Hi BahamaDan, I'm succesfully growing several varieties of blueberries in South Africa. I posted a long reply here that disappeared when I changed tabs :( I'll be brief now. My best performing variety is Brigitta which I believe was developed in Australia. Second best is Centurion. I use a mix of 1/3 each of perlite, acid compost and peat /coco peat in my pots. I top them with a mulch of big pine bark chips. My father-in-law bought some expensive German potting soil for azaleas, for the blueberry I gave him but his plant has been struggling for the past 2 years. I use only a half handful or so of Ammonium Sulfate per plant in the larger, half whiskey barrel sized terracotta pots. I do that in early spring and early summer. I almost killed one of the plants with a massive dose of the ammonium sulfate, so I'm very careful with it now. On a weekly basis or when I remember, I add a weak dose of either fish emulsion or an organic and water soluble fertiliser for acid loving plants. Below is my 2 year old Brigitta (one of two in the same style pot). In front of it are O'Neil and Gulf Coast recently bought for me by a friend, as they are said to taste really good and do well in warmer climates. The Brigittas were much smaller than the two in front when I first got them.

We've had a lot more sunshine the last two days and have been so glad to see it. I've been spending as much time as possible outdoors in the sun, so less time inside cleaning house or on my computer. I'm going to head outdoors in a minute now just as soon as the temperature gets up above freezing. It was 29 degrees the last time I looked at the thermometer, but the sun is up now so I should be able to go out shortly. Kim, Thanks for not keeping the sunshine too long. We needed it here too. I would have like to have watched you lasso the sun and haul it off to the TX panhandle. We awakened yesterday morning to a thin sheet of ice coating the trees and fences and other exposed surfaces. Since no rain had fallen, I assume we had freezing fog during the night. There also was very heavy dew on the grass, but I've never seen dew freeze on tree trunks and limbs like what we saw on our front yard trees yesterday. Of course, it melted away as soon as the sun rose. Bon, We are at a little over 71" of rain so far this year. Our previous record, from 1990, is a little over 59", so our rainfall record wasn't just broken, it was smashed. Everything here is mud, mud, mud. It is crazy....and yet we spent several months in various stages from being Abnormally Dry to Extreme Drought. Our weather here is just so bizarre. I always say I'd like to have a normal weather year for once, but I think for OK, bizarre weather that swings from one extreme to another is our "normal", so maybe I should ask for an abnormal year with no extremes. Patti, We have multiple rain gauges that I check and empty daily, and several thermometers, all posted at 5' above ground in full shade. I started tracking my own weather when I began to realize that our rainfall/temperatures almost always vary a great deal from our local Mesonet station, which sits NW of us by several miles. The weather data recorded by our local NWS Cooperative Observer is a bit more similar to ours than that from the Mesonet station as his house is about halfway between the Mesonet station and our house, but even so, some days he records a lot more or less rain than we have. For years, I used to record our daily high, low and precipitation total on a regular wall calendar, but found that when I got really busy in gardening and canning season then I would forget to record the totals. Now I mostly keep a running rainfall total in my head. For me, the big catalyst that pushed me to watch my own weather closely was a day in late April or early May almost a decade ago when our forecast low was around 50 degrees and we dropped to 32 degrees. Almost my entire garden froze to the ground, and I had tomato plants that were 3' tall and had fruit the size of baseballs (prior to that freeze, we had been frost-free and above-freezing for many weeks). I began to see the value of recording our own rainfall in the 2006-2007-2009 time frame on days we were forecast to have 2-3" of rain and got 6.25"-9.25" or 5" of forecast rain actually gave us a total of 12.89". Because rain can vary greatly over a small area (even gauges I have 200-300' from each other often record remarkably different amounts), I knew I needed to record our own actual rainfall instead of relying on the official totals. Most years, by the end of the calendar year, our rainfall total from home, the local CO-OP observer and the Mesonet station end up being fairly similar even if they varied from one another a great deal during a certain part of the year, so I guess it all averages out in the year. Still, I want to know how much