planto, if I saw your aralia, I would buy it too. it's really a beauty. I have to say, once I figured out what they like and put them on water-wicks to prevent them from drying out (am an underwaterer, keep forgetting... my duties!) - they are pretty much care free. but I did keep the baby fern-leaf bagged for the whole year! white it was establishing itself. they need very bright light. mine get sev hours of morning light and then western thru sheers : fl to ceil gigantic windows. and they were still dropping leaves in winter! it was because I set nite temps to 65F and near windows gets to 62F - they hated it. once I figured out to bag them - no more drops. by the way, you say you have hi humidity and very warm - that's optimal. 85-95F + above 80% humidity that's just heaven for them. I have 60% in winter and 80% in summer and 70-74 indoors - but that's not enough for ultra growth.

Dang my DH.... I was saving a bunch of those... and he threw them out..... he said. , DUH SORRY - I thought they were trash.... and of course... I said " WWWEEEEEEELLLLLL.... if they were trash - they would have beeeeeeen cut into little pieces so the birds would N O T get hurt by them... and of course..... if they were Real Trash..... they would have been in the TRASH CAN... not the cabinet...>>!!!! you know what he had the nerve... to say....OH I THOUGHT THE TRASH CAN WAS YOUR STORAGE PLACE !!!! OHHHHHHHHH that man.... but ya know... I gotta LUV Him!!! anyway.... KirK: the idea is FANTASTIC>>>> I appreciate the directions!!!! I can still make a come back ... from this smaaaaaaal set back!!!!! Stay Happy!!! Happy * * * ** Holidays * * * * *!!! M E R R Y + C H R I S T M A S !!!!! God Bless YA'LL!!!! susiesunshine

Carol, I have a lot of yellow, orange and red bell peppers in the back garden. I took a chance and left them uncovered because I was busy putting up drywall and taping and bedding it. so I didn't want to stop and go out to the snake-infested garden and cover up the peppers. I figured if they froze, they froze. Well, they didn't freeze. Maybe I'll harvest them today or tomorrow. They are about 75% colored up and I was wanting to wait for them to color up fully before harvesting them. I am just amazed they survived the heat and drought after I quit watering them. The ground near them had cracks nearly 2" wide, and yet the plants survived. Maybe whenever the scant moisture fell, it was going down into the ground via the cracks and the pepper roots were able to access it. The plants wilted badly and almost died several times, but really have revived very well in the month or so since rain started falling regularly again. I am going to cut them and freeze them for fajitas too. At our house the temperature only dropped to 37, although at our mesonet station in Burneyville, it fell to 34 degrees. We had very heavy dew....there were pools of it sitting on top of the floating row cover I had put over the containers of tomato plants, but I haven't seen any signs of frost damage, so I think we were lucky here. I am not sure people closer to Burneyville were as lucky. They may have had patchy frost. Bon, I hope the moisture isn't too much for your garlic. Is is "hard" to complain about moisture when we usually are in desperate need of it, but too much moisture at the wrong time is just as bad as too little. TouCan2, I did a lot of that "hoping" that the forecast was wrong for several years after moving here (usually with frozen plants resulting and killing my hopes), and then I just stopped hoping and bought floating row cover to throw over plants on the first few cold nights of the season. Often, If I cover them up only about once a week, I can keep plants alive and producing until December. The type of row cover I'm currently using was new to me in the spring, and it is the best row cover I've ever bought. It is rated to give 10 degrees of protection, but on some cold nights in the spring, it protected plants when we dropped more than 10 degrees below freezing. Oklahoma weather is so cruel and unforgiving. It doesn't seem "fair" that we had late freezing and nearly-freezing nights in the spring through the first week in May, and now we have early cold freezing nights in October. It seems like if we have late cold nights in the spring, we should get a pass from having early cold nights in the fall of the same year. The cold nights this year have cut at least a good month off our frost-free growing season in 2013. Maybe 2014 will be better. (I feel like we say 'maybe next year will be better' every single year.) I have 7 tomato plants in containers covered in blossoms and small fruit. (One of them is Celebrity. It isn't my favorite in terms of flavor or texture, but it stands up well to drought and disease.) I may or may not move the container plants into the greenhouse (they are huge containers that are really heavy) before the next freezing night or at least frosty temperatures threaten. My experience with "winter tomatoes" is that anything harvested after the end of September (and it is doubly true of any harvested from November onward) has poor flavor compared to tomatoes that ripen in summer's hot temperatures and plentiful sunlight. Having said that, though, the flavor and texture still are better than that of grocery store tomatoes. Most years I harvest tomatoes through at least the end of December, and sometimes into early January, but there's some point at which the flavor becomes so poor and the texture gets kind of mealy and I start asking myself why I even bother. Farmgardener, The nights here have been so cool that my current blossoms this week aren't setting fruit either, but our weather seesaws up and down so wildly here at this time of the year that it is not impossible for them set fruit despite the cool nights. I've had fruit set in November even before I have moved the plants to the greenhouse so they'll stay warmer. It is open to debate whether the flavor of the late fruits makes them worth having. I wish we'd had the better temperatures and moisture y'all had this year. I'm green with envy when all of y'all talk about your rainfall, but am happy y'all have had that improved weather. I just wish we'd had it too. Our summer was still too hot and too dry down here and we remain in Severe Drought, but have had a lot of rain in the last 3 or 4 weeks. I am hoping we'll be able to claw our way out of Severe Drought and make it back to being only in Moderate Drought, or even (it would be a big improvement) back to being merely Abnormally Dry within the next few weeks. I have found it hard to get excited about next year's garden while still dealing with the third consecutive year of persistent drought conditions. I'd like to have a normal year in 2014, though I think I'm forgetting what normal feels like. At least the days are gorgeous lately, even though the nights are cold. Dawn

me too! it so refreshing to have blue sky...friday is our next snow day... my c-pal sent pix from her home in idaho...some of her neighbors were in a really bad way...the weight of the snow on their roofs was critical..