Thanks so much Scott, Don and Fruitnut. I certainly do appreciate the information even though I wish that it was a little more encouraging about growing some really big plums that are delicious. The one that I mentioned which I lost to borers had some big ones that were really good, but they were not that big. I just did not know back then how to take care of it right. The Womack Nursery in DeLeon TX seems to be closed this time of the year. The Ham's orchard is probably about 30 miles or less east of me. I was glad to see them on there. I have always loved those little fried pies and no one could make them like my Mother used to do. Practically all that I have found to buy in a number of years have been a poor imitation but I see that they have some that I would like to try. I am sure that someone like that could tell me which varieties have done best here locally for them, but I am guessing that I would probably have to look elsewhere to buy a plant or two. At my age and state of health, I probably do not need to plant any more trees to take care of, but you know how you just get ideas. (Like Jack Nicholson did in "One flew over the Cukoo's nest!" ":^) Thanks again guys, the pleasure has been all mine. Bill P.

Bananafan, Take a look at this link. This site lists approximate fruiting times for several varieties but not all of them. I know that the Raja Puri I bought was advertised (per the tag) as producing fruit as quickly as in 9 months but I believe most others are closer to the 18 month range. http://www.alohatropicals.com/MusaBananas_FruitingBananas.html Also, as for producing more than one bloom, I am not sure how common that is with the more popular varieties (probably relatively uncommon) but I know that GreenEarth lists a specific cultivar bred for this trait listed as "Double (Mahoi) Banana Plant Banana tree": http://www.bananaplants.net/bananaplants.html At any rate, once a banana is big enough to produce fruit they usually seem to have good sized pups to take their place anyway when they die. Laurence Here is a link that might be useful: Aloha Tropicals - Fruiting Bananas Page

This is my third season trying to create a cottage garden out front, so I'm still pretty new to gardening, but here's my experience so far. For what it's worth. The first two seasons my beds were small and I mulched moderately with bark mulch. This year it's all just gotten so big that with two small children at home, I really can't afford to mulch! I'm sure my neighbors miss it, because it kept my garden looking very tidy and intentional...but I planted lots of flowers those first two years that I'd hoped would reseed, and hardly anything did...like bee balm and bachelors buttons, both known to be good self seeders. The only place I got lots of reseeding action was in a long stretch where I ran low on mulch and had spread it very sparsley. So this year I didn't mulch at all, and I have things coming up all over! Lol* A HUGE patch of poppies that volunteered, rudbeckia everywhere, bleeding hearts... It's a little irritating having to go through and pull weeds, but from what I hear, once you get a densley packed garden, the weeds should naturally decrease. (And in all honesty, I only pull the really out of control or big ones.) So that is what I'm trying...because truly, this year, I have seeds coming up from things I planted a couple of years ago, that I didn't get anything from last year. I do ammend my soil with inexpensive manure compost from Walmart, and I think it helps because I've planted at the end of my driveway which is essentially 70 percent gravel and 30 percent soil...but I added some topsoil and manure compost and the plants are doing pretty well. I do plan to leaf mulch in the spring, for looks and for the soil, but I have a feeling because it breaks down so quickly it won't cut the reseeding down too much. We'll see what happens. :) Good luck!

Please see my two posts on March 30, 2014. Only the earliest of hybrids released had two parents,and both parents are known for some of them. Later hybrids can have up to 4 parental inputs in each breeding line,as I explained in a previous posts I mentioned above so 8 parental inputs in each line.The last one in each line is crossed with the last one in the other line to make the stable F1 hybrid. Yes,there are many companies that breed F1 hybrids,mostly in the Netherlands and Israel and Japan and China,some still in the US such as Petoseed,which does custom breeding for Burpee although Burpee now has some breeders back in PA but I don't know of any releases yet,and do so since commercial farmers want F1 hybrids and preferably determinate ones to facilitate machine harvesting and those in areas want ones with tolerance,no such thing as total resistance,where soilborne diseases are found,which is not in all places of the US.. Companies don't breed OP heirloom varieties, for that would be the antithises of the word heirloom and let us NOT get into a discussion of what an heirloom is or is not,I mean you can,but there are many threads here already about that,no one definition,and I'm out on that subject.,LOL. Heirloom tomato varieties are sourced from many places and most of them,well maybe some,end up being listed in the SSE Annual Yearbooks,where they are then available to SSEmembers. To date I've grown about 4,000 plus heirloom varieties and have in introduced close to 300 new ones from various sources myself. And if you look at Tania's superb data website she has individual pages for about 5,000 now and taking all the ones that are in seedbanks in different countries there are probably close to 20,000, I should live so long being 77 this June.LOL