oops, never noticed that the pic for the cosmos psyche didn't go through correctly. sorry about that but here is the cosmos psyche Northerner, I surprised that your double click are only about 18 inches tall. It's supposed to grow to 4 feet. I had some last year and they did get that tall. I wasn't impressed with them so traded the seeds from that last fall and didn't grow them this year. Finally figured out what the orange and yellow cosmos is. It's cosmos diablo and I forgot that I had WS those seeds this year. Just have no idea what the orange ones are and the red one. I didnt' have those last year and only sowed seeds that I saved of gazebo lavender sonata fushia psyche white candystripe picotee diablo gloria sonata lavender daydream seashells white seashells pink pied piper versailles red sonata white so where it came from, the red is beyond me. I have no idea what that little white and purple petunia is either. I only know that the seeds came from a very dark purple petunia and or a very pale pink petunia that my neighbor purchased just before a local nursery closed for the month of August. She couldn't say no to the price and she planted them all in one pot. So the seeds where a mix. I have a string around the flower so that I can save seeds from it and not mix them up with the other seeds. Highaltransplanter, my plants are huge, but the toms are still small. Last year some of my cherokee purple did crack on the top but they still tasted wonderful, wouldn't be without them. The extremes in weather temps and water can cause toms to crack, but to me that is part of growing your won tomatoes in the garden and enjoying them. Tiny tim has a sweet but a bit tart flavor to it, and I didn't find the toms that small when ripe, about the size of a sweet 100. My 25 year old daughter likes them better than the sweet 100. I never heard of the mini bush yellow cherry and couldn't find much about it when i did a search. sounds interesting though and one I would like to try as well. I should have plenty of saved seeds from the tiny tim and my other toms for trades in the fall. Angie, thanks for the complement, not sure I would say I am an awesome gardener though. Some of my plants are about as sick looking as you can get and not sure why. Some has to do with the craziest weather I have seen in my life. At the moment the news and weather people are telling me that more rain has fallen in the month of July where I live than has fallen since the 1920's. Gee, didn't need to make me feel worse about the weather and all the rain than I already do. And the severe thunderstorms that have moved through on almost a daily basis for almost 2 weeks has been unreal. But that's the life of a gardener. Some years are better than others and it's either feast or famine when it comes to good weather. A pic of one of the storms that went through about 2 weeks ago, taken from the back door. No, I don't live in the tropics or a tropical rain forest. I live in a suburb northwest of Boston MA.

Hi Fotograf, I am glad to see your sucessfull grafting techniques. I am going to try grafting this summer. I too have a large Meyer tree and I am going to root some cuttings and sell them on Craig's List. I also planned on doing some grafting myself. I just need to call my dad and have him come over and teach me. So you say the key is too graft when the tree is going to go thru a flush right? Does the root stock need to be flushing also? What kind of grafting have you had the most sucess with? How about soil. This is a huge debate here. I found that my dwarf key lime is not finicky at all. It seems to thrive in the Miracle Grow cactus and citrus soil. It cracks me up that the Miracle Grow company actually bags up this mix and claims that it is great for citrus. I repotted my Oro and found that Al's gritty mix is very effective in keeping the water away from the roots but it gives them t he necessary moisture they require. I have taken some horticultural classes but I focused more in landscaping when I wish I had focused more in horticulture. I loved botany but hated the technical end of the landscaping. So much I actually ended up dropping out. That was when I went to Longwood gardens. Spring is such a great time to visit. I would like to go back someday. What do you feed your trees? Wow..to have so many citrus you must have a huge greenhouse. That is my plan someday. I would love to move to Florida but I wont go until this citrus ban ends. There is no way in hell I would leave my trees behind or be forced to have them erradicated!! I love my citrus too much. Just like Mike I fell in love with the fragrance of the flowers and also the allure of watching my very own fruit grow and ripen. My first experience with a grafted tree was with a Calomondin. I loved watching that little tree grow but Iwas very dissapointed to pop one of those tiny oranges in my mouth and expect something sweet only to get a lemon flavor! Thanks for the pics and inspiring us to try grafting! Andrew

Thanks palmcirtusbananavaz7! Dennis, I think the largest majesty I saw was in the part 1 of the pics. Im trying to remember if I saw a larger majesty palm because I think I did, but their definitely weren't too many large majesty palms. But the majesty palms I did see looked very healthy! Thanks for looking! -Alex

Wetsuitor: The only ones I dug up this year were 4 washies and a sago palm, each of which would take considerable protection here including heat. I will be leaving those in when they get 2 big to handle, but the washies seem to take root distubance very well and overwinter well indoors. There is of course some set back and it is slow to get growing in the spring, however I'm not ready to get into an elaborate heating system yet. I'm trying to work out my kinks this year on a trachy. Plus my wife would kill me if I had Jim's setup! I live in maybe the coldest winter 6a in America. This will be my 3rd winter here, the lowest low each of the past 2 years is -2, and -8F, HOWEVER, it is the norm to go 3 weeks at a time never getting above freezing. Last December and January, we had 9 days that got above freezing during the day, and most of those were in the 33-38F range for highs. We also had 2 3-weeks seesions of consecutive below freezing weather. The other problem is that I generally don't see grass from Dec.1 to mid-March, it never gets warm enough to ever melt the snow. Last year I lost 2 decent sized trachies and a sabal palmetto, and my minors and needle that survived received considerable damage, the minors burned 98%, the only things left were the emerging spears. Needle had spear pull with surving pups. That was with frost cloth wrapped unheated leaf cages, which provided 0-30% damage and no losses the year before.