Hi Krista: Your bouquets made my day. Thank you! They look like paintings that lift my spirit. I love Jacques Cartier with the button-hole. I enjoy your pics. very much. My sister in Southern CA informed me that a contagious disease wiped out her garden, including Annie L. McDowell. I think it's downy mildew. She lives near the coast. My heavy clay retains salt well, so I keep track of salt-index of fertilizers. CA dry climate with saline water is worse, that can shoot up one's blood pressure, plus wreck havoc on plants. I put too much Jobes organic fertilizer NPK 2-7-4 (bone meal, sulfate of potash, etc) into the planting hole of Gruss an Teplitz. It broke out in mildew instantly. So I put soluble gypsum on Gruss. That took away 80% of the mildew, amazing. Gypsum is used to de-salt saline soil or water. Gypsum salt-index is 8, so I gave Gruss "banana water" made by soaking chopped up banana peels NPK 0-3-42, very high in potassium and no salt. I let it soak for a few days, and watered Gruss with that. That helped! My husband is a marathon runner .. I don't run, but read his running magazines. In one study, volunteers were divided into 3 groups: fed low-salt diet, and low-potassium, fed high-salt diet, and high-potassium with lots of bananas, and a control group. Surprisingly, the group with high-salt and high-potassium had better blood-pressure than the group with low-salt and low-potassium diet. That's why they always feed runners bananas after the race .... This post was edited by Strawberryhill on Mon, Jul 29, 13 at 12:45

Sherry, Well, I think you can plant them and have limited success. Onions have to be in the ground and achieve a certain amount of growth before bulbing is induced. Since bulbing is induced by a combination of daylength and temperature, it is going to happen when the daylength-temperature combo is achieved, whether the onions have been in the ground for one week, one month, or whatever. So, that is why we have to plant onions so very early--to get maximum growth before initiation of the bulbing process begins. Most onions needs to be in the ground a minimum of 90 to 100 days before bulb initiation starts in order to size up fully, and some need 100 to 120 days. Short day-length onions will begin to bulb up once the daylength (hours of sunlight) reaches about 10-12 hours in combination with the right temperature. Intermediate day-length onions need 12-14 hours days to bulb up. Long day-length onions will begin to bulb up once the daylength is 14-16 hours and the temperature is right, which is why the long daylength onions are not grown in our part of the county. (Our daylength here maxes out around 14 hours.) So, if the onions go into the ground late, they will grow and they still will bulb up once bulb initiation occurs. They'll just be smaller when bulb initiation occurs, thus, they will be smaller at maturity than onions that were planted earlier. One reason that short day-length and intermediate day-length onions planted in the southern third of the country get bigger than those EXACT same varieties grown in the upper 2/3s of the country is that our weather allows us to plant the onions up to 5 months prior to bulb initiation, and the northern states' colder weather does not allow them to plant until approx. 75 days before bulb initiation. So, if you plant late this year, you'll get onions that are "northern-sized" instead of "southern-sized", but you'll still get onions! If you don't mind knowing you'll get smaller onions, go ahead and go for it. It would be a good learning experience if you've never grown onions before. Some commonly-sold short day-length onions are TX 1015Y (aka Texas Sweet or Texas Supersweet), Yellow Granex, White Bermuda, Southern Belle Red and Contessa. Some commonly-sold intermediate day-length onions are Candy, Stockton Sweet Red and Superstar. Some commonly sold long day-length onions (and these should NOT be sold in our region) include Borrettana Cippolini, Red Torpedo Tropea, Ailsa Craig (there's also a tomato by this name), Copra, Big Daddy, Red Burgermaster, Red Zeppelin, Walla Walla, Yellow Sweet Spanish and Ringmaster. I've already planted my main crop of onions, but I do continue planting onions in various spots around the garden as companion plants, and I will, probably through mid-to-late April. Of course, I don't care if those companion-planted onions bulb up or not. Sometimes I leave the companion plant onions in the ground until the following year, and let them bloom in the spring. Their tiny flowers attract a TON of tiny pollinators and beneficial insects, and are quite attractive as well. Dawn

I'm glad I started this thread. I'm not sure that we got down to 40 degrees F here, but it definitely has been unusually cool and rainy for this time of year. Still, I'm researching this boron thing. In my original post I complained about RdV's issues. RdV has always had blooming issues,even with "normal" weather in my garden,except for that one great flush I got after giving it the cracked corn last year. Though I'm reluctant to do it again now because of the badger issue, that DOES give me hope,and also suggests that there is a nutritional issue. Another rose that has been bothering me a lot is Charles XII. The fact is that I've never yet managed to get a satisfying bloom flush from this rose,even though it is now in it's 4th or 5th season in my garden. Now, earlier , I was threatening Chas. with The Shovel,but now I think it'd be unfair to judge him on the basis of this year's spring, just because it really IS chilly (and Chas was bred in a warm climate, to boot). However I think it quite possible that there's some kind of nutritional issue with this rose, too. I know that it is planted in very, very poor soil. This area of my garden's "soil" was pure clay, very, very inert. Nothing was growing there when I started out. Chopping with my pick,I could see that this area consisted of the typical very "soft" rock that makes up a lot of my soil. Don't know what it's called, but I'm pretty sure that, once exposed to air and water, in time this stuff breaks down into clay. Good for water retention, but totally unfertile. It's quite possible that I just didn't amend it enough, or with the right stuff. The Climbing Old Blush that I have growing in similar soil has much more marked disease issues than other plants of the same rose growing elsewhere in my garden,and the tips of the shoots all suffer die-back . I've only just begun my on-line reading, but have already read that boron deficiency, for example, is thought to play a part in causing bull-heads and proliferation in roses. Chas. also has vegetative centers; not sure if this is the same as proliferation. Another oddity: the ends of the side shoots on the older canes show a sort of die-back. These canes all seem to be blind shoots, whilst younger ones produce buds...must study this more! I did try to go easy on the nitrogen this year with Charles,so I wouldn't THINK that excess nitrogen was the problem, but you never know...

Nikki, your package arrived today. Thank you so much! I didn't do a great job on the picture, but there are 2 packages of beautiful flower stickers, that pretty little notebook that includes a pen, several packets to indulge with beverages (non-alcoholic for all who are picturing otherwise - LOL) and that fantastic cup which I really like - a bright and happy color and such a good size. I often take a cool drink with me in the car on hot days - also in the little baggies there are 2 kinds of anemone and a lily. You made me happy, Nikki. Thanks so much! I hope everyone at your house is starting to feel better. Jeanne