rain fell on my yard and garden, not 3 or 6 or 9 miles away. I don't keep any written records of what, where, how, etc. I plant. I am not a numbers person. I just plant until I have what feels like "enough" of each thing in the ground and then I stop. I've been doing this for decades, and I know how much harvest I generally get from planting a set amount of each item, and I don't really mean that I know 30 broccoli plants give us all we can eat fresh plus fills up the freezer.....I just transplant broccoli plants into the ground until it feels right for that year's timing/weather and then I stop. So, my gardening is not mechanical/planned so much as it is intuitive. When you garden intuitively, your brain is, of course, operating like a little computer and is looking at the current weather conditions/timing (big difference in everything if the last frost is the first week of March as opposed to the first week of May) as you plant and directing you what to do. I jokingly say that I listen to "the voices in my head", but I don't mean that in a schizo way....I mean it in an intutive way. The great thing about gardening here is that we can sow succession crops from January or February through October or November, so there's always a chance to plant another round of something if you don't get enough of it planted the first time. I try to keep every square inch of my garden planted at all times, partly because I hate wasted space and partly because Mother Nature will plant weeds in any spot I leave vacant for a week. Since I'd rather harvest veggies, fruits, flowers or herbs as opposed to pulling weeds, I immediately replant any harvested area. So, for example, if I harvest the last of the broccoli or cabbage on a late Spring morning, then in the afternoon I am putting pepper plants, bush beans or southern pea seeds or whatever in the newly empty space. Just from being in my garden daily, I knew how much of everything is thriving, what is or isn't planted yet, and what I need to use to fill any newly open space that resulted from the harvesting of an early crop. I also often intercrop, growing 2 or 3 types of edible plants in the space most people use only for one. For example, I often grow lettuce and carrots as living ground covers beneath tomato or pepper plants. I grow sugar snap peas on a trellis, and grow cabbage or lettuce in a row along the south side of the trellis so that peas grow above and cabbage or lettuce (or kale or Swiss chard or whatever) below. For privacy and security reasons, I decline to give you or anyone else my coordinates and I don't post photos that show what our garden looks like since it is very visible from the road. My husband is in law enforcement and prefers we guard our privacy on the internet. Because of his decades in law enforcement, we know that criminal types often prowl social media and internet forums looking for folks to burglarize, etc., and we decline to make it easy for any of them to find us. I realize this not a popular stance nowadays when people post photos of their entire lives in ways easily accessible to public view but we are old dinosaurs and we aren't going to change. It isn't members of this forum we worry about, it is the fact that such things, once posted, can be seen by anyone who bothers to look for them. There was, in fact, a member of this forum (now deceased) who lived on the same road as us and not too far from our house. It didn't bother me that he knew where we lived until another neighbor (highly reliable) told me some troubling things about that person. After that, I wasn't entirely comfortable knowing that he knew where our house was but, in fairness to him, nothing creepy ever happened here, as far as I know. He figured out where our house was just because I once mentioned a next-door neighbor by name and he knew where that person lived, so I've learned to keep my mouth shut about stuff like that. I did look at satellite photos of our place from the air once or twice and it was disappointing. Because our garden is, in essence, in a clearing in a woodland, all you see are trees, which hide the house and the garden. In the winter, everything is the same color since all the mulched beds and paths are mulched with hay and leaves and blend in with everything around them. The only satellite photo I ever found of our place showing how it looked in winter was well over a decade old and looked nothing like our place looks now. All my raised beds are 4' wide and run east-west and all the pathways are 2' wide. It really isn't anything special to look at. There's no amazing layout or anything. It is just an old dirt garden and I am an old dirt gardener. This spring will be our 18th spring garden here and trees on the west and north that weren't too very tall when we broke ground for the garden are incredibly tall and