Hi Julie, how strange you couldn't post this to the other thread???!!!! Anyway, love that you've got your geraniums going. I'm finding them pretty easy to overwinter. I actually dug a few of mine out and threw them in a pile planning on getting to them to re-pot then forgot them for four weeks. Well I found the pile in the stuff in the garage and just for jollies I chopped them all back to about five inches or so from the soil line, repotted them and voila, they are ALL doing well and leafing out. Hardy plants! I cleaned bathrooms and changed the sheets on the bed as well as washed the kitty bedding today. Not a lot to show for the day but I also spent some time in my blind. Deanne

Ken - the plan for the hoop house is cold winter crops, propagation, seed starting, etc with a plan sale in the spring to offset the cost of the hooby. Once it's empty, I'm planning on tomatoes, paste and beefsteak. My best guess is it will become to small in 6 months, I'll have more plants than I know what to do with, give most of them away, and loose money on the whole thing....but I do enjoy it! As far as the edging, it helps if your OCD and can't sit still for 30 seconds on top of that. I use the flat shovel as mentioned and then the upside down weedwacker trick to keep things in check. MXK3 - The Heuchera looked good until mid July, then when the heat came, it kind of went downhill in color and was closer to brown than caramel. I was hoping it would come back into form in fall but it didnt. I have a few others, but none looked as good as that one so I'm not touching it.

Pretty! I like Jay. Nice to have something just starting. Mine are winding down fast and I just posted a bunch of last blooms too. I like Tom Wise too and my favorite is Smoky Mt.Autumn. Purple NOID reminds me of Swirling Water.

The horrible wet start to the season kept me from planting much of what I had planned, and much of what I direct seeded rotted in the ground. Still, there have been successes (and a few more failures). I was able to plant three beans on time in my home gardens, and all have borne seed: - "Serbian Pole" bore seed early & plentifully, and is a wonderful shelly... so it is a keeper. The dry pods & seed also show very good resistance to moisture, there was virtually no spoilage even in our very wet summer. - "Grandma Roberts" was grown in pots last year; this year it was a large row for eating & further seed increase. It did remarkably well - a couple meals of snaps, and over 4 pounds of seed thus far. The only down side is that the seed has a strong tendency to sprout in the pod, even in dry weather... at least every other pod has 1-2 sprouted. The upside: after letting the vines go for seed, nearly all of the pods have dried and been picked... and all of the vines are re-sprouting! I might get another few snaps before frost. Generally, beans drop all their leaves & die as the seed ripens, so this degree of re-sprouting is remarkable. - I lost 4/16 plants of "Flamingo" to disease, but the remaining plants were rampant, and completely covered the trellis. The flat pods are tender & sweet, outstanding eaten raw - DW & I snacked on quite a few. Unfortunately, once pods began to ripen, only two plants showed the bright red coloration... the rest were pale, or red spotted. Dry seed came late, but since it does not appear to be stable, I will not be saving seed, and will not grow it again. - "Garafal Oro" is the only bean that survived the June flooding in my rural plot - and even the lowest 1/3 of that row was lost. Fortunately, the plants that remained are lush & full of pods, which are just now beginning to ripen & dry. The color change is widespread, so I should get a good seed harvest before frost. Runner beans: - "Insuk's Wang Kong" has done exceptionally well; due to several cool snaps & the absence of really hot weather, it set a full pod load early. The majority of that seed has already dried (about 3.5 pounds so far) with maybe another pound or so still on the vines. All of that seed is either purple or pure black. I had been looking forward to seeing if any of the white seed reappeared, since I had not planted any of the white seeds the first time I grew it & wondered if it was hidden as a recessive gene. There are over 20 plants, and no sign of white flowers or white seeds... so it appears that the white was eliminated in one generation. - "Gigandes" is adjacent to "Garafal Oro" in my rural plot, and also lost part of the row to flooding. The plants were set back, and flowered later than usual. There are a lot of pods on the vines now, and a few are beginning to change color... but unless the frost comes late, I doubt I will get much dry seed. Limas: - "1880's Butterbean" (in my home plots) was transplanted late, but still set a heavy pod load fairly early. I've been picking handfulls of dry pods daily for a week now. The color change has become widespread, so I should get a good dry seed yield, and freeze quite a few shellies. - "North Star" is a large lima that I have never grown in quantity, so I was really looking forward to it this year... but it was transplanted very late into the rural garden. It has set quite a few pods, but is probably too far behind to make it. For some reason it was the plant that was nipped the hardest by a weak frost last night, which could be a mixed blessing... it might cause some of the pods to ripen faster. I've already posted about my success with a bush, non daylength sensitive hyacinth bean that I acquired in a trade. There is already a tray full of dry seed, and the bushes are still setting immature pods... so it too appears to be a "keeper". I have a Filipino friend who used to eat the dry seeds, so I will be getting more info on proper preparation. It's late & I have to get up early, I'll cover the rest of the legumes later.