Hi Cindy- The zone question will have to be answered by someone closer to you, but the part you should know is that we can use the method for spring and summer sowing. There's a blurb in the FAQs about it, and it involves a little more protection from the heat of summer, but definitely can do succession sowing for most, if not all seasons. Scroll down about 1/2-way down the page for the "Is there Spring & Summer Sowing" thread, and just below that is the hot-zone information for Z9 for you. As far as hardiness goes...a "plant" has its own hardiness factor, and that won't change, but winter sowing "seedlings" are born in the cold, and therefore, ARE hardier than a nursery-grown plant from the get-go. There is no real 'hardening off' process to speak of, and we don't worry about such things as "damping off" that indoor sowing needs to be concerned about. More blooms: lots of factors can affect a plants bloom-count, but the method that they are sown I DOUBT is one of them. If a plant is sown too deep (take a tulip bulb for instance), you would see only foliage and no bloom. Same with irises, I believe. But again, the method that they were sown is not a factor in mature plant performance. Direct sowing: There are winter sowers who direct-sow certain things, and not others simply out of habit, or what they feel is better for them, but overall, we winter-sow because it takes the critter & nasty weather factor out of the equation (and 1,001 other reasons, the biggest being because IT WORKS!). The containers protect the seeds from critters eating them, and keeps the wind & rain from washing seeds either 'away' or into an area where you don't want them to grow. Hope that answered some of your questions!

Ditto GardenGal's comments. To me the bottom line is not to be afraid of failure. Certainly you don't want to be removing a lot of huge dead trees from your garden after a hard winter. Some ideas are also just plain unrealistic (like the guy who expects coconut palms to grow in Seattle if he just keeps on trying - ha.) But plants will always perform better or worse than expected and there will always be pleasant and unpleasant surprises after a hard winter. To me, if my gardening style isn't flexible enough to account for those surprises and absorb a certain degree of risk, that takes a lot of the fun out of it - especailly as there are so many cool plants that are hardier than many nurserymen and books realize. A lot of useful weather data can be found at the Western Regional Climate Center: http://www.wrcc.dri.edu/Climsum.html The information necessary to calculate your USDA zone isn't provided, but what is provided is a more complete climate picture that is at least as useful, including record lows, averages, precipitation, etc. I haven't looked at the weather.com site but their numbers sound suspect to me. The WRCC data is from official NWS records. Olympia's all time low was -8F on January 1, 1979. Klamath Falls appears to be -17F in 1972. (Interesting side note - according to the Oregon Plant Atlas (google it), madronas can be found as far up/inland as the Crater Lake area (as is chinkapin) - I'm sure plants of that provenance would do fine in Klamath Falls.) You're certainly right about microclimates - they are much more variable than people realize, even over very short distances. When you find the all time record low for your area, it might not necessarily represent you. A fine example is the Olympia weather station, whose very cold winter temperatures don't really represent the rest of the area. I can tell this just by looking at some of the plants around town (eucalypts etc) after a hard winter. When I lived on the north side of Olympia, I usually had overnight temperatures 10-15 (in one instance 20) degrees warmer than those recorded at the airport during those cold arctic events. Another example of this sort of thing was during the Feb 2006 freeze when in the same night, Tacoma Narrows airport had a low of 32F and McChord, a short distance away, bottomed out at 12F.

Gary, Your weather is Texas is crazy! I have seen the devastation to fruitnut's stuff before. We are cold but the weather is consistent. Once it's warm it stays they way. We have had exceptions. I think 3 years ago we had a late hard frost that destroyed our crops here. It does not happen that often, once in 20 years. I can grow the SHB, but fruiting we shall see! Plants are young. Kept in garage which is 20 to 30 degrees warmer. When it was -16F it was probably -2 in the garage. Close to zone 7 weather and Sweetcrisp is rated to zone 7. It did have some slight tip dieback. Which was my fault. i should have taken out of the garage sooner, it became too warm in there, and it started budding out too early! I know better now to take out late February. Most years though it will not be that cold. It's a young plant and because of the damage I decided to prune it hard to strengthen canes and promote lateral growth. It also slowed budding. it is now starting again. On rabbiteye I have my eye on titan, looks like a cool plant! A late season, many are that are rabbiteyes. I figure Pink Lemonade for a pollinator. I have no room! Maybe in the future.

Herman, thanks for the update. It’s great to see fruit already. How large are the Conestoga 026 Segentrange and Poncirus Plus fruit? They look similar to PT…….or are they larger…….photos can be hard to judge. Great to hear 5* Citrumelo has some sweetness. Fruit ripens around Thanksgiving……but the size is clearly larger than PT…….a nice selection. Getting fruit in 3 years is very fast. I gave my brother who lives in Fairfax, VA a seed grown Citrumelo 12 years ago and it still hasn’t bloomed! Keep the updates coming.