My own experience with sweet cherries and Apricots.... I absolutely LOVE apricots - but so does all of the disease and bugs here... The tree seems incredibly difficult to keep alive down here.... I have 1 apricot that went in last year.... and I am seriously re-considering a Tomcot.... but I lost all 5 other apricots to bugs literally eating the trees to the ground... Cherries... Cherries are tough because Birds love them so much... so far - the last 3 years... I have gotten 1 cherry each year in my mouth... The foliage also gets hammered by Japanese Beetles... but they seem to pull through... On Peaches - Scott has great advice.. I would also add Red Haven and Elberta.... They are older, tough, reliable cultivars... Plums wise... Same as Scott - but more so... My European plums don't do well in the summer... Too hot for them - and they go dormant in the summer - and the plums came out very bitter... I dug them up and planted them in the shade last year.. and they didn't die.. We will see this year... Japanese plums wise - so far Methley is super reliable but So-so for taste (Bland and watery when fully ripe) until the very end of it's season.. The kids absolutely love them - so the tree can stay for now... I put in a Satsuma last year - we will see how it does.... If you like making Jelly - American plums are the ticket... but they are very bitter/sour/inedible until 100% fully ripe... I LOVE home made American plum jelly! Thanks

I have yet to get any significant blossom blight, but my impression of the brown rot lifecycle is it is easiest to shut it out early than to try to fight it later in the season. The only year I ever had bad brown rot was last year, and there were horrible continuous warm rains last spring and I did not spray very much then either. Previous years I had done many more spring sprays (trying to shut down a bad case of shot-hole) and I never had brown rot then. Since last year was so bad I did one spray of Orbit at pink and plan on using the Saf-T-Side/Serenade combo for the rest of the summer. Scott

shastensis, According to Dr. Bob Zybach of Oregon the old growth in the Northwest was comparable to today's old growth over a century ago in the settlement era. He studied fire history in the state of Oregon and believes most of the trees were second growth when the white man came. Zybach has said reports of Douglas fir in excess of 300 feet are mostly stories that cannot be documented, and he has said that the city of Vancouver BC was a prairie before the white man came. I think his views are the minority opinion. He was a reforestation contractor for 20 years, so I value his input. Most estimates I have seen suggest between 70 and 90% of the biggest and oldest Douglas fir forests have been logged in the past 130 years. In some places like Southern Vancouver Island up to 99% of old growth fir is said to be gone. One need only look at the hundreds of old logging photos of giant fir and cedar to get an idea of how large the lowland forests once grew, and in places like present day Seattle, and Vancouver BC. To deny all of this pretty much tells me one would have to be a lobbyist for the timber industry, but that is just my gut feeling.

"Roughly speaking, how much of the flora is unable to grow on the West Coast?" Seems like it's usually more like what won't grow here? (Often with bad consequences, in the case of invasives.) For instance, my mother is endlessly frustrated by my interest in native plants (she is in New Mexico), as she says "You can grow ANYTHING there and you plant plain old Apricot Mallow???!" lol. Of course, I still have a lemon tree, orange tree, palm tree, tea tree, orchid tree, hibiscus, hydrangea, avocado etc....Full disclosure: I am a newbie and just got some actual dirt a year ago - but it has been amazing to learn about this amazing climate - which is Mediterranean btw. Often I wish there was a California version of every forum here - particularly veggies, since our planting times are totally different. Some books I like: Mediterranean Kitchen Garden: Growing Organic Fruit and Vegetables in a Hot, Dry Climate by Mariano Bueno, Pat Welsh's Southern California Gardening, and California Native Plants for the Garden by Carol Bornstein et al. The Sunset Bible is also on my shelf. The micro-climate is crucial - I am in East LA and have a totally different zone than you will in Santa Monica. One thing that I'll add to look into for native plants is the Theodore Payne Foundation which is local - it's really a neat non-profit nursery and educational resource.