Oops, misread again .. I missed your last line about only using one of the two sections. That will give you only 6'. That is far smaller than the usual recommendation. I would say it is possible but only with aggressive pruning. In particular, the way to keep vigorous vines under control is to hedge them in the summer: pretend its a hedge and trim all the shoots back to 3' or so length max. Do it once or twice in the summer depending on how fast they grow. That is how I kept my muscadines that were 3' apart in-line. Also make sure to winter prune back to the number of recommended buds per foot, no more, and have the cordon end a couple feet from the end of the trellis - make it only 3' or so long total. Note that I had major dieback of my muscadines a couple winters due to cold. Hopefully you have one of the more hardy varieties. One of the advantages to your northernly location however is the vine will not put on as much growth since your season is shorter than where muscadines are normally grown. Scott

S.O., I use traps that look like . They are very durable in the garden, some of mine are over 10 years old. All I need to do - other than bait them - is to clean the mud out of the mechanism if it starts to bind up. The only part that ever breaks is the plastic release tab... and sometimes the traps get bent (or go missing) if a predator finds the mouse before I do. The alligator-style traps that I tried never caught anything. The small traps that I use are not really strong enough to to hold a ground squirrel; if caught, they usually pull free (leaving a little fur behind). There are larger versions meant for rats (I have about a dozen of those) which will kill ground squirrels. The ground squirrels can be just as destructive as voles, if you grow anything for dry seed... a pair of ground squirrels "harvested" nearly all of my pea seed one year, before I caught them. The only reason that they might drive voles away is that they compete for the same habitat & food supply. If you caught more field mice than voles, either that was a reflection of your rodent population, or the bait you used was more attractive to mice. In my home gardens, I caught a lot of field mice early in the season, but by late summer, all I was catching was voles.The vole population always seems to explode when the late tomatoes begin to ripen. In my rural garden, I had a period this year where I was catching toads - about 5-6 of them. (!!!) Not something I wanted to catch, obviously... can't figure out what might have attracted them to the traps, since that never happened before.

Luckylady, I am in SE PA, zone 6. Is the foilage dark green and the big beautiful flower a gorgeous bright color? Yes, they are probably tropical hibiscus. Take 2 back, tell them you don't want them. Plant one in your yard right next to your ROse of Sharon within the next 2 weeks, they don't like the temps below 50 at night. It will grow beautiful and big and you will love it all summer, and in the fall, let it die. That way, you will only be out 14.99. NOt 14.99 three times over. Trust me, it is worth it to keep even one and truly enjoy a tropical plant in your yard over the summer. Plant it in the ground, don't pot it. Good Luck!

I have three pluot seedlings in my back yard. None have fruited, but my 3 year old had blossoms last spring. It is a cross of Flavor Queen (Floyd Ziaiger, hybridizer) and a red Japanese plum grafted as pollenator. The leaves show a moderate degree of red influence. This seedling set fruit but dropped it a few weeks after as did my pluot parents for the most part. The red leafed parent has small sweet plums so I think the fruit would be of good quality. I expect that I should get fruit next spring. The tree was awfully young to have even flowered and we had a cold wet spring. It is now over 8 feet high and the trunk is around 6 inches thick near the base. I think that is pretty impressive growth for a tree entering its third year. The others are just coming into their second year. Out of about ten pluot seedlings so far only three are vigorous and healthy, The rest were disease prone or lacked vigour. Still, a third isn't too bad for good healthy offspring. Randy Hughes, Vancouver, Wa.