Plums have been a continual disappointment to me. I'm about ready to chop them all down. I have Opal and Green Gage in the ground, but they don't seem to want to grow. I had a beautiful Toka tree, but it never bore fruit and just up and died a couple of springs back. Ptitsin #5 and Brookgold (I suspect was mislabeled and is really Brookred) will grow and survive the winters OK here -- but they either bloom too early or fruit too late, and are aphid magnets. Frankly, they're not worth the space they take up. I've tried Black Ice about five different times, because I heard it's hardy to zone 3b and fruits earlier in the season. But it always winter kills here. We are supposedly in zone 4 under the newest classification, but I have a hard time believing it. I grow a variety of apples, pears, and sour cherries ... even got a few apricots last year. But I've come to the conclusion that this is just a tough area to try to grow plums.

True_blue, 'John Davis' will bloom again on new wood, though the second "flush" generally isn't very significant. In order to climb, this rose NEEDS deeply dug fertile soil and feeding, otherwise you'll just end up with a shrub, but an attractive one at that. 'JD' can take zone 3 cold, but the biggest challenge is dealing with winter desiccation drying up the stems. Alberta (central Alberta included) will at times experience amazingly BALMY winter temps and the reflected heat from buildings will only further intensify and desiccate this rose. So, I water deeply prior to freeze up and attempt to lean 'JD' away from the house ... it's a challenge to get almost any rose to climb in our cold prairie climate. 'Olds Collage Rose' looks especially nice, thanks for posting vstapes :)

Okay...I read this earlier and HAD to make some! LOL Albacore tuna, Miracle Whip, mustard, pickle relish...I will HAVE to try olives some time..love them!...and finely chopped onions. When I was a child, I didn't eat much of anything..VERY picky! In the summer we had 2 weeks of VBS from 9-3, so I would get a packed lunch. My mother would make me a tuna sandwich on buttered white bread and cut the crusts off, a handful of Cheetos and orange pop!!!! I thought I had died and was in heaven! LOL I never ate this at home, but loved it VBS.

