I live about 60 miles southwest of New Orleans. Nothing we have planted is over three years in the ground. The best for me, so far has been my citrus. This year will not be good because of a late frost at bud time. Valencia, blood orange, tangerine, Ruby Red grapefruit and Louisiana Sweet produced heavily. The Owari and Brown Select Satsumas have not grown enough to produce well. Meyer and Lisbon lemons are doing well (planted next to the south side of the house). I spray when I see white flies. There has been a bit of leaf minor damage, but that will be less of a problem as the trees grow. I planted an American and a Fuyu persimon. The American is growing slowly, the Fuyu has died three times in the same spot. The next Fuyu I buy will go in another spot. No bugs were noticed, they just dried up (after looking lush and beautiful) and died. No spraying on them. The muscadines are growing beautifully and quickly. I may have a monster to tame with pruning. The Cowart is loaded with fruit I hope to get some before the animals get them all. The other varieties are Carlos (for wine), Summit, and Fry. One vine makes all the muscadine I can use, if the animals would leave them alone. I had 2 Fry and 2 Cowart at my last house. The only problems so far, with no spraying, is a few aphids. The peaches are a different story. The 2 Florida King, which ripened first, gave us enough fruit to eat and preserve. The other 3, LaPeche and La Festival, ripened later and were beset by bugs and squirrels. It also started raining every day, so I couldn't effectively spray. We lost all those peaches, except a couple we picked still too green to enjoy. Peaches look like they will be a lot of work, but we love them. We planted 3 apple trees (Anna, Dorsett Golden, and Ein Sheimer). Two died (I think because of root damage from hurricanes Katrina and Rita. One bent the trees to the ground from the North, the other bent the trees to the ground from the South.) and of course I didn't mark which was which. I was going to mark them later and then after the tags fell off, I was going to identify them from the fruit. I think I may try to replace them. I had 2 fruit on the remaining tree, but something wanted them more than me and was willing to eat them green. Not much bug problems yet, but then no fruit. The pears are growing well and I have some fruit on the Keiffer. The Pineapple and Orient are growing well, but no fruit yet. They are young trees. Had one banch with fireblight, which I removed. It has not returned, yet. Figs normally do well down here, but I'm having trouble getting them established. Most froze back to the ground or had major limb damage from the last frost we had. All the trees were sprouted and some had breba crops. Now we have a few fruit on the LSU Gold and the Ventura, but as they ripen the birds get them. My neighbor has 2 well established trees, but I looked at them yesterday and all the ripe ones were split from the rain. I don't think he is even picking any. I tried growing pawpaw, the seedling died and the grafted Mango variety died to the root. The root is coming back and is doing okay as I am now shading it. I thought planting them between my shed and my neighbors shed would be shade enough, but they got direct, middle of the day sun and were fried. I plan to try another grafted pawpaw in the future. I have a wild mulberry. It grows very fast and produces a ton of fruit. This year we had tent catepillars (after the fruit was gone). I sprayed the tree once for a scale infestation. I need to trim some branches, but overall a no care tree. I have 2 jujubes (Li and Lang). No pests, no problems. We have fruit this year for the first time. I sure hope I like them. I have never tasted them before. The biggest problem has been root suckers. I mow most of them and cut by hand the ones close to the trunk. I planted some wild cherry trees, but a rabbit ate the bark of and killed them. I will try again. I planted some banana trees a couple of months ago. So far, so good. I planted two Cherry of the Rio Grand and a Strawberry Guava. The goats ate them to the ground, but one of each is coming back. They are very small. I have two English walnuts. I thought they would never break dormancy, but finally did and started growing like gangbusters. Then something (Junebugs?) ate all the leaves off. I sprayed, but it has been raining every day so I don't know if I did any good. They are sprouting again. I have two pecan trees (Sumner and Elliot). They are finally starting to grow. I hope to try a few in about 5 or 6 more years. I have 3 loquats. They produced one year and then I pruned drastically to correct a shape issue. Just a few this year, but should be great next year. No bug problems, except a few leaves were chewed on the edges. I guess the bugs needed something after the walnut leaves were gone. I have (had) 5 plum trees (Methley, Santa Rosa, and Bruce). Several died and yes, I didn't mark the varieties. They seem to have problems with mosses and lichen growing on the trunk and need to be sprayed a couple of times a year. I've used copper and lime/sulphur. Both seem to work. No fruit to speak of yet. The couple we had were small. They may be getting too much shade from an oak tree. I have one seedless concord. It is very slow growing (at least compared to the muscadine) and has not produced any fruit yet.

