I experienced the same thing and chalked it up to the drought. Only a few of my azaleas were established for more than a year and those survived but still did not bloom at all. All the other azaleas were planted in the spring just prior to the drought and I lost 2/3rds of those. Had kind of a funny thing happen regarding azalea bloom. I have them planted at the edge of a woodline lining our driveway and it's kind of on a hard slope with poor soil. I decided this year in addition to supplemental watering I needed to build a small retaining wall, fill it in with good soil and level it off to give those azaleas more room for their roots and soil that will more readily soak in moisture instead of running down the slope. Just before I put the wall in I ripped out all of the dead azaleas. All of my shrubs were either very obviously dead with no foliage or looked relatively healthy with lots of foliage. All except one scragly little twig of a Delaware Valley white azalea only 6 inches tall that had a couple of limp yellow leaves barely hanging on at the base. I decided it was too pathetic looking to try and baby so I ripped it out anyway and tossed it up into the woods. Next day when I resumed work on the wall something white caught my eye from the woods and sure enough that tiny, near-dead stick put out 2 blooms and was THE ONLY azalea in my garden that bloomed this year. I felt so sorry for it that I retrieved it, gave its roots a good soaking and replanted it in the new bed even though it's ugly as sin. I'm actually kind of hoping it will still die lol so I can plant something healthy in its place but I don't have the heart to kill it myself. Nature is amazing sometimes. Danielle

Barbara, nice seeing you there. I bought a bunch of plants. I was going to come by later but had a little tragedy in the pet family. My dog had a heart attack Saturday and died Sunday. Obituary from my wife cindy potts to Tracy, Kim, Claire, Joni, Joyce, panda78413, James, me, Brenae, Patty, sharon, Pat, Christopher, Renee show details 2:16 pm (8 hours ago) Today, October 7,2007 is a very sad day in the Potts family. Today we lost our beloved Tex. He died this morning. Tex had heart worms for the past year. Tex is survived by his wife Jasmine, his loving brother Rex and sister-in-law Mollie. He was the father of 13, but only three were living with him, they are LT, Tiger and Snapper. We will all miss him, he was our joy. He is the reason that we are blessed with all our other "kids with tails." Love to all, The Potts I wish you could clone dogs like brugs. I do not imagine there is another on this earth like him. I bred him 4 times hoping for another. No luck, just dogs. He was part human and had the Iq of an Einstein. With no fear. I will miss him dearly. Roses I can kill them faster than anyone. They hate my soil. I talked with Linda and a neighbor of yours has a type of plant I am after. I need to find out the name. It is growing at green acres next to the herb area. Email me and I will give you my phone number again. I am sorry I missed coming by your garden home in Rockport, it is special. It was nice to see you and Ruth and to meet Linda. Gardeners are special people. Jim

George, To me, it feels too early for even a light frost. I'm glad it didn't get everything, although it is too bad it got the ground cherries. Amy, We have the strangest weather here in Oklahoma. About the only thing consistent about it is its very inconsistency. Our first year here we had a killing frost/freeze at the end of September---likely the 28th or 29th. I was shocked. Most years we get the first hard freeze in November, but then one glorious year it didn't happen until mid-December. When someone new here in my county asks me when we get our first autumn frost, I can tell them truthfully and with a straight face that it occurs sometime between September 28th and December 14th. Granted, that is not the most useful info, but it is the truth,. Then I tell them that they likely can count on it arriving in early to mid-November in an average year, not that we have many average years. Being further south doesn't do me one bit of good, and neither does having an average last frost date of March 28th or 29th. Because I'm in a cold microclimate (a low-lying creek hollow in the already low-lying Red River Valley), I'll get colder down here than a lot of y'all will much further north occasionally. I notice the impact of the late cold nights most in April and early May when we are way past our average frost date and ought to be having warmer nights. It means I really have to watch the weather carefully and cover up plants with row cover in March, April and even the first week of May if I feel like we will get colder than forecast. Sadly, the low-lying microclimate doesn't seem to keep us cooler in summer. When I woke up the other morning and checked the mesonet map on my phone before I got out of bed, I was so shocked when I saw the 33 degrees listed for the Burneyville station. However, I knew before I ever went downstairs to look at our Min-Max thermometer that we didn't get that cold here at our house because our house was warm,, and I hadn't switched the HVAC over from AC to heat at bedtime. We were expecting 45 and went to 42 which is fairly typical of our microclimate. The only damaged plants in my garden are pest-damaged or drought-damaged. That brief period of time at 42 degrees had no visible effect on the garden plants at all. In fact, they probably thought it felt nice after a long, hot summer. Sometimes we get frost damage even when the overnight low was only 37 or 38, so I am careful to harvest everything before we start dropping down into the 30s. I'm usually harvesting warm-season crops in November, and occasionally even in December. In the years when I plant cool season crops in the fall, I often can harvest the most cold-hardy ones, like kale and collards, all winter long but the lettuce will freeze once our lows start hitting the teens pretty regularly. Dawn

Hi Bernard, I hope I don't repeat something because I only got about halfway through this thread before I got sick of reading and decided to go ahead and post. #1. I don't know where the idea come from that calloused roots are good. Callouses can't absorb water. It's dry scar tissue that keeps in/out moisture, thereby protecting broken stems and so on. When a plant's roots are partially exposed by wildlife digging, etc., the exposed portion callouses to keep the plant from dehydrating, but that calloused portion will never absorb water again. We don't want roots to callous (except maybe Bonsai growers who like to expose some roots over a rock or something). Putting a root system into dry mix is never good for it. I challenge anyone to prove how dehydrating or callousing a root system can possibly be good for it. The previous poster who said the dry mix will dehydrate the plant is correct. Always use damp mix for re-potting a healthy root system. If the roots are dead, it might be a different story. #2. As you've already learned, it's easy to under-water gritty mix. Since it's pretty close to impossible to over-water grit, I'm with the posters who say to soak it deeply and often. If you're paranoid, soak it daily, or even twice daily, but then give the pot a quick, little down-up motion to dislodge any perched water. That way it'll always be just barely moist. If it were mine, and planted in grit, I'd just water every day or two until the roots are well-established. As one who has killed off whole, healthy root systems by under-watering grit (once weekly), I feel confident in telling you that you're extremely unlikely to drown a plant in grit. I'm watering my succulents daily right now, and some are STILL too dry. BTW, Danny, I think mentioned he prefers soil for jades. I don't disagree with him. The one I have in soil has grown much better than the ones I have in grit. Furthermore, the Aeonium I had in a 1:1 soil:pumice mix has a huge, beautiful, healthy root system. The big one in grit has puny roots. These aren't experiments with standardized variables, so something else might be going on, but for now, I'm also not certain that grit is always a better medium.