wide now and looming high above it. (I knew this day would come eventually, but the garden spot is in just about the only really sunny place we have that doesn't flood heavily, so putting it someplace else was not an option.) In fact, the trees on the north lean over towards the garden at an increasingly awkward angle, stealing its sunlight more and more each year. I have been shrinking down the front garden for about a decade now, making it smaller every year by surrending space back to the woods on the north and west sides, but am tired of giving back space to Mother Nature. We are contemplating spending the month of January either cutting down about a dozen huge trees that sit north and west of the garden (this will involve removing the fence lest it be crushed and then putting it back up again), or moving the fence and taking in more space to the east to make up for what the trees are shading out on the north and west. We wanted to do it last winter, but it rained nonstop so we couldn't work outdoors enough to do much of anything. I worry this winter will be the same. I once had a garden that was almost square, considering we had to work around existing trees, a pond, the driveway, etc. Now it is increasingly become a longer, narrower rectangle year after year. Who knows what we'll end up with this spring after we cut trees and/or move the fence, etc. I built a lot of my early raised beds using the lasagna gardening method of layering materials atop one another. Now, as the garden stretches out in length and narrows in width, my lasagna garden is turning into a linguine or spaghetti garden. Now, I'm headed outdoors for most of the rest of the day. Dawn

We kept all the river rock from the excavation when we built - so I have a lot to work with. I also have a pile of granite boulders and other large interesting rocks to be used yet :-P I have no grass whatsoever in the front yard. It's all gravel and perennial/native plants. I have a few sedums and semps, but mostly shrubs like contoneaster and juniper; and perennials like oxalis, lilies and flax. And heaven help me - wolf willow. I even have a happy little valentine cherry tree These pics below are from a few years ago, and everything is much fuller now (the arbour is covered in Virginia creeper now) but the gravel/rock pit is still pretty much the same and is where the bulk of development into C&S heaven is going to take place (ps black mulch sucks and I'll never use it again. It looked good for like, a week) Oxalis gone wild! Left a planter here and it went to seed. Here's photos from last year showing where I'm going to add the bulk of my C&S rock garden/dry stream bed and a patio. Maybe pergola. And this side will be another C&S bed, it gets hot hot hot sun all day, and the spruce is a major water hog so it doesn't stay soggy ever. I think I'm going to try opuntia too. I have sedums here already and will probably move that volunteer Nanking cherry. I have a loooong way to go to even approximate the glory that is Harry's yard :-P kd

Hi Sara Ann, it's good to have you post and show us some of your lovely roses--Belinda's Dream is just stunning. I think lots of us have had better rose years than 2022, including me. It was our hottest year on record, yet we still managed to have a freak snowstorm in May, the first one since 1964. Julias when splat during that storm. I wish you the best rose year in 2023 and a mild winter. And good health to all of us and our families. Please post again. Magpie, I love your artistic rose arrangement. As you know, I love pale colors that contrast with dark purples. Yum. Love your Strawberry Hill photos. I do like roses with changeable colors. Kitty, all those luscious cherries you'll be growing will just be one more reason for us to show up on your doorstep next year, looking for cherry pie. Just be sure to net the pie cherries, or birds will get the future pies. I like the pretty lavender-purple flowers of Victoria, and I hope Maypop gets lots of water from her human mom. Your beautiful bouquet is exquisite and so fresh looking. Berrypie, what a lovely little Strawberry Baby. Jim, your park photo is amazing. You had perfect timing to take the photo just when the reflection was at its peak. I think you should frame that pic for your living room. Kristine, all your roses look great--what a nice autumn reward--but Daybreaker is outstanding. Perfection in coloring. I remember when I wanted that rose so badly, and for some reason never got it. I still want it, especially after seeing yours! Seaside, oh, my, that Huddersfield Choral Society is a breathtaking rose. What color. All your roses look great and I'll bet you have lots of good rose season left, you lucky thing. Carol, thanks for starting the new thread, which I'll look at now. Loved reading about your Thanksgiving feast. Diane