The prior message was correct that bushes and vines will give you fruit faster than trees will. Figs and kiwi will grow in your area, but you must make sure to get varieties that are cold hardy. These can be found but you need to Google "Cold Hardy figs" and do a bit of reading before you buy plants. The smaller non-fuzzy Hardy Kiwi can be grown even in zones 3 and 4, but not the bigger fuzzy kiwi. A raised bed with everbearing/day neutral strawberries will give you a really good harvest the second summer after you plant them and some the first summer. You can order bare root strawberry plants in early March that will cost a small fraction of the cost of the potted ones for sale in the summer at retail locations. They will look dead when you get them, but if you read ahead and plant properly, bare root strawberries will probably give you more fruit, faster, for less cost and effort than any other fruit. Raspberries and Blackberries are a close second. Blueberries make a great plant for the yard, but keeping the pH of the soil low enough can be difficult for some people. If your soil has a naturally high calcium level and high pH, blueberries may be eaiser to grow in containers where you control all the soil rather than fighting against a soil base that keeps raising the pH for your plant. Someone asked a similar question in the containers forum. I have copied part of my answer to them regarding a wonderful book that could help you as well as a website for information. The book is published by Rodale Press, one of the oldest and best sources of information on organic garden and sustainable agricultural techniques. Whether you go organic or not, the book as great information about starting a backyard orchard. ....I would recommend one of my favorite books on the subject. You can get it used from one of Amazon's used book dealers for under $6 including shipping. If you want to raise a backyard orchard it is well worth the $6. It is a book that is straightforward and full of information. On Amazon's "Look Inside", you can see the table of contents, a few example pages, and the index. One of the best parts of the book is not shown in the preview. It has a 50 page alphabetic encyclopedia section, which gives almost everything you need to know about a variety of fruits from Apricots to Tayberries. All of the fruits are for small backyard gardens, and all but a few are great for containers. I cannot recommend this book high enough for beginners or experience gardeners who are new to growing fruit. In 160 pages, it has more information about a home orchard, than I have ever seen in one book, even ones many times longer. By Rodale Press ISBN-978-0875966380 "Backyard Fruits and Berries: Everything You Need to Know About Planting and Growing Fruits and Berries in Your Own Backyard" One shortcoming of the book is that it was printed in 1995, so when it recommends specific varieties of plants, it will not have the newest varieties listed. This is not to say that the information is not still valuable. I have a fondness for heirloom varieties that are often some of the best tasting. Many of the advancements with new varieties are not for taste, but for better shipping for commercial growers. Some traits that commercial growers want are the opposite of what a home grower would want. Commercial growers want a plant with fruit that ripens all at once, while home growers often prefer an extended fruiting period. Cornell Guide to Growing Fruit at Home is a great resource for gardeners in New York state and surrounding area. "http://www.gardening.cornell.edu/fruit/index.html" Here is a link that might be useful: Rodale Press's Backyard Fruits and Berries: Everything You Need to Know...

JS, you're welcome..Before the ban, Harris and Briteleaf were the only citrus nurseries I'd order from..Since the ban, no citrus, boohoo..lol. Since you're in Fl, I'm sure, you'll have nice-sized trees on your hands, before you know it.. I don't know what you're idea of small is, lol..are they under 3' tall? Both nurseries sent shipping size trees, well-packaged, in long, narrow boxes. Their citrus were at at least 2-3' tall, sometimes larger. But shipping costs would have been sky-high sending huge trees throughout the states, so I guess logically and economically, the sizes sent were sensible. I've ordered trees from a few other nurseries prior to finding Harris and Briteleaf, and what was sent were 1' tall trees, at excessive prices..Not to mention names, but one place charged 32.00 or 34.00 for a 1' bare root tree. I was very unhappy, all three ordered died, soon after purchase. Good luck, Toni Anyway, I'm glad you found the citrus, and hope you're happy with the results..Ruth is a wonderful person, and very helpful..She'll send you the best..Toni

Roger that. Thanks Mike. Looking forward to getting to know you. I ordered some Foliage Pro the other day. I think I am going to bite the bullet, build a mix, replant and try to start over. I can't figure out if I love these geopots or have serious issues with them. They do allow for great drainage but the moisture they hold may prove to be excessive for my indoor environment. Looking forward to speaking with you soon.

A couple of days ago I found that I could search my father�s mother�s family even further than I could his father�s, and that took me back to South Carolina on the French side of the family. I could go even further back on the father�s side if I wanted to contact my relatives in Switzerland, but I would have to write to them in German, as their English is not so good, for some reason. I might do that at some point; my German is very good, if not modern. Anyway, the other night I had a dream that I was going to a family reunion at some large house in the country, and I hardly knew any of the relatives there. I had a suitcase and traveling gear with me, and I set the suitcase down in the dining room or kitchen. More and more cousins kept arriving, and some of them seemed like sketchy characters, whom I felt I might not be able to trust. The house kept getting bigger also, until it morphed into a warehouse that had lockers in one of the hallways. I put my suitcase in one of the lockers for safe keeping but left my traveling gear in the dining room, unsure of what I should do with it. I thought I should keep some of it with me but was convinced that it was okay in the dining room. I ventured out into other rooms in the warehouse (it had multiple levels), and eventually I discovered that I could no longer find the lockers where I had stored my suitcase. I began to become nervous at this point but told myself that it was just a dream and that I would find everything when I woke up. However, when I tried to find the dining room with the rest of my things, I began to panic and became very lost in the warehouse, having no idea of where I was or where anything was. At that point I decided that I HAD to wake up, but when I did wake up, my pulse was racing, and I felt almost like I was having a panic attack. I can�t tell whether the anxiety was caused by my blood pressure medicine (which seemed to have the opposite effect) or whether it was from the virus I had that was coming back. To calm myself back down, I started reading again. Right now I am reading anthropology books at night to help get to sleep and I am currently in the Upper Pleistocene Epoch, which is one of my favorite periods, but it might be causing me to think too much about my ancestors. I found out yesterday that my health insurance will help pay for psychotherapy, and so I am thinking about looking for a therapist to see if I have issues that I need to resolve. They usually put me on more medication, but that might be okay. I think I have a chemical imbalance that makes me psycho sensitive to certain medications. It might also have something to do with what I eat. I'm not sure how much more I want to find out about my ancestors at this point - I'm sort of afraid they might come back to haunt me. My famaily has been in Texas since it was an independent republic, but that was not so long ago. Lars