Sherry, my parents have raspberries growing along their tree line (Wood at the back of their lot, mostly Oak trees) and they do just fine. In fact, they do better then fine because they get more berries then they can handle. LOL... I hate going over there when the berries are in because it's raspberries on everything they offer me to eat... They even make me go pick them. BTW, sorry to hear of Tornadoes; hopefully everyone made it ok. I worked Hurricane Andrew with the Red Cross back in the early 90's and know 1st hand what tornadoes can do...

Hi lovetogrowflowers. I don't think you are bothering anyone. Lucy is right, try not to stress yourself out. Take deep breaths. LOL. I think your plan for the two potted ones are perfect. I read in one of your earlier post asking about if the crawl space was ok and someone I believe said yes. For me, I WOULD strip the leaves first. The brug will be trying to take care of the leaves instead of useing its energy to go dormant. Plus you wouldn't want bugs to sneak in on a leaf and spend the winter eating your brug. :( As for the one in ground...well people cut back or don't cut back for different reasons. One of the biggest I think is for safety and the health of the plant. During the winter the brug branches will freeze so they cut them back so there is less of a chance this will happen. Who wants a mushy rotting brug in spring? How tall is the brug you still have in the ground? How close to the ground is the Y? The experts can chime in if this is a bad idea, but how about if you...1.Stip the leaves. 2.Cut off only the top green tips. (Save them) 3.Mulch as high as you can get it, at least to the Y if it's close to the ground. 4.Cover the brug with a REALY big rubber trash can or tub. 5.Maybe even cover that with an old blanket. Or would that be over kill? The cuttings you could take in and root them. Hopefully none of that was bad advice. Me and Lonny are newbies too. This will be our 2nt winter. We killed one of the two brugs we had last winter. But that was because we brought them in and tried to keep them growing. This year we brought all in again. This winter we have many more, plus young ones. We made a Brug room and have been learning lots. So we are going to give it a try. If they had been bigger, we would have left them out in ground to go dormant. Now that I have writen a novel.(sorry, long winded) Try not to worry, you brought them back to health and they are doing well enough to be around to overwinter, so I think you are doing well. Kim

HI sorry i cannot tell you the name of the dahlia but the ones in the pot are not doing so well. Because the pot are too small next year try and plant them in the ground. You can tie them to the fence but be careful cause the fence could get hot with the sun and burn the stem. I have mine on a wooden fence its not so bad. For storage take them out of the pots wash them and let them dry for a hour or 2 then place them in a carboard box with wood shaving or peatmose and keep them in a cool place anna lisa

For future years (a little late for this year in your zone), liberally scatter some Shirley Poppy (Papaver rhoeas) seeds in among the Iris rhizomes in early May. When your Iris foliage starts to get ugly, the poppies will already be growing among it and their foliage and beautiful scarlet flowers will hide the ratty iris foliage. They should perform for you most of the summer and into early fall in zone 5, and although they are annuals they will readily reseed. In my zone 7 garden they poop out (because of heat) in the middle of July, and the passing of the last poppy flower is a sad event. - Steve