The compost that I use is from a place listed in the phone book as Hwy 55 C & B Landfill in Holly Springs. To get there go south on US Hwy 1 to Hwy 55 exit, then east on Hwy 55 staying on the bypass to Old Smithfield Rd. which is about 3 miles from US 1. Turn right onto old Smithfield Rd and then immediately right onto the entrance road. You pull up to a small building and pay $12.50 for a pickup truck load/cubic yard of compost. You can get mulch also for $5, but it is coarsely ground up tree limbs which I do not care for. The compost is very well decomposed yard waste from the town of Apex, and it has been consisitantly free of trash. The price includes their loading it with a loader. One thing that I like is that they are very responsive when they are loading if you ask them not to only fill your truck to a certain level. My son-in-law will not allow me to take his truck to the City of Raleigh site on Poole Rd. He bought a load there and they overfilled the truck so that he drove home on the beltline with the bumper practically dragging the ground and stuff blowing out the back. The Hwy 55 landfill is open 6 days per week and takes credit cards; however, if you are going, I recommend that you call to make sure that they have someone available to load, especially on Saturdays.

Brock, if anybody is guilty of writing too much, it is I, appreciate your input on the matter. I believe you are correct, it's Chinese or Japanese roof iris aka crested iris (did some googline). I did see zone 5b somewhere which is the colder limit for them, and I definitely think there is a difference b/t 5a and 5b, but I might be able to squeak some things through anyway. Now that is distressing that they may not survive the winter. I just set them out this afternoon, new area where there is no protection, and will have to mulch (or something) for the winter and expect to lose them. There are too many similar in this class to know exactly what to expect. If they make it through the summer, I could pot a few up and bring them inside, but that defeats my purpose as I have enough already to winter inside. They look so nice with that pretty foliage. Yes, I could move some, but I've got scads more plants waiting to be set out. Yes, I agree that some, not all, mail-order retailers exaggerate the zone business because they would lose sales. A topic for another time, tired after setting out 24 plants, used my bulb planter which made things go a little faster. I think I had my tiller set to till and not cultivate, oh well, it had gotten so bad so fast, it needed the extra power, but I'm worried if I could have compromised the roots forming on the Austins I set in there ealier. They should recover.

Glad you've joined us, gayled, welcome to the NE forum! My DH and I are retired. We work together in the gardens... our spring techniques are pretty simple. 1. Clean up dead leaves and foliage and weed underneath plants... but not as early as we'd like this year. Probably not until April .... if we get more snow this week. 2. One of our earliest tasks every spring.... amend the soil. I think that's the best thing you can do for the gardens. We get free compost from our town.... dig it and take it. We've done this for the last eight years and it's really helped improve the gardens. While it's not exactly "organic" because the compost is made from garden waste that people bag and the city picks up, "free" makes it worthwhile. 3. We like to use bark mulch and I use cocoa mulch in a few special areas, but this has gotten expensive as our gardens have grown. We've found that the compost works like mulch by breaking down over the season. So we mulch every other year. 3. Fertilize? No, not even our roses. I think good soil is better than chemical applications. I learned about composting from my mother who was a wonderful gardener. Mom collected coffee grounds in one container (for her Mt. Laurels and rhododendrons) and egg shells & other wastes that she'd spread around her flower beds. Over 40 years of this gave her a yard with deep, dark soil and lots of worms. 4. My DH put in an irrigation system several years ago and he checks this early in the spring. We have a long yard with gardens down one side and around a garden shed. The days of dragging the hose around are gone for us. Molie

I put a zuke in my first SFG between two tomato plants- what a riot! I had to hack back a few leaves every now and then. If you do that, remember, don't remove any more than 1/3 of the foliage. Tomatoes are supposed to be kept to 1 or 2 vines (indeterminate types) so heavy pruning is a must. Or not. I don't bother pruning my tomatoes too heavily. My trellis is on the north side of the garden and I usually plant one tomato, one cuke, one tomato, etc. all along the back and tie them up. After awhile, the cukes go a little nutso, but I don't mind. In front of those are peppers and in front of those, carrots. I keep some pepper plants and all of my eggplants in containers. I ended up building separate beds for the pole beans, strawberries, and onions on either side of the stairway to the deck. The pole beans growing up the tee-pees on each side of the staircase made sort of an arbor and looked quite nice. Then I discovered that we don't really care for pole beans. LOL.