Maduce, I am in central Florida 9A. What type of soil do you have up your way? If you are 9A Raspberries are going to be tough. I grow a lot of Mysore black raspberries and that is about all I can grow for raspberries. They are thorny but quite good. Blackberries you can grow most all of them. I have tried a few and now just grow Kiowa which are big and taste great. Blueberries I grow about 200 bushes and with them you have lots of choices.

Cupshaped, We lived just south of Daytona for over 20 years. We hadn't discovered OGRs, but gave up on the HTs that were sold at garden centers because they were too much work--the constant spraying required was a nightmare. Especially in the heat of summer, when you'd come in needing a blood transfusion from all the mosquito bites. We were on a barrier island, so the "soil" was almost pure sand with a thin layer of leaf litter and pine straw on top. Water & nutrients ran right through it. We found gardening with Florida natives to be a very satisfying, enviromentally friendly way to go. If you want a Florida native that will attract butterflies, get a firebush (Hamelia patens). Wonderful red-orange tube-shaped flowers are great nectar sources for most butterflies, and hummingbirds like them, too. Being a native, it should perform well--there may be a little freeze damage once in a while in Daytona, but it's good to whack the bushes back once in a while, anyway. Another great Florida native for butterflies is Wild Coffee (Psychotria nervosa). Makes a beautiful rounded bush with shiny leaves, small white flowers, and red berries. Zebra longwing butterflies LOVE it. Citrus trees act as larval food for Eastern Swallowtails (the caterpillars look like bird poop, and put out scary red antennae-type things when alarmed, but the butterflies are GORGEOUS.) The caterpillars don't eat that much, so just ignore the few chewed on leaves and wait for them to emerge in all their flying glory. And you can eat the citrus, too. Passionflower vines are larval food for zebra longwings, and have great flowers. Muhly grass is a lovely ornamental native grass that has pinkish blooms. And some of the spartina grasses are also great native ornamentals. Green Images in Christmas, Florida is a WONDERFUL native plant nursery that's not too far from Daytona. Worth a trip over there, and they should have a bunch of natives that will perform well and bring in the butterflies. Depending on your friends' soil, amendments can be tricky. If they're in a real sandy area, the soil is so coarse that it has tons of air & oxygen in it, and organics burn up so fast that you almost can't add them quickly enough to make a difference. Other places are muck (basically swamp bottom) and have much richer soil. The Florida Native Plant Society is a wonderful organization and a great source of information if you want to "go native". Natives are so much easier to grow, provide food and cover for birds and butterflies, and low maintenance to boot. Water rationing is becoming pretty common in Florida, and planting things that will deal with normal rainfall is a way to have a beautiful garden in spite of water restrictions.

Hi Sherry Showing a picture of your tree will be extremely helpful! There are great instructions on the Conversations page. Once you get the hang of posting your pictures, you might get addicted to it, like me! Click on the link. Susie Here is a link that might be useful: photo insturctions

mjjones453, I am in Lakeland. You are about 45 minutes to an hour south of me. I just left them in the pots and let them go down on their own. This winter, if one of them does not go down, like my Guacamole, I am considering storing them in a mini fridge. This will be my next trial. Hope this information helps. There is a lot of information for growing Hostas in pots on this forum. I read and read until I finally bit the bullet last year. Trust me, they will enable you on this site.