guavalane Thank You. I want all the info I can get. Does your friend buy seeds and if so what varieties and where does he buy the seeds. etc. why higher ? How big are these. You are in a great warm long grow region. I am zone 5 and must plan carefully. So I am interested in what comes quickly and what takes a long time. I can probably do with plants to about 105 days as some pumpkins are 105. not sure on the maximum but it probably depends on the temperature. Right now it is cold here. high of the day below or near 50. just to give an idea. But of course all information is eagerly sought. how is the eating quality difference between winter melon and fuzzy gourd. I had a oriental melon gourd that I liked. It was pretty good. it grew sort of like a square long melon. the melon had 4 creases running the length that caused it to have a sort of square cross section. the crease was indented along the length. the melon was nice in soup. It might have been a winter melon but no white on the melon skin and it was ready very early. The skin was tough so it was easy to cook. I could put it into a microwave and after it was cooked the skin would come off in one piece instead of falling apart. I just grab the skin and pull it off. well more or less. worked great. the "melon" was nice and firm. light color. sort of clear when cooked. moisture came out of it. the moisture with the seeds was a little more sweet. but this was for cooking not for raw eating. Does anyone have any idea what it might have been. what kind of oriental melon or gourd. I saved some seed but then the seeds might be crossed with all the other stuff grown there. Mostly I want to know what it is so I can buy some good seed that is properly correct and not some half wild cross.

I spent a week in midtown Manhattan once and couldn't find anyone who could give me directions one day to where I wanted to go in a language I could understand. When I asked a man with blond hair, I couldn't understand him either. He only spoke Norwegian. I enjoy accents, and when traveling, I always ask fellow tourists where they're from, or better yet, may I guess? Not so much into Magnolias, however. Their main fault , in my opinion, is lack of good Fall color. Dull brown when everything else is yellow, red, or orange is a put off. Ruins the whole Fall scene. The leaves of the evergreen magnolias are slow to decay, so that's a point against having them in the garden also. Sure like them in the Spring though.....in someone else's garden. Hey, it's no crime to be selective! Mike

Wow that seems like a lot of growth for 4 or 5 years. Very cool. Good point about zone variance. Although we get in the 20's here our growing season (rhizome growing season) is fairly long with hot sunny days from May through October. Also all of my planting have a lot of sun exposure and i am feeding them a lot (composted horse manure everywhere and other organice amendments.) The interesting growth limiting factors to watch will be competition with huge establihed conifers (pines, cedars and furs) as well as pockets of red clay alkaline soul that compacts hard as a rock in summer months. It will be fun to see how the rhizomes compete with these factors. I have no idea at this point. I will do a detailed video every summer so it can be easily tracked. I will be thrilled if my 3-5 culm plantings look like your henon stand after 4-5 years though!

i checked that link ais posted more and it says the l. perennis are indigenous to this county (wake). so, they should grow here. still no info on soil preferences, though i'd guess lean and sandy more than clay based. then i could only find one source of semi- affordable seed. everyone else sold it by the 1/4 pound and it's expensive- guess it's used as a wildflower more than anything. i would love to try it out if anyone found a good source. i have about 1/2 of a packet left of 'wild' lupines i got from pinetree that are the originals that the russels were bred from (they're not l. perennis). that's what i figured you were talking about earlier, and since the russels only do so-so, i figured they'd be about the same. they did squat last year. i'll soak them and scatter them out this year again to see if they do anything. with the lack of rain i'm not very optimistic, though. i may try a few as container winter sown, but since they dislike being transplanted, i'm a little leery.