What she said. This is my first year gardening here (moved from Massachusetts) and it's been a tough year. I love the long growing season, and the variety of plants I can have here, but the heat, drought, rabbits, squirrels (I've never seen so many of the rotten little tree rats), Japanese beetles, moles, hard clay soil, and miscellaneous insect pests nearly did me in. This forum is a huge help in providing advice and information, but even more in keeping my spirits up. Thanks all!

ah, but you to wait til you realize that you can garden all the year round here! you'll forgive all the above and decide you garden in fall winter and spring and just wait it through the heat. :) welcome. and try to enjoy- the downsides do get easier to deal with- they're just different than what you dealt with at home, that's all. (you didn't have ants, chipmunks, squirrels or blackbirds up there? i came from western PA and we had all of the above..., plus tons of rabbits and groundhogs, which are much more scare here) .

Yeah, what Tamelask said! Gardening in the South is more of getting your brain to tilt a bit and erase Northern memories/timeframes. The season here practically never ends, or at least starts so much earlier and ends so much later, if ever, that giving up July & August isn't such a bad thing.

Granted, this year has been extreme with drought and heat, but it has happened here before and will happen again so we just deal with it. I still consider it to be a wonderful trade off for all the months of gray and dreary up North. JMO.

And, having the support system this site provides is, indeed, a really big plus!

Oh, and Nawthuners(that's phonetic) fergit about the old standard of planting your tomatoes on Memorial Day. By then you'll have missed a good three weeks of growing time.
Might still wait til Memorial Day to get those peppers and eggplants in but each year's late spring weather is different. There are some years when spring begins and ends in the same weekend.

It is difficult to forget 30 years of 'nawthern' truisms. lol, but I am adapting. Memorial Day (Victoria Day in Canada) being the first big gardening day of the year is one of those... lol

And yes we do have ants and squirrels and chipmonks and blackbirds in Canada, (rabbits and deer and racoons too) but most of those creatures move on if you keep your trash bin lid secure. Here there are so many!!! (How come all the squirrels are grey????)

On the positive side I love the weather (even the heat most of the time) and all the fabulous new plants (I know they are common as red dirt here, but to me they are new) like pieris, camelia, lantana, lorapetalum, even azalea (though I am really having mixed results with these)

It really helps to have a place like garden web to learn things, we have little choice but to shop at 'big box' stores and mail order/internet until we become more familiar with the area. Both of these plant sources seem to be very short on reliable information about the plants they sell. There are a number of nice looking local nurseries, but most of these are closed on sunday, which is our only day to browse.

Oh well soon it will be fall and instead of putting the lawnmower up for the winter, we will give it a tune up to get it ready for it's first real work in several months.

;) Thanks Again

Don't know where you are located Frances but if you ever want to take a nice Sunday drive come visit the nursery I work for in Sanford. Can't type the name here but if you substitute a B for the P in Pig Ploomers that would be the name. We specialize in starter sized perennials and have nearly all you can think of from A to Z. There is a nice nursery nearby us that is also open on Sunday called Dales Nursery. They have limited perennials but a nice selection of trees and shrubs. Just bought some very nice large cast iron plants and a beautiful edgeworthia from them last week.

I'm surprised most nurseries aren't open on Sunday. Sunday was always a big day for plant shopping up north. Adele

Hello Adele
Sandford is a bit far from Gastonia for Sunday browsing I think, but I will remember it if we manage to get that far east. I visited the website and it looks like just the sort of place I would like.

Frances

Oh Frances, Gastonia huh. We could have been neighbors ha. Before settling here in the Sandhills we looked all around the Charlotte area concentrating on Gaston County. We finally ended up finding a place that fit the bill here in farm country. Hope you found what you were looking for also. Adele

frances-- the squirrels are grey because they're grey squirrels. red and fox squirrels are a lot more numerous in northern climes, and the grey squirrel's coats are redder up there, too. lots of folks call them tree rats with reason. maybe you're having critter problems because of where you are specifically- until this year we'd never had issues with stuff getting into our trash, but now we have a determined coon. i figured you had all those critters up there- my tongue was mostly lodged in my cheek when i asked that.