Unfortunately, my veggie garden was NOT a sucess this year. Mostly because we didn't amend the soil before planting. Most of my sucesses were plants I saved in one way or another. I had wonderful sucess with some orchids that I "rescued" from Lowe's sale rack in January. Most had little or no healthy roots. I only lost 2 and one cattleya's blooming for the second time. I saved two roses, easter lilies, century plants and daylilies from houses being demolished. One rose I was still pulling out of the ground as the bulldozer was tearing down the houses' front porch! My red leaf hibiscus was a success, so much so that I'm going to plant more next year. This was the first year I planted one in the ground and I'm very pleased with the results. It is much happier and is getting ready to bloom - a LOT. If I plant earlier next year, I bet ya, by this time next year, I'll already be enjoying the blooms. WHICH you can use, along with the leaves, in teas and stirfry recipes. My swamp sunflowers are gorgeous right now - happy as hogs, full of blooms and requiring NO care! Now if I could just get my brugs to be happy, it'll all be good. Next year, in the ground they go. You can see pics of the plants at my webshots page: Barb Here is a link that might be useful: Barbie's pretty plant pics! ;)

I made some major changes to my garden in fall just because of winter. Here in the Colorado mountains, dull brown is the color for a good seven months. Why not put the energy and creativity into keeping those seven months green? My girlfriend thought I was nuts and obsessed. I was. Now, in the middle of February, I can look out at the mini-Christmas trees of dwarf Alberta Spruce in the denuded flowerbed, along with the pointy crisp leaves of mahonia and a sparkly Blue Star Juniper. Dwarf mugo pines anchor the small white-barked apsen tree. The small "Bakerii" blue spruce near the cedar fence matches the hues of the pincushion Blue Fescue grass "sea urchin." Against the jumble of rocks in a dry-stacked wall, a ball-shaped daphne pose a striking sihouette and waits for spring. In the dry xeric broder, native banana-leaf yucca provides an architectural element against the contorted branches of a dwarf siberian pea shrub and a Round-leaf Buffaloberry (Shepherdia rotundifolia), a wondergul evergreen -- or should I say ever-silver -- plant from the high-desert Colorado Plateau. It has fuzzy greenish-silver leaves on pipe-cleaner fuzzy white stems. In my driveway hellstrip, I was totally surprised at how dark red succulents can become in sunshine: hens & chicks, hardy iceplants and dragons blood sedum. Kinnikinnick is a cool ground cover, too. I went overboard with my purchases last year. But I just could bear the thought of a dead-looking, boring garden waiting for warm weather. Other than monkeying with the perennial bed, all of my gardening effort was specifically geared to create a winter-early spring show. Seems kind of nuts. There I was in the middle of summer, fussing and planning out a display for October thru May. The good thing about winter gardens to suplement summer gardens: angst and longing year-round, not just in springtime! My failures: Thinking holly would grow along a shaded fence (It's too hot and dry here... all plants were dead by July.) Expecting Feather Reed Grass to not be flattend by snowfall. It looks marginal but next week, it's getting the ol' early spring crew cut. The winter hardy cactus may have received too much winter moisture. Time will tell on that. Even though the winter garden looks good, I still love summer and can't wait until the flowers start doing their thing!

There are some that will bloom from spring to frost, and some others that will have foliage that looks good all season. Verbena bonariensis, otherwise known as tall verbena. Must be sheared every year to keep it shorter than you. Echinacea tennesseensis, hard to find, but easy to start from seed if you can find the seed for sale. Notice how this echinacea has petals that don't droop! Centaurea gymnocarpa, which is like a perennial dusty miller. Has purple flowers which are not shown in this photo: I don't know the name of this one but it is a gorgeous ground cover for the sun. I've seen it sold at Lowe's. It comes back every year but it may be a reseeding annual, I just don't know. It's kind of slow to come up in the spring. It spreads to fit the space it is in but doesn't run over the other plants. Absolutely wonderful. And of course Purple Homestead Verbena: All of the salvias are great too. I particularly like the blue flowered ones. I don't have any pictures of those. Hope this helps! These really are Texas Superstars in my book. They either bloom or look good all season long, even on the non rainy years! Last but not least, what is a garden without old garden roses?