Each redwood box is 2.5 x 12 feet, filled with a mix of soil and compost. I planted 10 roots in each, purchased by mail order. They were supposed to be male Jersey hybrids but 50% produced berries so I suspect they were Mary Washington. The company refunded my $$$ when I complained - so at least this failure didn't cost me anything but water and time. They were watered on a drip until October when the rain started, and its rained since (raining today) with some warmer days starting in March. We had a few days of frost but no hard frost this winter. Our local Master Gardener Organization grows them in raised boxes and this is recommended in our area because our clay soil can get quite hard packed and the shoots have trouble breaking through. This weekend I'll dig through the box and look for roots. The spot is part shade but the ferns grew wonderfully so I figured they were happy. Perhaps the rotted with all the rain we've had? I'll replant next Spring.

Just the other day I was cleaning around some of my bushes and I noticed that off to the side a bit of Graham Thomas was a nice sized branch sticking up, looks like it has a long stem to it and it seems to be separate from the bush, like, I could cut the main stem and I would have a rooted rose. Should I cut the stem, dig up the rose and put it in a pot or just cut the stem and let it continue to grow awhile? We are still in early spring and it just poured rain, so might be a good time to transplant......any advice? Thanks... Oh, and just noticed a larger plant coming off Corneila.... Judith

Carol, So far this morning, we're down to 34 and were forecast to go to 40, which makes me wonder how cold we'll be this weekend on the night forecast to go down to 32. When I see those large, healthy tomato transplants in the stores here in March (and, this year, in February), my home-grown transplants always look so small by comparison. I sort of have a little moment of panic, something like "oh, my plants aren't ready yet!" and then I calm down and get a grip and remind myself they shouldn't be ready yet because it isn't planting time yet. By the time that the proper planting time arrives, my plants will be just the size they should be. It's the same thing when they have squash plants the size of my hand (which, for early March, isn't actually good since the ground is too cold for those plants) and my 'plants' are still seeds in the packets. I have about 2/3s of the tomato seedlings outside where they sit on the concrete patio and soak up sunlight all day and then go back onto their tables in the garage at night. On the days that they have full sun instead of cloudy skies they seem to make some good growth and have great color. They're not ready to go into the ground yet, though. For one thing, the wind would beat them to death right now. I strategically place them where buildings protect them from wind right now, but once they're in the ground, they are on their own. I do hope we have a nice, steady warming trend the rest of this month so the ground warms up earlier this year than last year, but I expect we still have another couple of cold fronts coming even after this weekend's cold front passes. I'm be happy even if our last cold weather is the Easter freeze as long as there's nothing else really cold after that. El Nino is slowly receding so we still have cooler and wetter than average conditions forecast through at least May, so it doesn't make any sense to me to rush the warm-season plantings along. Dawn

Yours are beautiful. I like the different ones, I have some pink and yellow/orange combos. When they open you have hope that spring is actually near. Carla