yeah, you picked a heck of a summer to start! really, they aren't all this bad, honest. they all have their challenges, certainly, but this has been whopper. you'll get it all figured out in no time & half the fun is in discovering the differences. i just wish i'd had this resource when i was trying to figure it all out 14 years ago or so with my first real garden! oh well... i still learn tons from all these great folks. enjoy your sense of newness- soon enough it'll wear off.

one tip about mail order: there's a competing site called dave's that has a wonderful resource on it that lists all of the mail order places and people can rate them and tell about their experiences. so it's a great way to pre-weed out the bad ones before you trust them with your money. again, wish i'd had that when i got going and was mail ordering a lot of stuff. you can google to find it- not sure whether i'd get my hand slapped for mentioning it here. and bb's is awesome- do stop if you get down sanford way!

tamelask

In Canada we have a lot of different coloured squirrels, red, black, white, grey (and combinations of those which range in appearance from 'odd' to 'awful') lol

Part of our squirrel/chipmonk problem is definately 'location' we bought a new house in a mature neighborhood and are completely surrounded by mature oak trees which seem to be 'preferred' food/shelter sources for squirrels. We are the only house on the street without a single oak tree. (most lots have at least two of these giant trees)

I have been forced to abandon my bird feeding habits and look for other less squirrel friendly ways to attract birds to the yard. (growing bird friendly plants/vines etc?)

Ah well it's all part of the challenge of gardening isn't it?

When I consider how delighted I was by my little pieris and camelia this spring, my first heavenly sniff of gardenia (grown outdoors!!)or what beauties my little shrub roses are, the trials seem a lot easier to take.

frances

they do make very squirrel proof feeders- some that even have electric charges going through them that only squirrel's weight trips. one of our local nurseries carries them and the accompanying video is hysterical. they also say if you can suspend the feeder 10' off the ground & away from any objects, then cover with a baffle, you're good to go. so, a line stretched between 2 poles or trees with a feeder attached works well. ours is on our high off the ground deck, on a pole that we can extend to 8' or so, with a baffle underneath and has worked really well for years. til the coon found it this spring, anyhow. need to trim some branches and get a heavier/wider baffle for him. we stopped feeding this summer so hopefully he goes elsewhere before fall.

closer to the mountains they have white and black squirrels as well as red. it's just around here that they're mostly grey. rascally things- strangest thing they've not left alone for me is christmas lights on our deck. i tried 3 years running to string lights along the deck and they chew through them in multiple places each time. i'd love to see that light show! lol. so we quite trying a while back- seemed pointless. nut-brains, i call them. that's all they think about, and it's all that's rattling around up there. they are fun to watch chase each other around, i'll give them that. boogers.

gardenia makes up for many ills, doesn't it? i have a prostrate one growing by my front door and that scent is amazing when you walk by. you'll have to discover winter blooming daphne, which, admittedly, is very picky, but worth it for the fragrance in feb/march. mmmm.

Frances - I have hoards of the beastly tree rats myself (similar, established neighborhood with lots of big trees) and I got a bird feeder called a RollerFeeder (link below) and it actually works. You can still feed the birds and you get the added pleasure of watching the squirrels get dumped off on their butts. With so many big trees, you'll get lots of wonderful birds, too.

Here is a link that might be useful: Squirrel-proof feeder

The only place I could put a feeder 10' off the ground, away from everything would be the middle of my front lawn. I think my spouse would not really appreciate that! He is trying to get rid of all of the 'green, not grass stuff' that currently passes itself off as a lawn, lol

Will look into some of those squirrel proof feeders. They have already destroyed 4 feeders this year. At the moment most of the local stores do not have much, but food and decorative type feeders which are not terribly useful in the rodent wars.... With cooler weather i am sure the selection will improve. (Really like the look of that rolling feeder)

The 2 box stores have a nice assortment of the birdfeeders that are squ. proof. Spend the extra money and get the ones with METAL parts and the ones that have the cage around them. They aren't as expensive as the electric ones or the ones that turn and toss the squ. off. Some come in a nice copper finish or just plain metal finish. Check them out.