i've seen kudzu cover over a house and barn!! and completely scale a 50 foot tree, straight up!! with vines that were like elevator cables... THANK GOD the efforts made out where I'm working on the GH have kept the growth of the kudzu under control. It actually is NOT growing where we have had it dug up several times....and every time I see a little sprout coming up...I 86 it...our extension office here says you can actually get rid of it...plan on about a year of continual monitoring, digging, spraying etc. And eventually it will give up and go elsehwere. that is encouraging...I have had to dig deep to get to those big nasty roots...it's really pretty unbelievable. AND, recently I got a recipe for kudzu flower jelly...this lady I know made it for her kids when they were little and she said it was one of their favorites. The flowers have a faint smell of grape soda...and they are pretty too. RE: the concret drain thingie..it's a main drain/run off with a giant underground pipe and it runs a ways away from us to a lower elevation. The mosaic idea is cool, I'm sure I have some material around that could work for it..I could even go a bit more upscale with some stone looking tile left over from my bathroom redo...hmmmm I'm going to work on a sketch of what I envision for this area and scan it and post it later....

I got the full sized dome one on sale last year for ~$100 off regular price. Took me/us a little while to get it assembled (DH & I aren't so swift in the handy-ness category), but it seems quite sturdy and the plastic seems strong. One down-side is that because the shelving is secured together, it would take more than I'd like to do (and I'm not sure it's advisable anyway) to remove one shelf for taller plants. Some of the mini-greenhouses allow for shelves to be simply removed since they just lift off. Re how wide the shelves are, hmmm.... if I can remember tomorrow I can go measure them. But the big one is 5.5' across, whereas the half one is 3.5' across - I think I read that on a tear off sheet that Cdn Tire had for several of their models. Maybe 1.5'? More than a foot I'd say. The windows are manually zip-operated of course, and are sizable with screens when open. I didn't have it up early in the season last year, and have it located in a shady spot, so it's not really functioning as a "hothouse". I actually liked it very much as a "workhouse" for less than ideal weather. I don't seem to tolerate really hot (for us out here, lol) weather, so it provided a nice area to do some potting up or even sitting to read or eat lunch or drink tea! I have a rolling seat and a wee table at the end, and bring out a bag of books sometimes.... so pleasant (if no mosquitoes - can close the door though if so) under cover when it's raining or too hot/sunny, &/or listening to the birds. It didn't work to overwinter tender items like pelargoniums and begonias of course, and they got moldy since it's damp here. I forgot a favorite hat out there for a while and it got moldy too, dang. I need to experiment to see what will thrive in it... might be a good place to start/grow greens or cuttings that don't want the hotter sunnier part of the yard in summer. I had planned to move it to a sunnier part of the yard for the winter, but didn't end up doing that. Will see this winter. I think it might have said a 3 season greenhouse.... I'm not sure what season is supposed to be left out, but I presume winter for colder areas??? Or summer if too hot??? Didn't have any problems with wind, but we do have some protection with fences and tall trees and sheds. There are stakes to hold the plastic to the ground. I realize we're in different parts of the country and climates, but I think that on sale it's a very decent buy. Full price seems high but I haven't done a LOT of shopping around. They are much sturdier than many of the mini-greenhouses, but I do wish the shelving were more flexible (maybe there's a way I don't know). Hope this helps a bit; sorry for the long and meandering post but I'm sleepy now. Btw, re seedling protection from squirrels - have you tried sowing in 2- or 4-litre milk jugs (as often described on the Winter Sowing forum which I haven't found time to peruse much this year)? I love those (except for the appearance to others), especially as I'm not always quick to plant things out.

My first Hydrangea is now in the ground for more than 25 years. At this point, I keep it for sentimental reasons only. It's gotten so THICK with canes that if I wrap it in my usual cage, I have to get everything so tight in there that I think I may actually be suffocating the plant. I've not had good luck overwintering it in recent years. This past winter I didn't even bother with it. If I were you, I'd consider taking a cutting or digging out a portion of your sentimental one and essentially start over. It would indeed be the same plant, so you could keep your sentiment. But I can understand sentiment. I should get rid of my first Hydrangea, but I'm not. For a long time I would cut back the old canes completely to the ground in the Fall. I'd only leave canes that had shot up from low points on the canes or from the crown. They would have grown all summer and would end up giving me great flowering the next year. I'd have very long stemmed flowers, too, that I had cut. The big problem with this technique is that you end up with weaker stems than you would otherwise and next summer they'd be weighted down to the ground with their flowers. I've found that, for my zone, I can usually prune as hard as I want up until about Fourth of July, just to be easy to remember, and not hurt the flowering potential for next year. After that, the buds start setting for next year and you start running into that problem. (But then I've cut some "nikkos" back to the crown in the Fall and on some I'd get great flowering and on some I'd get none. Do I really understand this? NO.) So, here is another method for you to consider to keep it smaller, at least in height. Another thing I've experimented with is to prune all the wimpy growth completely out and just end up with a few stout canes over time. This was interesting, but you end up with an artifical looking Hydrangea and the few stout canes start looking rather strange. But with this technique, more or less, you could develop a plant that wasn't so crowded. I don't know though. I wish I could help you more. I'd like an answer to the question you have, too! Hay

