Hi Christy, Mike is right. He has taken a lot of crap here. Mainly from one jerk who has mysteriously dissapeard. Hmm....wonder why he isn't here anymore? LOL...GOT WHAT HE DESERVED!!! I am glad you found a great organic fertilizer. I have to say that Mike has never steered me wrong and his fertilizer regimen has done tremendous things for me. IF you go thru the posts on the forum, you will find a post that I did on my new 'Dancy' tangerine tree. Not to many people looked at it. I think because they checked it once and realized there was no picture, so they never went back to that post. I also wanted to show people how the FP, white vinegar, and some liquid iron spray saved a sick dying tree. Since you want to go the organic route, can I still suggest one thing? Use the capfull of white vinegar! I have seen such a HUGE change in the health of my plants. I started the white vinegar treatment before I even had the FP. Good luck with your citrus. Your in the right place with this group of fantastic dedicated growers. Mike, Rhizzo, Josh, Al and Pug have all been extremely helpfull (There have also been others that have helped but this group has gone above and beyond being just helpfull!) Just one word of advice. If you are not trying to by more citrus trees, stay away from Meyer Mike's pics!! Since coming here and meeting him, he has been solely responsible for my buying my 6ft Improved Meyer lemon, and my Oro Blanco grapefruit tree! LOl. Love ya Mike! Andrew

Jerry, once I get home and can open my pics again, I will definately tell you where I got it... Thanks for your nice comments!:-) I am so glad you can grow at least a couple of your favorite plants. Sweet. One good thing to it, you only have to focus on a couple instead of dozens...lol. They are like kids to me. So tempermental, yet you love them to death! Let me tell you Frank, for what you are using to heat yours up, that is great! I use a couple of heaters which to me is cheating a little.. I can't wait to get home and see your setup. You probably have a much lower electric bill than I do, and you are still making it work..Bravo Do you have to open yours a bit to when the sun is out all day to let heat escape? The other benefit to our popups is that, it is always humid in there....:-) I wish there was enough room in there for me to sleep at night, so I can get rid of this nasty cold from the dry air..!lol

Ksrogers, It is not about so much a saftey issue, as what the following statement I read...........Same as always with the goverment.....MONEY AND TAXES, lol ""Its perfectly legal to brew your own beer or make your own wine at home, as millions of people do. So why is it illegal to make your own distilled spirits at home? The reason is simple - - - taxes. Taxes on beer and wine are low compared to the very high taxes imposed on whiskey, vodka, gin, and all other distilled spirits. Over half the retail price of a bottle of distilled spirits consists of taxes. Congress was pressured by home brewers and wine makers into letting them make their own alcoholic beverages at home in limited quantities. But the government doesnÂt want to lose any of the many billions of dollars it receives each and every year from the very high taxes on distilled spirits. Government officials argue that moonshine is a serious health hazard because many illegal producers use vehicle radiators in the process, which can potentially cause lead poisoning. However, safe home stills could easily be sold to solve that problem. The real issue isnÂt the health risk of contaminated alcohol, but the potential for enormous revenue loss from the production, even in small quantities, of otherwise very heavily taxed liquor."" I have been making wine for years. Some of the older stuff still in carboys,that I was going to pour out some over 5 years old(undrinkable),a friend mentioned he had a Mini still, asked me for it . 5 gal produced almost 1 and a half gal of 138% proof white home brew. He mixed it with some flavored bottle water to reduce it to 80 proof ..Not to bad... As George Jones sang... Well the "G" men, "T" men, revenuers, too Searchin' for the place where he made his brew They were looking, tryin to book him, but my pappy kept a-cookin' Whshhhoooh . . . white lightnin'...

You can grow all the stone fruit (peaches, plums, apricots, nectarines and even almonds which are a stone fruit harvested for their seed) and, if you're not in an area heavily wooded with cedar, you can grow apples. You will not necessarily get fruit from the stone fruit trees every year because sometimes they bloom too early and either the blooms or the young fruit are knocked off the trees by late frosts, but in the years when they do produce, they produce really well. I don't grow apples because our property is surrounded on four sides, or at least 3.5 sides, by property heavily wooded with cedar, making the risk of cedar apple rust high on our property. (One day I may break down and plant apple trees just to see if I could do it.) Because it takes both cedar trees and apple trees for cedar apple rust to complete its life cycle, you'd likely have to spray your trees with Immunox or something similar if you try to grow apples within a mile or two of cedars. Cherries have a tendency to bloom early as peaches do, but you'll get a crop some years. You do have to net the trees to keep the birds out. Figs grow very well here. Sometimes they'll freeze back to the ground but they come back pretty quickly and generally produce every year. If you choose your tree varieties carefully and select a mix of early, mid-season and late-season fruit varieties, you can harvest fruit for a long period of time. There are peaches, for example, that produce ripe fruit as early as early- to mid-June in my part of Oklahoma (southcentral OK) and as late as late July or early August. Not many folks here grow the really late ones that produce in August or September and probably that's because of the problems with drought and high temperatures and more pests later in the season. It does seem like the better quality fruit comes from the varieties that ripen in June and July. Pests are a bigger issue on those that ripen later but I don't have a pest problem at all on those that ripen earlier. Don't forget the other kinds of fruits---the berries! Blackberries are easy to grow and produce well, and strawberries produce well if you give them fertile soil, and can keep the pests under control. I don't have issues with strawberry diseases here in southcentral OK because we're usually hot and dry, but folks in more humid areas might have more disease issues for which fungicides would need to be used. For years I didn't bother with strawberries because the sow bugs and pill bugs would destroy the fruit before it ripened. However, now that we have Slug-Go Plus and similar organic pesticides, I can keep the sow bugs and pill bugs from bothering the strawberries. You might have success with raspberries if you're in NE OK and have good soil. If you have or can create acidic soil, blueberries grow and produce well here. Don't forget some of the less well-know fruit like fruiting mulberries, bush cherries and bush plums, elderberries, etc. You can grow banana trees here but it is rare to get ripened bananas from in-ground trees here because our growing season isn't quite long enough. I had a friend who got ripe bananas in Fort Worth in a year when the last spring frost was really early and the first fall frost was really late, but I don't know if you could do that here. We have native persimmons on our property but we have to fight the coyotes for every single fruit (they eat them green) and the persimmons are too astringent until after they've been frosted a time or too. You also could grow some of the annual fruits. Check the website of Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds for seeds of some annual fruits. If you have a greenhouse or a place inside to overwinter citrus trees in pots, you can grow lemon, lime and a few other citrus fruits in large containers that are carried inside in winter. Grapes are high-maintenance and proper pruning is essential in order to avoid disease and get a good crop, but they grow well here. I've linked a fact sheet from OSU on growing peaches for you. If you look at the list of peach varieties, you'll see how planting different varieties can lengthen the harvest season substantially, but sometimes it is hard to find some of those varieties. Even though I removed approximately 95% of the young fruit from my fruit trees last year at the proper fruit thinning time, they still over-produced and we harvested about 340 lbs. of fruit from 2 plum trees and 1 peach tree. (That broke down to about 260 lbs or so of plums and about 80 lbs. of peaches).) So, you do need to have a plan for what you'll do with all that fruit in a good year because you cannot eat it all fresh. In our case, we made jam, jelly, juice, flavored syrups, and fruit butters; we froze fruit;, we dried fruit; we gave fruit away; and we ate as much fresh fruit a day as we could. Without a plan to preserve the harvest, a lot of your fruit will be wasted, so have a good plan as the years go by and the trees grow and mature and reach their maximum productive capacity. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: Apple and Peach Varieties for Oklahoma