My bean report: This year we had kind of strange weather (though with every year now being strange in a new way, I guess that makes it a "normal" year). Like drloyd, here we had an early, very warm spring, and are currently in a late, very warm autumn (going to be 70 degrees all this week!), but the summer in between was unusually cool and almost completely missed any of the heatwaves rolling over the rest of the country. The coolness made beans slow and tomatoes a full month late to bear. Anyway: --Alma Whitaker Cornfield-- A bit on the late side but did very very well, healthy tall vines totally loaded with handfuls of pods. Smallish, curved pods tightly packed with small, pinto-patterned seeds. I ate some as full beans and they stringed easily and cooked up pretty quick. Got these from Remy of Sample Seeds. Planted 6 May, flowered 8 Aug, dry seed 14 Sep. --Blue Shackamaxon-- A favorite of mine and in my opinion a real winner. Did very well, as always. Tall plants with shiny black seeds and pods that turn purple at maturity. Great-flavored dry bean. My seed was getting low so I grew a bunch out at my folks' place well away from any other beans, since this variety seems to cross very readily, both as a pollen recipient and donor. --Clarendon Wonder-- Stringless snap bush with large bright red seeds. Australian heritage variety bred by Hawkesbury Agricultural College in the early 1900s. Did pretty well in a container. Planted 4 May, dry seed 24 July. --Gunlik-- Dual-purpose bush bean. Small black seeds look just like Midnight/Black Turtle, but the pods are sweet. Did pretty well despite being grown in a container in a shady spot. Planted 6 May, dry seed 30 June, and all of the plants survived the first harvest and are currently loaded with a second crop just past the shelly stage. --Inka Pea Bean-- Did quite well despite being in a shady spot. Relatively short vines ( petered out at 6'), and seed in the usual pea-bean bicolor red & white pattern, but with pretty pinkish streaks inside the red part. Planted 4 May, dry seed 1 Aug. --Kaiser Friedrich-- Did very well. Fairly tall but well-behaved vines; when they outgrew their trellis I looped them down to the bottom and grew them back up the same way again, making approx. 9' feet of vine total. Pods stringless, flattish, yellow at first getting a neon pink blush, and purplish when dry. Bright purple seeds. Old German variety. Planted 6 May, dry seed 2 Sep. --Kuma Anna's Charcoal Grey-- Got utterly smothered by the Apios growing in the same bed, so I only got out 3x the seed I put in! Pole snap. Planted 2 May, dry seed 30 July. --Lavender Bush German-- Bush dual-purpose variety with seeds a unique lilac color I haven't seen on any other bean. Did pretty well in a container. Planted 4 May, dry seed 25 July. --Mariazeller Bush-- Pretty seed, but didn't seem to like being container-grown and hardly made anything. --Mountain Pima Burro & Caballito-- Poor germination from old seed, I'll have to grow this out again next year to bring numbers back up. Weakly climbing plants, beautiful seeds, tasty thin-skinned dry beans, wish I'd got enough to actually eat any this year. --Norridgewock-- Usual-looking red & white pea bean. Short vines. Didn't have many seed to start with and had damping-off issues, so only got replacement seed for a harvest. --Riesenkorn aus Omsk-- "Giant-seed from Omsk," which sounded intriguing. Summer-planted bush plants that weren't very happy with the container I grew them in. Seeds like large kidney bean size. Limas: --Black Cave Dweller-- Bush lima that turned out to be day-length-sensitive, so I haven't gotten any seed off them yet. --Madagascar-- Large-seeded pole lima. Planted late, so just maturing pods now. Plants doing well despite tomato competition. --Ping Zebra-- Finally deigned to make flowers this month, so I'll see if anything actually comes of them. Cowpeas/Yard-longs: --Washday-- mostly-bush cowpea that did pretty well despite being smothered by Apios. Seed coats tend to split. This is supposed to be fast-cooking, and I think would be considered a "lady pea," but I haven't tried any yet. Seeds small and ivory with some red speckling around the hilum. --Tiger-striped-- Yard-long with red stripes on green. I have a bit of trouble with yard-longs due to the cool nights here, but this one did pretty well for a yard-long. Not day-length-sensitive, and made a couple big handfuls of snaps. Didn't eat any yet but it's still producing. P. coccineus Runner Beans: --Ayocote Amarillo & Ayocote Morado-- Some beans from dinner planted on a whim, they made nothing at all in the summer but perked up slightly in the autumn to give me a very small harvest (like half a handful per plant). --Tucomares Mixed-- Complete crop failure this year. Every legume in their planter shriveled up and died and I'm not sure if it was blight, fungus, herbicide-contaminated potting soil, or what (all-new store-bought soil in only that planter). Misc: --adzuki beans Buff, and Blue Speckled-- both did pretty good this year, making a decent number of pods with seeds of the proper size. Seed for both from Anpetu Oihankesni. Planted 2 May, dry seed 30 July. --unnamed buff-seeded rice bean (Vigna umbellata)-- Second year growing this, and it again did well sprawling over a short trellis. The seed pods corkscrew open explosively when fully ripe, so I've taken to picking them either in the shelly stage or over a deep bucket. Going to try a dal recipe with these next week. --unnamed hyacinth beans-- A veritable explosion of neon purple flowers and pods on horizontally-greedy vines (were quite useful for separating P. vulgaris bean varieties from each other). Seed looks like tiny Oreos. Planted early May, dry seed 12 Sep. --unnamed red-seeded sword bean-- Made tall thick vines, but seems to be day-length-sensitive as it didn't bloom until well into fall. Currently ripening a few thick pods that look like they'll have only 1-2 seeds each. --groundnut/Apios americana-- Went utterly mad this year and swallowed all in their path to form a very leafy 4'x4'x5' hedge out of their 4'x4' raised bed. Flowered a lot (and smells like your great-great-aunt's perfume, pyew) but I don't think set seed. I can see some tubers poking up from the soil a bit and it looks like there're going to be masses of them to try out some recipes.