you very much for your suggestions and tips for growing drought resistant/tolerant vegetables and varieties. I am busy in reading all your posts and simultaneously taking notes on the varieties to order. Its looks i not have all those varieties recommended expect couple of tomatoes. I am going to look at my seed stock filled in 3 big storage boxes before I place order. Jay, Thanks for your suggestion on NuMex chillies. I am going to order couple of varieties, by the way which is your best flavored chilly? I too often see that doughnut hole around our property in radar. I hope growing condition will turn better for this year. I love see my garden looks like jungle! Last year was really bad tomato year, but we have good harvest in the fall from fourth of july and sweet million. I will look for those new tomatoes you and Dwan suggested in seeds catalog and online. I am growing only dixondale this year but I love to hear back from you on your new and drought resistant onions. Thanks for all those points, I still feel a newbie when I read post here, so much to learn! I will keep experimenting with new varieties and note down good performer every year and tally those with climate, I guess may need many year to chose best for my garden... long way to go. Dawn, Wow that is awesome list to try! Growing less water drinking vegetable is to cut down water bill while not sacrificing yield. I also learned that water use efficient (less water drinking) vegetables and/or varieties have more flavor and taste and high nutrient that their counter parts which consume more water. This I also noticed last year with eggplants and chilli. Paula's Mild Jalapeno which was grown under less-frequent-watered-bed has stronger flavor than one that grown in bed which received more water. I try short DTMs and start as early as possible. This is already pushing to start my starts this weekend. I need go thorough each and every variety your suggested. By the way, I have not much success with broccoli and cabbage in the last years. But I am trying again this year with some row cover to check my luck. I will check Willhite and SESE. Yep that is true, most herbs did pretty well last year. Fowler Bush Bean sounds good. Dawn, you are right, I almost forgotten about the wind and hail tolerant variates, you know how much garden trashed by wind and hail last year. Carol and Dorothy, Thank you, I am envy on your rainfall pattern. Even thought you may not be growing drought tolerant varieties, but you always very nice trips and tricks to deal with problems. Dorothy, I am glad to know new salad mix of violets, burnet and swisschard. Carol,I know guys love eggplants, I bought few new types of eggplants from India, please let me know if you want some seeds or I will grow few extra plants for you and share with you later. All these are Indian types (drought resistant), but not sure how they will do here in OK. George, I will try you Fowler Bush Bean as well as Woody Mountain Crazy Bean. How is their flavor of these beans in comparison to blue lake? Yes yard long are must to grow, we had great harvest last year with out much care or watering. Any good recommendation on yard long bean with respect to flavor and production? I glad to know you are belong to SSE We love yard long beans, Priya makes curry and subji with very tender long beans and they also great for still fry. By the way, is there any difference between yard long and asparagus been? By the we not have any problem with large animals but bugs, the only two bugs I am afraid of with are squash bugs and borers. Seedmama, Thanks for offer, if you have extra, I love to have some. Hmm Bean called "Tepary"? you know the meaning my village local slang for "Rough and Tough" Lets grow that one as well. Thanks again for all these wonderful suggestion tips. Cheers -Chandra

The best survivor on our property was Gomphrena (Globe amaranth) "Strawberry Fields". We have received slightly over 14" of rain in 2011 and it has received no irrigation because it is 300' from the house. The gomphrena bloomed all summer long, finally dying out last week. Other really tough plants that did well all year but received some irrigation are these: four o'clocks, portulaca, Texas hummingbird sage, autumn sage, 'Laura Bush' petunia, datura, verbena bonariensis, malva sylvestris 'Zebrina' and 'Mystic Merlin', morning glories, Texas Red Star Hibiscus and Swamp Mallow (but only because the Mallow received steady irrigation). The trumpet creeper vines that received some water near the house bloomed all summer long, but the trumpet creeper and American Cross Vine that were too far from the house to irrigate hung on and survived but haven't bloomed very well. The coral honeysuckle 'Pink Lemonade' looked good until about mid-August but has gone downhill since then. I'm not sure it will survive if rain doesn't fall soon. All the pasture grasses dried and either went dormant or died. The Johnson grass, which is a horrible weed just about as annoying as bermuda grass, lasted longest and I doubt any of it is actually dead though it definitely is dormant. The bermuda grass around the house didn't die, but didn't look good even though it received some irrigation. With a lot of the trees in the woodland that have dropped their leaves and gone dormant early, we won't know until next year if they've survived. I think most of the large trees will be fine if it rains some this fall and winter, but a lot of the smaller understory trees may not make it. The hoped-for autumn rains haven't really materialized here although