wow! that's cold ;). and they were producing flowers at these temps since dec? curious even more - how often do you water and with what water temp? were these in old last year pots overwintered in GH? so you did not disturb the roots? or were these repotted in the fall? wondering how are the roots growing at such low temps? i don't see many leaves on the pics. so it's just the blooms? i suppose 80F during the day raises the soil temps too somewhat?

Hi Cenepk, I agree he is a pretty boy however known to carry fleas and has poor eyesight due to mostly coming out and about at night,..in my case i think he found the cat food tasty and arrived each evening at feeding time,..size wise he is about the size of an American football NFL type,..two VERY short videos below,..i keep small videos in Photobucket. Video===Hedgehog At My Feet Video===Hedgehog And Cats. Oh boy you visited the Garden Store and went wild lol,..fingers crossed they all thrive for you and great to see you got the Rooting Powder,..i couldn't manage without it. About your Lupine,..and the picture,..seeing my head is sideways lol,..first the Lupine seeds should be soaked overnight in lukewarm water,..sow them in the Autumn/Fall as they are another plant that likes to go through a cold spell before spring,..its that word again stratification,..remember that snails and slugs love Lupine like they do Hosta so make sure you protect them,..Lupine will come back in the same spot for several years like Perennials however some are only Annual and last only for a season though i have never had the latter,..oh they don't like to be moved,..they will grow but remain smaller for a season or two,..same with Foxglove. Don't know what happened to your Lupine in the picture as it could be a multitude of things but i would try taking cuttings when they are at the stage in the picture but when the cuttings take plant them somewhere else. There is a Free program named Faststone Image viewer which enables you to rotate pictures on your computer,..resize,..crop and copy them from there to the Forum,..give it a try,..its what i use.. ============================================== Hi Mantis, Sorry to see you can not grow Lupine there,..if its any consolation there are many plants i would like to grow here but its a wet climate so plants for a warm dry climate are difficult to grow. Philip

Chandra, I truly hope you enjoyed your day off and were able to get a lot of those tasks done. Please tell Priya how much we are thinking about her and hoping that all goes well for her with the pending birth of your twins. She is so tiny and petite and I am amazed that she has carried the twins so well and so long. She must be amazingly healthy to accomplish that! Tanu looks so darling surrounded by the veggie harvest. I hope she is enjoying the wonderful harvest and her wonderful play area in the backyard too. Your entire yard and garden are a masterpiece. Every area looks so good and so right and so beautiful. I hope you have been able to enjoy the visits from all your sweet, loving friends and family who have visited to help Priya in these last few weeks before the babies arrive. Now, to address some of your gardening concerns: Watering: This has been a big concern for most of us, except for Carol, Michelle and a few others who have had plenty of rain (in fact, too much rain at times!). Just do the best you can and don't fret over it too much. Remember that infrequent slow, deep watering is better for the plants than shorter, more shallow waterings done more often since it encourages the roots to go deeper. If life gets too crazy after the babies arrive, you can put soaker hoses or sprinklers or drip irrigation systems on a timer. Red Candy Apple is a little hard to manage as it can be slow to grow and doesn't size up nearly as well as Candy grown in identical conditions. It has superb flavor but seems to be a slower grower. I read Bruce Frasier's advice on the Dixondale website to northern growers to give Red Candy Apple extra nitrogen to push it to perform better and grow bigger, so I tried it, even though I'm obviously a southern gardener. I gave Red Candy Apple a standard pelleted all-nitrogen lawn fertilizer (33-0-0) sometime in May when we were having all that rain. They really increased in size, for the most part. I think next year I'll try to give them more nitrogen earlier in their lives. Some of my Red Candy Apple onions were the same size as some of the big Candy and Super Star onions, but not all were. That difference in sizes might be an indication that I didn't distribute the pelleted fertilizer evenly. I normally don't use pelleted chemical fertilizers, and I just scattered it by hand. Still, I was pleased with the difference it made, and think using it earlier next year will make an even bigger difference, so I'll likely either rototill it into the soil before planting or will top dress it after the onions have been in the ground 3 or 4 weeks. Cool Season crops have suffered greatly from the very early arrival of abnoirmally hot temperatures this year. We get a second chance with cool season crops in the fall, and all we can do is hope for the weather to be better in the fall or next winter. Blackberries and raspberries may have had issues with late freezes freezing their blossoms. Or, if you just planted them next year, they just need to make some growth and ought to do better next year. It wasn't a great berry year here either. Telow gave you great grape advice. I'll try to pull up the OSU grape growing guide and post it in its own thread. It is incredibly hard to grow grapes here without preventive spraying for diseases. The peas had the heat issues to deal with. For comparison's sake....last year was a great pea year in our garden because the weather stayed cooler longer and we harvested about 35 lbs. of sugar snap peas. This year, we got maybe 6 or 8 lbs. We got too hot too early this year, and all the rain in May also caused some disease issues (mostly powdery mildew) for some Oklahoma gardeners with their peas. Carrots that mature in warm weather do lack sweetness. When carrots are able to mature before the heat arrives, they will be much more tender and sweet. Lettuce performed really well here too. Remember that you can plant it again in the fall, and some people grow it indoors in the winter. I think you can grow it in containers this winter in your greenhouse if you want to. I don't grow fava beans but I think Mrs. Frodo (Andria)does. Maybe she'll see this and tell you her secrets to growing fava beans. I think they are cool season and may need to be planted in the fall. Likely the heat is what is damaging your fava bean blossoms. It has been a great potato year here too. I am glad you got such a good harvest. If you had any small potatoes that you didn't use for eating purposes, you can save them to use as seed potatoes for your fall crop. Your corn sounds right on schedule. Silver Queen is a very late corn and I imagine it will tassel and silk soon. Tomatoes: My feeling is that I don't care how the plants look as long as they are producing. Tomatoes get every foliar disease that comes along, pests love them and the high temperatures are hard on them, but as long as they are flowering and setting fruit, all that other stuff doesn't really matter. High temperatures can impede pollination, fertilization and fruit set, but that doesn't mean it permanently shuts them down. Whenever we have a day with highs less than 92-95 degrees and lows less than 72-75, you'll still have some fruit set. Patience pays off. Some summers I've seen my plants sit there and drop blossoms for 3 or 4 weeks, but then a cool spell comes along and they do set fruit on whatever flowers they have at that time. The plants that produce bite-sized tomatoes are not affected by high temperatures nearly as much as the varieties that produce larger fruit. Peppera often have foliage issues and there are several diseases that cause the puckering and curling of foliage. I generally just ignore it and it either corrects itself or the plants just keep on producing anyway. I don't see any difference in production between plants with perfect foliage and plants with puckered or distorted foliage. I don't pinch off blooms usually because I don't think it is strictly necessary. In our climate, I try to let the tomatoes and peppers set all the fruit they want before the heat shuts down production. Eggplants are virtually indestructible, at least in summer heat. Just watch how they perform all summer. One year, during exceptional drought, I stopped watering the garden in June. Despite that, the eggplants produced until the first frost in November in an almost total absence of rainfall and irrigation, which I think is remarkable. I fully expected them to wither and die after I stopped watering. All your "hot season" crops like sweet potatoes, okra, etc. ougt to be exceptionally happy in this weather! Thank you for sharing all the beautiful photos of your garden with us. I am so proud of you and so proud of how well your garden is performing this year. I know you spent many, many hours on research and never hesitated to ask questions and to carefully read the answers and glean from them all the info you could. Your efforts certainly have paid off as you have a fantastic garden. Your garden must be giving you great joy this year, and I am happy that so many of your friends and family members have been visiting y'all this spring and summer and have been able to see your garden and enjoy it too. The beautiful rainbow of crops in many colors that you're growing are something to be proud of, and just think.....a year or two from now, Tanu will have to share those sugar snap peas with the twins, so you're going to have to plant a lot of them! Happy Gardening to you, and give my best wishes to Priya for a restful, quiet week and for a happy delivery next week (if not sooner). Dawn

