I've been avoiding this post because I knew there was going to be a lot of happy Californians talking about stuff. Two feet of snow but starting to melt-sooo, it's ice city like one foot lumps on the sidewalk. The weather reports from Washington D.C. are wild, aren't they? Sorry for sending you our weather, though we rarely get five feet at once, either. I hope the Cherry trees are alright. I haven't forgotten that one I bought by mistake. Not even the rootstock made it. They were selling them at K-mart. As we drove home the latin name kept bothering me-I knew I had read it somewhere. The monsters who send those and bouganvillea and Lady Banks Rose to Montana ought to be sent to summer school at a logging camp. 36 degrees on the porch tonight. A front coming out of Seattle is pushing the warm air ahead of it. I was wishing for an old-fashioned chinook wind. Haven't had any in years. You'd wake up in the morning to a howling warm wind and the snow would be gone in a couple days.

Bkay remove all the soil. I use a hose with a nozzle to blast away any remaining soil on the root ball when I need to result to this tactic. I'm nearly 100% certain it is a salt/mineral issue since you mentioned the terra cotta pots disintegrate which is what the salts will do. I had the same probleam with non plastic pots until I started to use glazed pots. Given Texas is primarily desert no doubt your water is quite alkaline due to limestone deposits or other similar minerals in the ground which your water percolates through. The easiest remedy is to repot your plants including this one and removing all soil from the root ball and pot into a good soil mix. Not sure what part of Texas your in but you might want to consider buying a rain bucket and using that water for your hostas. Or purchase a water filter which you can attach to your outside faucet to remove the salts. Heavy fertilization using a chemical fertilizer such as Miracle-Gro or Peters can also cause similar damage overtime as well. Easiest solution would be the filter which you can get at any big box store. Scott

Herbal, It sounds as though you need to to some deep research on growing vegtables in the south. With the exception of melons, okra, sweet potatoes, peppers all other crops are either winter grown or havested and frozen/canned by the end of June. You have to be astute in your seed selections. It takes a lot of study, experimenting and talking to old timers in the area to grow successful crops. For instance, the best variety of corn is Silver Queen. Tomatoes and sweet peppers should be grown where they receive afternoon shade. To date the search is still on for a tomato that will produce well during the hot summers. Lots of promises in the catalogs but that is all they are. Southern nematodes are a problem. Plant veggies with a handful of granulated sugar which will repel them. Heavy applications of straw mulch for vegetable plants in the ground should reduce watering needs. If the greenhouse watering is too much for you consider setting up a drip irrigation system to water the pots. Just a few thoughts on the difficulties of southern vegetable gardening.

Don't feel too badly Ribbit/Rabbit. My AZ garden was a bit of a bummer, too. I didn't get much out of it for all the time I spent on it, but if I plant one down here next winter I'll know to get a LOT more soil amendments and dig them down into the sand below. And direct plant rather than start stuff in containers on the south side of the house. Granny Here is a link that might be useful: Annie's Kitchen Garden