Almost in February so I am closer to the pruning time. I just want to make sure I am going to prune right, so I thought I would check in another time, offer some pictures and drop a possible bomb. Yes.. the neighbors adjacent to me would like to build a fence across their back yard, however the fence where my grape vines are hanging on the chicken wire would need to move out 3ft in the direction of the neighbors, so that they don't enclose my fruit trees in their yard (since I had planted my apple, cherry and peach trees on the outside of my fence). So now I really am worried I'm really going to screw up my grape production as the chicken wire has to come down and the grape 'trunks' and vine system needs to be swayed inward toward my back yard and trellised on wire. So here's what I have done so far. I freed the trunk vines out of the chicken wire (grew through it in places and would have had interrupted circulation in a couple years I suspect) and then tried to make sense out the tangled mess of vines with 1st, 2nd and 3rd year's growth (assuming I count the year I planted them as year 0.. like 7" tall sticks in 2007.. is that wrong?). The vines are more of less straightened and here's what I want to do.. The wood that is the lightest color at the tips of each arm is the summer 2010 wood, right? .. so I leave 30 buds on that for each arm I want to trellis, right? I bought 1/8" wire rope to thread through 2 sets of needle hooks I screwed in some 4"x8' posts I had already sunk in the ground. My idea is that I want to bend the vines from that back corner of the yard over to the right (as shown in these photos below). The arms of the vines will be attached to the two sets of wires that are 30" apart. Will this work? I realize I might be a bit unconventional, but my yard is truly cramped and if this works to get me good production, I'll be thrilled. My neighbor's house diagonally behind mine offers me no privacy, so I have thought of getting with my neighbor that has the welder in his garage, picking up some scrap metal and making a trellis to attach to the tops of the wooden posts, and then train some vines up there both for added production and screening of said neighbors. Nothing like them having a BBQ and looking uncomfortably in my back yard as the sweaty gardener has blackened hands and sweat pouring down his face. lol Here are the 'trunks' I have 2 plants, but all the compost and mulch I dumped over the last 4 years had caused the one plant on the left to split\root a few times looks like: From 01252011 This is just to the right of the trunks. Most of the vines are directed here, though I have a few really long ones on the right side out of the picture frame too. From 01252011 Here is where I am attaching the wire and directing those monstrous vines, so the wires will go from the trunks to the right and then make a right angle along the rear fence between those posts. From 01252011 Here is a shot of the whole setup: From 01252011 So please offer some recommendations of getting this thing in control without sacrificing much production. This will be the going into the 4th year of growth in the spring. Our lost frost date here is around May 5th I believe, so how long should I wait before I start pruning?

Hopefulauthor, with awful whiteflies, either try neem oil, or maybe put some aluminum foil under your plant, or silver mulch, it freaks the bugs out because they like the shade and don't get it with the foil/sunlight. Or do what I do and make a tobacco tea, it'll kill most soft bodied insects like aphids and whiteflies. Just don't use on tomato plants because you can get tobacco mosaic virus transmitted to tomatoes. Butterfly, yes, I just got 2 gardenias to KILL, HA HA HA!! From Logees too. I got a 'hardy' gardenia (har har hardy) and a fortunia (sp?) as well. They look lovely, and I am going to go up right now and take pictures of them. I will document their demise on here, so you can see them croak. Just to make it seem like I'm not totally heartless, I got them both some nice containers, put them on gravel where they get early sun, and I also got a strip of old jeans and put it in the pots before I potted them so they can wick up the water if they want, as well as getting humidity. I also mixed the soil as 1 part sand, one part peat moss and one part potting soil. Okay, I just took pictures of the poor victims..I got them a few days ago and they aren't dead, the fortunata actually has buds on them..let's see how long THOSE last...now I have to figure out how to post pictures here. http://s181.photobucket.com/albums/x249/mersiepoo/?action=view&current=hardygardenia6.jpg http://s181.photobucket.com/albums/x249/mersiepoo/?action=view&current=fortunata6.jpg http://s181.photobucket.com/albums/x249/mersiepoo/?action=view&current=bothgarenias6.jpg

Squash and pumpkin seeds are normally good at room temperature for about 10 years. We live in a hot climate and often refrain from running AC, for economic reasons. Yet I have germinated squash seeds as old as 15 years. At that point I see a notable drop in germination percentage. But those clearance sale pumpkin seeds are practically as good as what will cost a lot more, come next spring. As gardengal13 mentioned, if you store them in an airtight container in the freezer you can pass them on to your grandkids to grow! Here's a true story. In 1984 I was given a ripe squash by a customer at the store where I worked, It was really really good, so I saved seed, passing some on to a friend in Tulsa, OK. I grew it in 1985. In 1985 I named it Warsaw Buff Pie Pumpkin and hand pollinated for pure seed, passing on some seed to a friend of mine. I also started, probably in 1986, to distribute it through the Seed Savers Exchange. In 2004 I was going through some old correspondence and came across my Tulsa friend's address. I wrote him, asking if he still had tomato seed, of a variety I had shared with him. He responded that he did, and that he also believed he had seed of Warsaw Buff Pie Pumpkin in his deep freeze. He found it and sent me some. It was from his 1985 grow out. I planted this seed in 2006 and had nearly 100% germination! Now, growing on a Northern exposure, that might be a problem. Squash and pumpkins require a minimum of 6 hours direct sunlight. You might try checking on that before next spring. The days are shortening now. But you could get a good idea of whether or not you receive enough sunlight in that location. George Tahlequah, OK

Could this have been meant for a diff thread? "Sorry, but it sounds like Late Blight (and other fungus) heaven in there. Hornworms too...." No, gumby_ct, I posted on the right thread. It's a 4' wide row of tomato plants crowded in a tight (and unprunable, so constantly becoming tighter) mess, crawling all over each other (except when occasionally separated by some wooden stakes or whatever), weighed down by the fruit.... In other words: solid tomato plants, no possibility of air circulation except on the two sides. After rain or in humid weather, it wouldn't dry out in the middle for days ... maybe weeks. Low visibility, too. If there were hornworms or other pests, you wouldn't be able to see them. Entire cubic feet of vines in the middle of the row could have been reduced to nothing but stems, and you'd never have a chance of seeing it. But I suspect the fungal diseases would finish off the plants first. And they'd get a really good hold on the plants, there in the middle of the mess, before anyone noticed a problem. Perhaps the original bloggers live in an arid climate. Perhaps zeuspaul lives in a dry part of zone 9. Perhaps fungal tomato diseases are different there.