I was looking for suggestions about pruning my lemon tree because I thought it was getting too tall, but according to what I have just read I guess i’ll Let it continue to grow. It was started from an overripe lemon that I had about 3 years ago and right now it is almost. 4 feet tall. I pinched it back several times in the past to try making it bushier which it did and now it is growing rapidly again. Hopefully if I let it grow I will get some fruit to go with the beautiful foliage.

Hello Angelsmell, I'm reading all these posts with great interest. Cananga is a native here in northern Australia but I can't seem to find var. fruticosa anywhere but I'm not going to stop trying;). Perhaps I can shed some light from my experience. I tried for ages with seed from exchanges, clubs, trades etc. I was never able to get them to germinate. Tried scarifying, acid treatment, giberrelic acid, even tried feeding some to the chooks (sorry, chickens) to see if they would germinate in the droppings. No good. Finally got on to the bloke who is the head of the seed collection dept. for Queensland parks and wildlife. Turns out that seed is only viable for a very short time. I got some from him and planted it all into a large foam box, put it into my shadehouse and had seedlings on the warmer side of the box in three days. They grew very quickly but being an unnatractive seedling I had a hard time giving them away. Now that they are flowering everyone wants one!! I had no idea how long they would take to flower but was very pleasantly surprised to see flowers early in the second year from seed!! They are now three years old, nearly 20 feet tall and almost constantly covered in flowers. I will harvest my first seed from them this week. We had a cyclone (hurricane) through here about a year ago, it was preceded by three or four weeks of torrential rain which softened the ground around the tree's roots. The canangas were leaning over until they touched the ground in the wind. One was over the washing line so I tied it up using two strong ropes. This tree now grows extremely crooked while the ones I didn't tie up in the cyclone are straight as arrows. I keep meaning to cut the top 10 or 12 feet off it so it will grow straight again but I can't catch it out of flower for long enough. My wife and my neighbours would ban me from the chainsaw if I cut it while it was covered in flowers. I hope this helps a bit, we are pretty troical here and I don't know what your climate is like. Regards, Brendon

Mulberryknob... I agree that you could probably use sprouting seeds for garden use. These are always organic, and should be *pretty* fresh and good quality. I tossed some flax and sesame seed from the health food store into my cover crop mix, and I couldn't tell you what these two look like, but EVERYTHING sprouted, including the beans from my pantry, and all is growing well and doing what I would expect a cover crop to do. I am posting one of the links I found on growing your own cereal grain, and sprouting seeds. If I find the link I had for grain and seed sources I'll try to post it. According to what I read, these home grown seeds would be so much fresher and healthier than even those purchased at the health food store. Like we've been discussing here on the forum......freshness counts! I'm a kindanewbie at this sort of thing but I love to experiment, and was gonna buy some organic wheat seed from the health food store to grow my own bread wheat, until I found a good link with some organic varieties of cereal grains, and so now I'm going to order from them, (when I find the link again!) when the time comes to plant. Buckwheat is on the top of the list for me as well. I LOVE buckwheat pancakes, and it's considered a superfood......the best of all possible worlds. Stuff that you love that's good for you too, as opposed to junk food. If my DS could grow junk food he would, but not in MY garden, lol! I'm happy that he's starting to take an interest in the garden and seeing how real food is grown. But I'm rambling. Sorry :) I get a little too excited sometimes. I try not to bore my friends with this type of conversation, and come here to vent instead, lol! Barbara Here is a link that might be useful: Growing Cereal Grain

Not quite true... Roses are hybrids so the seeds from Chuckles can take on the traits of any of it's ancestors. Some may look like Chuckles, while others may be more like Jean Lafitte, New Dawn or Orange Triumph (The parents of Chuckles). Seedling roses are best thought of as people, or at least that is how I explain it to friends, even though they have the same parents they may resemble anyone else in the family, and no two are alike...not sure roses can have identical twins! I hope that helps a bit, and I am sure others will pop in and help out also.