Randy, I would be happy to be the first to respond, mi amigo. First let me say thank you for this post. I think it may be up to the few and proud of us to revitalize this forum, and get some great conversations started. It's been a little... slow in the past. Let me get the question I cannot speak to out of the way first: I have never grown P. edulis indoors, or protected in any way for that matter. I have P. edulis 'Fredrick' out in the open with no protection in a large pot, and it overwinters with just a little damage. It comes back fine, and is growing like a beast right now. I hope to soon be growing P. edulis 'Nancy Garrison' as well, (thanks to you), as I have read that it is even better at frost tolerance. Next, anything I have ever taken indoors has suffered from the dryness associated with central heat, a wood burning stove, and watering difficulty indoors. This year I plan to make a space in my garage dedicated to Passifloras with a timed "grow-light" like the pot-growers use. I have too many that will need some sort of protection to let them wither in the winter. Now, on that same note, even though I plan on protecting some this year, we also always test our limits. We are in zone denial. Dozens, maybe hundreds of plants that should not live here, we "force" to live here. Sometimes that means we have to get creative sometime we have to get Very creative. For instance, (though no one seems to have ever heard of this spectacular plant), we grow Mackaya bella outdoors and it has no issues whatsoever. Our Aphelandra squarrosa lost all his leaves in the same pot, (though heÂs fine now). There are countless others On to the Passifloras, the subject you actually posted about. First, let me tell you our climatic conditions, (I almost typed climactic that would have been a bit Freudian). In the last 10 years, our lowest temp was 19 degrees. Usually, in winter we get about 12 -16 days of sub-32 degrees, with our lowest night normally about 23/24. We almost never get snow, maybe once per decade for a couple of hours. Our only rain comes in the winter months, most heavily in Dec and Jan. If you plan a spring, summer or fall BBQ, you can count on it. No chance of the game being called here. We almost donÂt have a spring, and barely a fall. Tuesday the trees have leaves and Wednesday they donÂt. Our summers can be brutal. We just had 5 days in a row triple digits two of them were 107 and 108. ItÂs also very dry think desert. Thankfully, we have misters, drippers, sprinklers, et cetera, or the only thing we would grow would be California natives... yuck! So, let me think We have no trouble growing P. citrina in the ground, though it is supposed to like 45 degrees minimum. Oh man, this is going to be hard we have too many. How about this: In Ulmer and MacdougalÂs book, (if you donÂt have it, you either know too much to be reading this or if you are reading this, you seriously need to buy it. Go here: http://www.amazon.com/Passiflora-Passionflowers-World-Torsten-Ulmer/dp/0881926485/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1246590216&sr=8-1), if they state the minimum temperatures for a species or hybrid to live to 5 or lower degrees Celcius, I can grow it outdoors. If it states 7 to 9 degrees C, I need to protect it somehow, be it mulch, overhead cover, 3-wall patio cover, et cetera. If it states 10 or even higher, (for the most part, though there are exceptions), I will most likely have trouble, and at the very least I need to bring it indoors or into the garage space I am making this year. Actually, I am planning on putting my "7+ degree" plants in there this winter also, so they have much less stress, and flourish faster. I am tired of having plants take till May to start growing again. Randy, and anyone else who happens to read this, I am sorry that I cannot give you a full list. This is the best I can do at the moment. IÂm a bad plant journal guy P. mooreana is one that should definitely not have survived with the slight overhead protection we gave it. It has been blooming one flower per day for a week or so right now, and smells fantastic! Another that surprised us was P. herbertiana, which should not make it out in the cold. We had a tiny cutting, (which is supposed to be very hard to do Crystal is the "rooting queen"), out in the open, no protection whatsoever last year, and it made it fine. It is growing great right now. P. ÂCoral Sea grows rampant in our cold and heat, though it rarely blooms. ItÂs a massive vine. It is supposed to only like it up to 86 or so, and doesnÂt like it below freezing. No problems here. I am planning on making this a grafting root-stock for less heat-hardy Passies. But, one other fairly non-relatable, (due to rarity) Passiflora that I can speak on is the P. umbilicata x P. tucumanensis. This is weird. It is the same cross, (and probably a seedling from the same fruit from Henk), as P. ÂJuttaÂ. Mine is slightly different as it has two full rows of coronal filaments. Both parents are supposed to be extremely cold tolerant, but not heat tolerant at all. Mine grows and blooms in the spring and fall, with only some bud-drop and a few month bloom hiatus in the hottest summer months. It still does quite well, with very little if any damage. Granted, cuttings of it have died in the summer, but that may have been my fault. ;-) IÂm sure there are more, but my mind fails me I will have to consult Crystal later and post again. Eric