Summersrhythm, Houses built before refrigeration/electricity often had an unheated room off the basement in which perishable food items were stored to keep them cold and hydrated since these cellars were humid as well as cold. Iceboxes were kept in the kitchen for perishables like fresh meat, eggs and milk to keep at hand for ready availability. Root/fruit cellars were used for storage of perishables that had a longer shelf life but needed cold, but not as cold as an icebox. Foods were stored in them such as: apples, potatoes, carrots, cabbage, winter squash, cheese, cured meats, and bad little boys...just kidding! Put a couple bushels of local, fresh picked McIntosh or Cortland apples in a root cellar at harvest time. Leave then there until they have turned fully ripe when they actually have a glow and feel like they have been rubbed with olive oil. This could be as late as December/January. They're slippery! Now, make applesauce from them, no sugar needed, just a little nutmeg and/or cinnamon. Freeze or can the sauce. You NEVER tasted a better, super healthy, more delicious applesauce in your life!

Update, six weeks later. The tree doesn't want to go on the cart... Red arrows point to one sucker branch and one sucker bud(?). Purple dashed line is what I believe to be the graft scar. Green arrows point to what I hope are new growth above the graft. These appeared all within the last week; maybe due to the days getting longer, maybe due to a few degrees rise in temperature inside as some other inhabitants were running fevers. I have read on this forum that sucker branches are usually not desirable. Are they worth letting grow for a while, if they are the only source of active chloroplasts on the tree? My hunch is yes, but I admit knowing very little about the regrowth tendencies of Meyer lemons. My next question is whether the old branches are actually dead,or whether they have some hope of rejuvenation: Most of these branches used to be green, but are now brown or near black. Some show hints of green near the branch collar. Is it worthwhile to prune back branches which look brown, if that might encourage growth from the same collar? Or do brown branches ever return to green, and it's worthwhile to wait? Thanks, all!

Well by the time we got the free bare root rose bushes it was June or July it was really hot out . I let them soak for several days and then planted them out there or put them in a pot and used a full Brown paper bag to cover it and just kept it really super wet. I just wet it every single day sometimes twice A-day in the heat until they leafed out . They are still there and it's been 12 years. Is it an ideal way ? Absolutely not but when you are given 13 free bare root rose bushes you do what you can to make them thrive.

if they are already germinated .. what else would you do with them.. plant them ... you have nothing to lose... in my z5 MI .... there are a lot of october/fall variables that would be against a late bloom ... like shortening days... cool days.. cold nights ... etc ... whether or not they will make it to the finish line.. would be left to the fates .... ken