Samuel, I do use Al's gritty mix and the first time I bare rooted a mango I thought I killed it too,lol!! I used a pressure type nozzle on a garden hose and sprayed all the old soil off (I did this in late summer in FL when the day time temps were around mid 80's). I also did it in the shade under some trees so the roots don't dry out in the hot sun. Once I transplanted it to the gritty mix within a couple of days I started to see leaves dropping...Healthy green leaves just started dropping at an alarming rate. BTW, this is the same tree above that I'm talking about (my Glenn). I lost a TON of leaves and I thought the plant was going to die...but very slowly it stopped dropping leaves after a couple of weeks or so and eventually stopped. Several weeks later it started to recover and showed new growths. Funny thing was I've bare rooted many plants after that and that has never happened to me again. I've had some go through stress where the leaves looked droopy, so don't over compensate by over watering. Check the moisture level with a thin wood dowel inserted in the soil to check if it needs water or not. If the stick comes out damp don't water. Keep the tree in mostly shade once you bare root and transplant your mango tree(with only a little bit of morning sun in the beginning) until the tree slowly adjust to the new mix, then you can slowly introduce it back to full sun. I have NO idea why that particular tree did that? Looking back on it I'm sure it was because it was my very frist attempt and didn't really know what I was doing. I also think I did not put it in the shade and had it in full sun, I think slowly acclimating it to full sun is very important until it gets used to the new mix. As far as my Potted fertilizer goes...I've used several different brands in the almost 5 1/2 yrs. I've had that tree. Miracle Grow all purpose (mixed with water), Foliage pro 9-3-6, Vigoro Citrus slow release, Fish emulsion, Dynamite slow release pellets. Of course use only one fertilizer at a time,lol...or you'll kill the poor tree! I also use it at 1/2 strength never the full dose that's recommended. Mango trees are sensitive to fertilizer burn and can damage the roots and tip burn the leaves. I prefer to fertilize during the warm/hot months and while there's new growths. Don't fertilize much in winter (cold months) and when its blooming...I still fertilize mine about 1/4 strength since there's no nutrients in my soil just to give the tree a little boost. Fish emulsion is good at low dosage for this this. I prefer to fertilize once a month at a lesser dosage than every 3 months at full strength. I know everyone has their own fertilizer regime, but these are what I've used over the years... Sorry this is so long, Hope some of this is helpful. Good luck!