phasv2, You should definitely do a soil test, Auburn and A&M have very good facilities should you decide to use one. They will even tell you what to use to fix problems if they find them. Have you been to any of the wineries in our area? They are popping up all over the place and offer a ton of great ideas. I know that asparagus given the right soil will do well here, and artichokes are okay as well, both being perennial. You might also look into strawberries as you can get 3-4 years out of them, but rarely a 1st year do they produce in the home garden. Not to mention, nearly all of this can be implemented into a home landscape. If you go with some blueberries, try for 6 bushes if you have room all different varieties, from 2 early, 2 mid, and 2 late season that way you can have them all spring through summer. Or you could just get to early, 2 mid, or two late complimenting varieties. Personally I like Austin, Tifblue, and Oneill. I am planning on planting about 25 soon on our land when we get the well done, I am going to do to southern lowbush, the rest will be rabbiteye and will be planting them like that to get a consistent crop. You might want to look into things that attract bees for bluberry cross pollination to increase yeilds if you go this route.

I'd suggest you asking on a local Freecycle forum. Please see link below. Here is a link that might be useful: Freecycle area search

Usually, ready-made lattice looks super cheap and tacky. There are exceptions which usually require some sort of heavy framework & tasteful decorate details. Beefier custom lattice -- also with good details -- has the potential to look much better. It would be very unlikely for vines to just die unless they are being given NO care at all or being treated badly. If one vine in a section dies, then adjacent vines can move in quickly to cover the bare spot. I didn't mention, but since a perennial vine can take a little time to cover solid, annual vines are useful in the meanwhile to provide quick (6 weeks) solid cover. I have had great luck with moonflower vine on this count. Heavenly Blue Morning glories can be used and look great but they tend to hang toward the top and leave the bottom bare. Don't use any temporary vine that reseeds itself. 'Grandpa Ott' morning glory is like this and is the weediest damn thing ... still sprouting 4 years after the original was killed.

Harriet, I agree, and it was that way dating back to at least the 1980s, though it got even better in the 1990s. I do think Howard Garrett had a lot to do with that---it seems to me that there was a huge number of folks gardening organically in the D-FW metro area long before it became nearly as popular in other areas. I still prefer shopping down there, although at least many of the organic products are now found in stores only 20-30 miles from where we live, whereas in our early years here we had to drive 80-90 miles, one way, to find those same organic products. So much has improved for organic gardeners in recent years. I grew up listening to Neil Sperry and have nothing but the utmost respect and admiration for him. His books are my gardening bibles dating back decades. I listened to his gardening show from when it first started, which I think may have been in the 1970s when I was still in high school. I read his columns. I remember when he was our county extension agent back even prior to the radio show. Then at some point I became aware of Howard Garrett too, probably in the 1980s, and began reading his newspaper columns/books and listening to his program on the radio too. To this day, when I mention Howard Garrett, Tim quips his tag line from the end of the radio show "and don't forget to feed the birds". Maybe that is why we feed the birds to this day. When Neil Sperry and Howard Garrett had a sort of quiet war between them on the radio waves, with each of them making pointed remarks about what "other people" recommended without saying one another's names, I knew who those barbs were aimed at, and I hated it. They both are fine people, with different philosophies, and I bet if they knew each other outside of horticulture, they'd like each other just fine. I just tried to learn from both of them and to find my own way to garden based on what I know and feel is important. I've always been 95% organic though, so even when Neil recommends synthetic products, I tend to let that part go in one ear and out the other. I used a miticide (Kelthane) once in the 1980s and Round-up a few times, and Bug-B-Gone for grasshoppers once in the 2000s. That's about the extent of my synthetic product usage in terms of miticides, herbicides and insecticides, but I do use Daconil to prevent/halt the spread of Early Blight sometimes. So, I guess I garden more Howard's way in terms of the philosophy and general practices I use, but from Neil I have learned so much about everything involved in horticulture that I appreciate---his knowlege of plants, pests and diseases is huge and vast and there's just no one like him. I still get his e-newsletter weekly and devour every word. If you've read and listened to Neil all along, you know that he is much less chemically-oriented than he once was. He was, after all, a product of what he was taught when he was in college and they all were taught the chemical way back then. I just happen to prefer Howard's natural way a lot more and it generally works well for most things. You know how when you have two friends who you get along with just fine, but they cannot stand each other? Well, that's how I felt it was with Neil and Howard, though I did not know either one personally. I just kept wishing they could get along and appreciate one another as much as I appreciated both of them. I guess that never will happen though. Dawn