ole dawg Maybe you should branch out a little. Note the lush and verdant growth in undisturbed clay areas. You can see it even better when you're in a plane, a carpet of green with a few cities/towns and quarries, maybe. Here in central Georgia, it's ALL red clay, but with raised beds and the growing medium on top of it, long roots burrow down into the clay and really thrive as long as the soil stays relatively moist under the compost. Corn, tomatoes, melons, beans, pretty much the gamut of vegetables, grow very well for me. But if I'd had to till and mix in compost, believe me, I'd grow most everything in containers, too! Clay soil is hard to work for sure, even if plants like it. The trick is to forget about tilling and use raised beds, or plow if you have the equipment and mix the goodies into the soil without so much backbreaking work.

Herbal and Eric, Here's my two cents. I must say that I've found the comments by Scott, Harvestman and Jellyman the most useful for my purposes, living here in Maryland, and would take what they say very seriously. I agree with the suggestion to try persimmons for Herbal. I have found them to be trouble free (so far), though the branches may need support when they set fruit. They are also very pretty trees. I agree with Scott about quince. I have a variety supposedly more resistant to disease than others. Well, yes, it is, meaning that while it gets diseased it keeps on going. Unfortunately I lost all fruit on it last year to disease and it may serve as a disease reservoir for my other trees. Don't confuse regular quince with flowering quince, however, as they are different species. Flowering quince (chaenomeneles) have set plenty of fruit for me, and have beautiful flowers in the spring (but are ugly bushes the rest of the year). You can do many of the same things with their fruit as with regular quince (Cydonia). I'd also recommend figs, particularly Celeste, if you have a sheltered spot facing the south -- perhaps a south-facing wall. I am not sure how worried I would be about disease in Eric's case, with just a few trees on an acre. Scott has a lot of trees in a small space, which no doubt increases disease pressure. I have had relatively little problem with disease here in MD with fewer trees and good sun and air drainage and a late winter/early spring spray of lime-sulphur + oil. Some of the new disease-resistant apples really do avoid the big three diseases (Fire blight, cedar apple rust, and scab) and taste pretty good. You will still need to do something about insect pests. I've found the big three here in MD in my small orchard are: plum curculio, oriental fruit moth, and codling moth. Fruit moth is particularly hard to deal with without spraying and is my number one problem. I use a combination of Surround and bagging (search for posts on this), which works well on pears and apples for curculio and codling moth, but I have ended up spraying insecticide on stone fruit, since Surround simply has not stopped oriental fruit moth. The organically approved Spinosad has worked, but is not registered for the large number of sprays needed to stop this pest, so I ended up spraying permethrin last year. Regarding varieties, I agree with Scott about Montmorency sour cherry and with the need for netting. You might also put in a smaller North Star sour cherry, which I have found to do well. With apples the most disease resistant include Williams Pride (summer), Enterprise and Liberty; Goldrush has some disease resistance and certainly tastes better, but I believe it is susceptible to cedar apple rust, a common disease around here. With elderberries you will find that planting the selected varieties found in nurseries on line will give you a lot of fruit. Finally, Backyard fruit growers in Lancaster will be having their winter meeting on Saturday Jan 15 up near Lancaster, and this meeting will have a talk by Ike Kerschner of North Star Orchards near Philadelphia on fruit growing in this part of the world. He probably knows more about growing plums around here than anyone. If you have a day to spare, you might find this an interesting event. If you send me a personal message I'll send you notes I took from a talk Ike gave on plums last year. Here is a link that might be useful: Backyard Fruit Growers

Ark, the one I posted looks pretty good. Much better than last year! The other AS is not doing so hot though. Some branch die back since this spring even. I planted baby q alba, rubra, and coccinea as well as two of your commemoration offspring in a circle around it in case it doesn't make it. Hair, with regards to Sandersville heritage, the buds look uniquely different than any saccharum I've ever seen when they begin to push. The buds extend almost 2" before opening. Really weird... I wouldn't be at all surprised if it was a hybrid. I haven't seen a barbatum break bud so I can't compare it to one of those.

The Invisible One is finally reporting in. After last SundayÂs gathering, The Bug got me down, eliminating my ability to say anything the least bit witty, not that I could have matched the others at that, anyway. DH and I enjoyed everyoneÂs company immensely. It was wonderful to dine among GW celebrities Igloochic (the delightful, devoted mother of adorable Jesse -- I hope he is doing much better), Buehl (who I later realized is the Kitchen Forum FAQ compiler/poster), and cooperbailey (with whom I had several things in common). It would be fun to meet more GW folks, whenever and wherever. We are in Towson, MD, so I expect weÂll be headed south when it happens. Some have pronounced our kitchen "finished." Now, we all know that "done" is a relative term. I hastily took some pictures of our kitchen before last weekÂs dinner meeting, and the only thing really missing is a window treatment. However, I need to straighten up the counters, find the best angles, and gather all the spec details before preserving our kitchen for posterity in the Finished Kitchens Blog. That new project is definitely on my Someday List  another relative term. :-) Alice