I'd just call it "Beautiful" and be done with it!! Sorry can't help with the name,it's just gorgeous though!! Kathi

Dang! I wish I wouldn't have missed this!! I love G. H. Wild and Son stuff! In fact I just finished making a list of all the new iris, day lily's and peonies that I want in the fall = now the hard part of narrowing it down to a manageable amount! LOL Marie

I am completely obsessed with lychees and personally feel they can thrive here in SoCal. I believe that many people don't know the intricacies of growing lychees. Many people like myself go to a nursery and purchase a tree due to an impulse buy and slowly watch the tree decline and tell all their friends that Lychees are difficult. Yes, our soil pH is a little high, our water is hard, the humidity is lower than Florida and the wind can severely damage the new leaves but there are easy ways around all of this. I live in San Diego and got into tropical fruit trees only several years but my family comes from a Lychee growing district in China and when I went back to China about 10 years ago and ate some fresh lychees, I was hooked. I am currently growing Sweetheart, Kwa Luk(Famous Hanging Green), two Kaimana trees, Ohia pink and Groff. My Sweetheart is the tree I've had the longest, I think its about 3-4 years old now and I got it as a toothpick. I've had it in a container the entire time and only planted it into the ground about 2 months ago. It is now about 4 feet tall and 6 feet wide. You can do a search for Sweetheart Lychee and I have pics of my tree from a couple years ago. It is about the same size because I had it in a pot the entire time and wanted it to stay small until I owned my own house. After planting my Sweetheart into the ground, it seemed much happier and has lots of new growth buds popping out. To counter our alkaline soil, I incorporated lots of organic matter into the soil including lots of peat moss to make the soil more acidic. At first, I was watering my Lychee trees with Reverse Osmosis water but later switched to normal tap water because I got lazy and did't notice any difference in the health of my tree. I don't feel humidity is much of an issue because my trees are healthy and my friend Phase001 whom also has a Sweetheart also has a healthy large tree that has fruited without any special added humidity. Wind damage is the major factor contributing to the slow growth of my trees. The smaller the tree, the more dangerous the wind is. Think of each leaf as a solar cell that collects energy from the sun and converts it into carbohydrates it can use for growth of new leaves and branches or fruits. The smaller the tree, the fewer leaves it has. When a trees leaves gets too old, it will shed the old leaves and sprout new growth from the internodes. If the weather is extremely windy during new growth periods, the new leaves will be wrinkly, tattered, dried and may fall off. Because the tree is small, it has little stored energy for another flush. If you don't protect the next flush, the tree can die or become extremely stunted because the few older leaves it has is not efficient at photosynthesis and it just spent a lot of energy on new growth that got wind damaged and fell off. Some important considerations when planting Lychees in SoCal are to incorporate lots of organic matter into your soil, innoculate the roots and rhizosphere with Mycorrhizal fungi/beneficial bacteria, innoculate with red/earthworms, use organic fertilizers and time the use of your fertilizers so you don't push too much vegetative growth late in the season. You want the tree to essentially run out of nitrogen well before the dormant period before winter. You also want to withhold water during the winter to depress vegetative growth and stimulate flowering. If you want to see a nice looking Sweetheart Lychee tree that has fruited in San Diego, do a search for Home Grown Lychees. There, you will find pics of the extremely large, absolutely delicious Sweetheart that Phase001 grew in his backyard. We did have to hand pollinate the flowers although I'm sure the bees did a lot of pollinating too. If growing in pots, I highly recommend using Smartpots or similar type air pruning containers although you will have to keep an eye for drying out of the soil. Simon

