I purchased 7 bareroot apples from Stark last summer during their sale. I planted them in pots and never got around to planting them in fall, so I overwintered them. I placed the pots as tight together as I could against the wall of my garage, but outside. Ideally I suppose I should have covered them with leaves and tried to get a tarp over them, but I was unable to do so. The only protection that they got was that I'd shovel snow over top of the pots every time that it snowed here, so they were under a pile of snow for at least 50% of the winter. I'm in zone 5A and they came out of the winter fine, are in the ground now and have broken dormancy and look fantastic. I'm not suggesting that trying to overwinter potted trees in cold areas is ideal, but if you have to do it and can give them any protection, they'll likely be OK. Admittedly, we had a fairly mild winter this year but were still sub-zero quite a few times.

That ginger goes completely dormant. I let them dry out, dig them up, and winter them in a plastic grocery bag, with the handles tied loosely, not sealed or it can rot (I overwinter many things this way). It will take up about as much space as a large apple, and requires exactly NO care until spring. I store the bag in an 18 gal. rubbermaid tub with no lid on it. I can fit fifty or sixty large plant rhizomes in that tub in this fashion. Probably too late for your poor plant, but FYI for the future.

Shuffles, Mine also took that long to start to producing fruit, but once it starts to bloom, it will really send out a lot of blooms. Unfortunately, I also noticed that the blooms are also dropping off at a quick rate. Now, I can see some fruit forming, but not many. I have yet to find out if Web worm infestation is my problem. I heard that wooded trees like oak trees are often the culprit for hosting a whole hose of unwanted creepies. We're now spraying BT on our lychee and mangoes and that helps, but I will soon learn more if Web worm attacks cherry blooms too. To me, it is not quite normal for fruit trees not to be producing such scanty fruit. There must be some way to deal with this, but I just don'the know how at this moment. I'll post again if I find out more info. In the mean time, I'd appreciate hearing from those of you who have experienced successful cropping with this tree.

eibren, as often happens when industry designs change, so do commercial and residential spaces typically not called upon in the past such as crawl spaces. I have a mid century Colonial close-in to a major city in the Mid Atlantic with humid/wet summers and recently increasingly wet/cold winters. Our crawl spaces were added in mid 1970s. GreenBuilding design is catching on even in crawl spaces, widening the debate to vented vs unvented and if the later, conditioned space. I'm changing my crawl spaces to unvented, conditioned space after extensive reading and thinking on our crawl spaces. I'm fixing problems which need fixing and the process requires light. Surprisingly or not, all who have given quotes have said lit crawl spaces are increasingly common to better keep an eye on them and to make them more inviting/inclusive. I've spent many an hour dragging LED portable battery rechargable lights (great light btw) around while working, so it will be nice to flip a switch or two. That's my take on it anyway.