Hi Violets_roses Welcome to Garden Web and The Plant Exchange! I thought you might like to know there is no email link on your member page, thus no way to email you. To set up your email link, just go to the bottom on any page here, and click on Member Pages Then click on Edit your Personal Information, Page, and Preferences You will then probably be asked to login in again. Then check the box Allow other users to send you email via forms at our site. That will place a link on your member page, making it handy for traders to reach you. While there editing you might want to also place your state abbreviation in the one box provided for garden zone and location. (see I am zone 5/6 S In) It is beneficial info to have when trading for many reasons. Additionally, there are some traders (myself included) who often do not respond to many posts where the location of the OP is unknown. By putting the state abbreviation in your zone box, it will be listed in your Member Page, and it will also automatically be displayed each time you post. Happy Gardening and trading. Sue

If all you have is balcony space, you can put it in a dark box that won't deteriorate with the weather. A Styrofoam cooler with an open top would be ideal. Put the plant in the cooler, and position it so the open top is against a heated wall. Shim it so the opening is fairly snug to the wall, but not air tight. It does no good to try to keep plants warm by building any sort of shelter unless you have designed it to utilize/trap heat from an extraneous source. For example, if a freezer was 0* f, and you put a cup of water in a cooler and placed the cooler in the freezer, the water in the cup would soon reach 0* ..... not as quickly as it would if it wasn't in the cooler, but the end result would be the same. You're not particularly concerned with keeping the soil from freezing, that's ok; but you ARE concerned with keeping the soil temperature from dropping to a 'killing low'. If you had a garage, you could use a cardboard box in zone 4 or 5 to keep most zone 8 plants alive all winter, simply by overturning the box and covering the plant so the box traps geo-heat coming through the floor. In your case, with the foam cooler or similar, you would be trapping extraneous heat coming through the outside wall. At this point, I don't think it makes a lot of sense to go to any heroic effort to salvage the plant, but you might wish to consider the box thing I mentioned - which doesn't take a lot of effort. Best luck, and Merry Christmas! Al

Thanks for your input! I have had the agastache AND the lavender Munstead in the garden in the past, and not come back, either due to rotting/wetness or cold, or both. So I decided to try them in pots. To be honest, they were already-grown pots purchased locally on sale and from Bluestone Perennials, on sale last year. I love them for cutting. I am pretty sure they are doing fine out in the unheated garage...we water a little every few weeks, that's all. The Chabaud carnations I planted from seed...will bloom this summer. I winter-sowed a bunch of other annuals/perennials a few weeks ago in pots/containers. We still have tons of snow, so it will be a few months before anything gets planted out anyway. :0) Phyl

I am in zone 14 also, although in Sacramento, so we get less wind. We have HOT days all summer, and cool evenings (I love summer evenings in this area of the country :). When we moved into our current house, it had 50(!) rose bushes, which were all really well adapted and seemed to thrive on neglect (of course, they didn't always look the best), so I don't think roses will be a problem for you unless the winds cause problems. I have had good luck with Dahlias, also, and see lavender and pansies everywhere around here. I am trying bleeding hearts for the first time this year, so I don't know about those, or fuschias. The main thing I have learned to focus on in my garden, especially the full sun areas, is making sure the plants can handle the dry heat. I seem to do well when I focus as much on the heat tolerance as the cold hardiness, especially in our front yard with the south/west exposure. Not sure about nurseries in your County, but if you are not too far from Sacramento we have several, including a few Capitol Nurseries, which are pretty good-sized and have knowledgeable gardeners on hand. Hope this helps a little - just my experiences.