Ahhh. You are right digdirt2! I really should have been more specific. I'm really looking for large tomatoes that are mid season enough that they'll still produce. I have good early cherries but not much for big beefsteaks/slicers. I'm also looking for season extension ideas that have worked for people in my general climate that are NOT a greenhouse or high tunnel. I rent and my landlord would have kittens if I built one of those. I'm toying with the idea of a small collapsible greenhouse made of panels that wire together though... :D One of the things specific to my area is some sort of soil disease? All the farmers around here know about it. I need to do more research because I'm not exactly sure what it is but it sometimes makes the nightshades very unhappy and sick. Not every year though. Just some years. I so far haven't had any pest issues. People talk about tomato hornworms and squirrels eating their plants/tomatoes...and I've never seen a hornworm. The squirrels are too fat from birdseed and peanuts to worry about tomatoes in my yard :D Everyone around here grows Roma and Early Girl. Bleech. The taste fresh (of both) is just so meh and disappointing, even from the garden. Roma is good for sauces but there are better ones with less BER I'm reading about (trying Costoluto G this year, going to try oxhearts next!). And Early Girl. I kinda hate her. It's all my parents have grown for years and honestly I never could tell the difference between her and a grocery store tomato. Never ever. For years I didn't even like fresh tomatoes except with lots of dressing. But the first year I grew my own...oh I had a Brandywine and a Cherokee Purple and they were a revelation. Raw tomatoes were good! I think I got 5 or 6 total tomatoes off the plants (my fault, due to it being my first year ever growing stuff by myself and me just sticking them in some dirt in the backyard in July, no fertilizer, not even watered unless they were wilting!). The next year I did the same thing...got about ten tomatoes. And planted my first cherries and discovered my deep love for Black Cherry and Sungold. Last year I found out about the soil issue and was told not to chance planting again (give the soil a year off) and planted in pots (way too small!) and got even WORSE production. I just keep experimenting and most of the time it seems I fail...but that was the year I discovered how much I like San Marzano and Sungold sauce (the only ones that still desperately pumped out lots of tomatoes while grown in tiny two gallon pots) This year I'm growing in 5-10 gallon buckets and 20 gallon (DIY) earthtainers. Unfortunately building the earthtainers took so much time that my tomatoes got put in really late (first and second week of July) instead of the early date I was hoping for! (May 18 -our traditional planting date is Memorial Day) But they're built so next year I'm going to try for 6 weeks early (April) on my plant out with Walls O Water and possibly some greenhouse plastic on a low hoop/tunnel and frost blankets on cold nights. I do have a backup planting planned for 2 weeks early (May) in case of disaster. I'm hoping someone in Minnesota or Wisconsin has tried something like a low tunnel plus WOW? I really want to grow some darned Brandywines and CPs without needing a greenhouse or high tunnel. Zone 5 sure seems to be a sweet spot for CP's If I can just get my plants out a few weeks early and increase the heat/light around them maybe I can get the good harvests I've seen people in zone 5-6 talk about. :D First to fruit has so far always been Sungold for me, though this year I tried Glacier and Black Sea Man as "earlies". I've got lots of fruit on all three but no blush yet. I think the BSM might even beat Sungold...I keep checking every day. :D Haha and you thought YOU had rambled. ;) This year I'm growing: Sungold F1 Cherry - 57 dtm Black Cherry - 65 dtm Csikos Botermo - 65 dtm Black Sea Man - 70 dtm Japanese Black Triffle - 75 dtm Paul Robeson - 75 dtm San Marzano - 80 dtm Costoluto Genovese - 80 dtm Glacier - 55 dtm Cherokee Green - 75 dtm Pruden's Purple - 72 dtm Aunt Ginny's Purple - 80 dtm Pink Brandywine (Burpee, non named?) - 85 dtm *I want to try some named ones and different colors next year Aunt Gertie's Gold - 75 dtm Kellogg's Breakfast Beefsteak - 80 dtm *I wanted KBX but couldn't find seeds in time to start I'm most excited to try Cherokee Green, Pruden's Purple, and Aunt Gertie's Gold. I've read good things about all of them so my fingers are crossed. Especially that Pruden's Purple is an earlier beefsteak with a taste similar to Brandywine. I couldn't find Brandy Boy seeds on the rack and forget to order them along with the others so that's an experiment for next year. Some of these are late...and pushing my season a bit but I have some frost blankets for this fall if we get an early frost. (Sometimes it's early/mid September...sometimes it's October before we get a killing frost.) I've been reading a lot about earthtainers in shorter seasons and they seem to be the answer for me! I can get stuff in earlier and keep it going later (I have the earthtainers on the south side of my home, the "real" garden is on the north side at the bottom of a small hill so frost just rolls down into the garden. There can be a whole month difference in harvesting tomatoes in the two spots). Eventually I'd like to produce enough veggies that we don't have to buy any all summer (or maybe all year...I've been reading Elliot Coleman's books and The Year Round Vegetable Gardener and I'm dreaming of harvesting kale and carrots all winter long) and I'm planning to sell some plants this spring for seed money so I can try lots of new tomatoes each year till I find the best ones for my garden! ;) Do I sound overly excited and super determined? Hey it's summer, tomatoes are kinda my favorite topic right now! :D