Got my MonArk - a U of Ark release - from Classical Fruits Nursery, in north AL(Moulton) - it worked well for them there, as it does here. Don't know if they're still in business, but Vintage Virginia Apples carries it. Centennial crab worked well for my dad, down at Auburn AL. I've had a knowledgeable nurseryman tell me that Granny Smith and Lady Williams would work OK on the zone 7/8 interface, when I was asking after tart varieties for my dad a number of years back. Think Fuji was also on his list for that area. I spent some time in the Guntown/Baldwin/Tupelo area 25 years ago, but not long enough to plant or fruit out any trees. If they'll work at Auburn, they oughta do OK in north MS.

Ft Meyers is iffy. Really iffy. I would not go anna. Definitely go golden dorsett which originated in Nassau Bahamas and for the adventure go Tropic sweet. try to find them on m111. these will bear a few fruits in 2 years instead of maybe 5 for a standard tree, can be kept pretty low. Watch Very carefully any "knots" developing at graft level. paint the entire trunk with white latex paint to anything showing above ground for borers. Golden dorsett may even have two crops a year for you. Thin the apples to no more than one per flower cluster and 6" apart on the stem to get decent size. I grew them on I think m26 or 27 from Bay Laurel in Ca. with great success until the borer got it. It makes dark gray bark. I mixed bonide borer spray with the paint. the dorsett is happily good for all uses, it is like a golden delicious which is one of its parents only better. Spray with captan starting when apples are 1 1/2" or so for bitter rot if you need to. good luck.

Alan: There is something fundamentally wrong about a 5-in-1 apple tree that has reached 25 feet tall. Can you recall how many years it has taken to reach this size, and perhaps the original source of the tree? Multigrafted trees are normally sold on dwarfing or semi-dwarfing rootstocks, and would never be expected to become this large. If the tree came from a dubious nursery source, you may have something quite different from a grafted 5-in-1 tree -- something like a tree on a seedling rootstock, or perhaps not a grafted tree at all. You have not yet told us whether or how much the tree blossoms in the spring. If a tree blossoms freely but does not set fruit, pollination problems may be suspected, but if the blossoms are sparse to nonexistent the tree sounds more like a seedling -- especially given the quality of the few apples as you describe them. You may have been snookered. Also, please tell us where you live in zone 8. Don Yellman, Great Falls, VA

I'm surprised nobody has posted on this thread for so long. Anyway, while knowing which general classes of roses are best, it's just as important to consider the specific individuals within those classes. The most successful rose I grew while in Mississippi was the Cherokee Rose (Rosa Laevigata). Second in vigor and health was the yellow Banksia. Third, I suppose, would be Rosa Fortuniana, which I planted (mislabeled by Bracy's, as usual) thinking I'd bought the white Banksia. Fortuniana is a hybrid of white Banksia and Cherokee. I've also had spectacular results with Mermaid and Fortune's Double Yellow. And while the endlessly touted 'New Dawn' was a bit of a disappointment, the once-blooming parent from which it sported, Dr. W. VanFleet, was a disease-free giant (I measured some thirty-foot canes!!!). My family's 'official rose' is Silver Moon, a big, disease-free old Hybrid Wichuriana. My Great-Grandmother bought one during her glory days as one of the richest women in the Delta. After the Cotton Panic of '25 decimated her plantations and vaporized the banks in which she owned stock, our struggling family would make cuttings from that original plant, as they established their own homes. A big, pushy, loud church leveled her home in the Eighties (purchasing it with promises not to, of course...pathological lying being that denomination's other salient trait), and bulldozed her gardens. But that rose's progeny lives on, from River Oaks to Mountain Brook. Today, a generation of budding gardeners is making cuttings of those Silver Moons, for homes from Mendocino to the Isle of Palms. I also grew up with another probable Wichuriana hybrid that seems to have been 'Gardenia'. Lemon-Creme blooms, tea fragrance, apple-green foliage, totally free of disease. Dorothy Perkins is a Wichuriana hybrid, which, while prone to a dusting of surprisingly-attractive mildew, is otherwise fabulously healthy and wonderfully easy to root. I think I've seen Dorothy's deeper pink sister, 'Debutante', naturalized in the hedgerows, along roads leading to Natchez. Anyway, the Wichuriana class, while once-blooming (except for New Dawn), are fabulously healthy, and mostly immune to the occasional cold snaps which complicate things down south. Dr. W. VanFleet, BTW, is also a Hybrid Wichuriana. Before we moved up here, I was falling in love with what was sold to me (at the Greater Belhaven Farmer's Market)as the non-climbing form of the Polyantha, Clotilde Soupert. Not a trace of blackspot; continual bloom; wonderful scent; petal-packed, cabbagey little blooms, fading to a nice, neutral fleshy-pinky-offwhite; blooms well into early winter; GOOD SHADE TOLERANCE: what's not to love? An aunt in South Carolina passed this little mnemonic along to me from a rose lecture she'd attended: "Polyantha Noisette likes her Tea in a China cup." That sums up, pretty well, the classes of antique ever-blooming roses best for the South. Walking to class at Tulane, back in the days when it was still safe to be a couple of blocks lakeside from St. Charles, I'd pass rundown Uptown Victorian houses with ancient Tea roses out front. Can't tell you the names, but the old teas (and very first Hybrid Teas) develop a quite pleasant and substantial architecture. They'd cheer me up, blooming well into December, on basically neglected plants. The Hybrid musk with which I grew up was 'Eutin'. My Grandmother had her two out beneath some Pecan trees. Even with the shade and the sap (and without pruning), they bloomed all summer. I remember a fragrance which traveled far from the plant, although the plant is not listed as being fragrant. The Growth habit is upright and awkward, though, and you will have to prune a lot. Eutin could once be spotted in humble gardens all over Mississippi. Personally, I've grown the Hybrid Musks Cornelia and Vanity. Vanity has a very open growth habit, shocking pink blooms, and healthy foliage. Cornelia matures into a huge mess of a shrub, with plenty of blackspot, but also plenty of vigor. The fragrance is up there with Hyacinth, Winter Honeysuckle, Frangipani, and Lemon Blossom...it's that wonderful. One spray will perfume a hospital room or an office. Grow it in your Kitchen Garden, where its big, messy ever-blooming self won't be an aesthetic disaster. Or plant it in the front yard (as I foolishly did, at an apartment building I owned), and spend all your waking hours pruning it.