there's been some patchy, scattered showers here and there, so everything is in pretty bad shape. Normally we'll get 3.5 to 4" of rain in September and we've had only 0.7" this month, so everything still looks dry and pitiful and we continue to have grass fires, brush fires and wild fires. Most of our native grasses and plants in the pastures scorched, dried out and went dormant or died this summer. They received no irrigation. The toughest survivors (some of them actually greened up and began blooming after they received 1.2" of rainfall in August) included greenthread daisy, lazy daisy, liatris, goldenrod, native sunflowers and frogfruit. The frogfruit plants in the front pasture lasted all summer, until temps in the 112-115 range finally got to them in early to mid-August, but the frogfruit plants that received a slight amount of moisture in a location close to the wildlife feeding area stayed in bloom until early September. They're still green but aren't blooming. The toughest shrubs were the Burford hollies, native Possumhaw hollies, sumac and southern wax myrtles but they all received some irrigation. The trees that tolerated the drought with the least damage were the native Red Oaks, post oaks, burr oaks, pecan trees (they, along with the native persimmons, did better than anything else), desert willow and chaste tree. The native roughleaf dogwood did fine in partial shade, and not so well in full sun. Older, larger and more well-established trees showed drought stress but little damage. Younger trees stressed much earlier and some have dropped leaves and gone into dormancy early as a drought survival mechanism. Lambsquarters did great even where not irrigated as did, unforunately, the pigweed. Basil, rosemary, catnip and mint held on longer than any of the other herbs, but ultimately the heat and drought killed them. Well, with mint you never really know---we'll see if it comes back next year. In the veggie garden, the tomatoes that produced best were those planted earliest. The plants put in containers in February and carried into the garage at night produced ripe fruit beginning in late April and continuing through late June or early July. The tomato plants put into the ground in earliest April produced very well before the heat got to them in late June or early July. Any tomato plants that went into the ground later than early April didn't set and ripen much fruit before the temps got too hot for fruit set in late May. The container tomatoes that produced well were Big Boy, Better Boy, Husky Red Cherry and Big Beefsteak. The best producers from the early April plantings were Early Goliath, Cluster Goliath, Goliath, JD's Special C-Tex, Gary 'O Sena, SunGold, Ildi, Jaune Flammee', Russian Persimmon, Mountain Magic, Black Cherry and Matt's Wild Cherry. Even though I haven't watered the garden since late July, one SunGold plant has held on stubbornly and survived and is still producing fruit, albeit they are smaller than usual. Their flavor is great too. I've never been impressed with any of the heat-set type tomatoes. They are bred to set fruit in slightly higher temperatures, but their flavor always has been poor in my garden. The best heat-set type I ever grew was Merced, but it was taken off the market a few years ago. Other veggies that produced well in the heat were onions, potatoes and lettuce in the cool-season crop category, and okra, sweet corn, green beans, southern peas, cukes, watermelons, muskmelons and peppers in the warm-season category. Nothing but the okra produced much after I stopped irrigating in July but I had planted everything pretty early so got good early crops. I planted a lot of interesting tomato varieties from Brad Gates' Wild Boar Farms but they went into the ground later than the varieties listed above so didn't get a chance to set many fruit before the heat got to them. I'll try them again next year. I still have lima beans growing in a cattle trough near the barn and they are blooming and setting beans. They have received regular irrigation, and when they are through producing I will replace them with lettuce and other salad greens for winter. Hopefully the arrival of the cold front late yesterday marked the end of summer weather for us down here. Now, if only rain will fall....but none is in our 7-day forecast. We have had some cooler, milder weather in September, but hit 107 earlier this month and it was 102 degrees yesterday before the cold front finally made it this far south. I'm going to overseed the lawn with rye grass today and overseed one pasture with a deer forage mix in the hopes that I can irrigate both of them enough to get the seed to germinate and the plants to grow. We still have a lot of snake activity, with the ones I'm seeing the most lately being the Timber Rattlers and the non-venomous rough green snakes and the racers. So, with the Rattlers out and prowling around, I haven't started any garden cleanup yet. Obviously, with the extreme heat, drought and wildfires, I didn't plant a fall garden at all. I'm ready for October and ready for 2012---assuming rain falls in decent amounts in 2012. The local stores have pansies, ornamental kale, and snapdragons out in the garden centers but it is still too hot to plant them here. I always look at them and then sigh and walk away. Even if I planted any of them, the deer would get them....and I can't blame the deer because they're really hungry. I'll probably plant some amaryllis and paper white bulbs in pots indoors around early November just so I'll have something growing.