Location: Southwest Louisiana I let a tallow grow in my background near my back living room window three years ago. The tree is now 20ft tall, covering 1/3 of my back roof with morning shade and saving me a lot on my utility bills. I just planted two more in my front yard to protect the forward windows from afternoon sun. We were struck by huricane Rita two years ago in Lake Charles. The tallow's upper limbs broke off rather quickly, saving the house because the oak trees in my neighboorhood resisted the high winds and as a result the entire tree fell on the houses, damaging them with wind driven rain. The tallow is a great tree for those seeking energy efficiency. Underneath the tallow, plant your desired oak or pecan tree seedlings. Once the seedling is rooted cut back your tallow periodically to provide light for the seedling. Once the seedling is tall enough, cut down the soft wood tallow, the roots may still exist but the energy savings the tree gave you for the past five years will make you glad to put the effort into root removal. Pruning tallows is very easy, find a limb and pull. I use this method to encourage upward growth of my shade tallows. The limbs can then be broken into smaller pieces for a new compost landfill. Sorry for the contradiction, but cheap methods of shading our homes to save electricity beat out long term environmental impact. Remember, a full sized tallow tree does scrub the atmosphere for CO2! I also have a thriving bird population and my dogs seem happy that my pool is cooler (another side effect of the shade).

I have had a lot of experience with this tree. We ahd several growing thru the fence in Houston...or rather the fence was growing thru the middle of the tree. Yes, they are pretty, and make great shade and are fast growing. But the seed pods are curly and sharp and fall all over the ground, then the seeds fall later on...little hard black seeds, which are fun for kids to play with but then they start sprouting everywhere. They only stay on the branches for a while until that white coating is gone. Both us and our neighbors tried numerous times to chop down, burn and poison them, and finally managed to kill them I think. Not only are they invasive and pop up everywhere, but other plants tend to not do well underneath them. I have one here which I dont mind, as it is not close enough to the fence to grow into it, and there are no others growing yet, i can pull up new seedlings (and have to often from my flowerbeds) but the grass does not want to grow very good underneath it, and there are huge bare spots, and I've had a hard time finding plants that will grow in the flowerbed under it. Liriope and wandering jew seems to be doing fine so far. I've got these seeds all over the yard and am fixing to have a whole 'nother crop of them if anyone wants them. I wish they werent so crappy here. They make nice fall colors and its a nice cool shade tree.

Hi SeaChange, we have a similar problem with our garden. We have been on this block for over 20 years, we are about 3.5km from the beach, in our soil description it is Quindalup dunne. Over the years we have added tonnes of sheep, cow manure, acid mulches and whatever I could lay my hands on. Our soil has changed from pure, white beach sand to nice smelling soil. However, I still cannot grow many acid loving plants. The problem is that the roots get out from the improved areas and when they hit pure sand the plants start to suffer. I am afraid the same happens with your tallows and crepe myrtles. You have two choices: keep improving the soil or plant trees that love lime. Have you seen the last segment on Gardening Australia with the Fremantle garden? I think that going with nature gives you much better results than trying the change it to suit your choice of plants.

Fortunately for you, an overdose of GA produces outstanding, albeit bad, effects on most plants (an exception is aroids). These effects include a lengthening of stems and petioles, so much that the plant topples over under its own weight. I said "fortunately" because you can use an overdose to test whether your product is real. Unfortunately for me, PGRs such as Diethyl aminoethyl hexanoate, Sodium Nitrophenolate, 2-(3,4-dichlorophenoxy) triethylamine and brassinolide do not produce outstanding effects when overdosed on the vast majority of plants therefore I cannot easily test whether I got what I paid for. Since originally posting, DA-6, 25 ppm, sprayed tomato plants had the first ripe fruit. DA-6, 25 ppm, soil drenched lemon seedlings are larger. And, DA-6, 250 ppm (an overdose), sprayed canna 'Pink Sunburst' produced tiny leaves. Same effect for 0.5 ppm brassinolide. Canna 'Pink Sunburst' is the only sensitive canna, For my four other canna varieties, there is no effect at any concentration.