Klehms/Reckamps- Most are slow growers but extremely hardy. Once establised they are simply gorgeous!I will be taking a handful of them to some of my new saturated colors this summer. I have a some new additions that I can't comment on yet but am excited about. Gossard and Norris. I've heard great things about Norris hardiness some I'm sure I'll be pleased. Kinnebrews do not do well for me and same for the new Stamiles. Dani

I live in Northwest Arkansas and I haven't seen any Berkleys around here. Most of Arkansas is rabbiteye and southern highbush country, so if they're not available here, it'll be hard to find them elsewhere in-state (there are a few nurseries a little south of here that I haven't been to). The way I grow mine is similar to Scotokla - I dig a 2 1/2' wide planting hole, about 12" deep in the middle, then fill it with a mix of 50% peat, 50% pine mulch (sometimes I add a small amount of cotton burr compost). I then mark the holes and build over it with a 3' wide raised bed, about 8-10" high in the middle, flat on top with steep sides. I then mulch over it with a heavy layer of pine straw to prevent it from floating off, with a total height of about 12-14" after I've added mulch, etc. The depth is a bit of overkill, about 2' below the crown, but I find the extra depth helps a lot with internal drainage (a major problem on heavy clay) and provides a nice pH buffer zone (native pH is 7.0). I plant my blueberries about 60% in the raised bed, 40% in the top of the planting hole. This hybrid-combination of a planting hole and a raised bed gives me most of the better qualities of each - it doesn't dry out as fast as a traditional raised-bed (much less a container) but has vastly better drainage and maintains a stable pH better than an at-grade planting. It's somewhat expensive & time consuming to plant them like this, but it pays off with a very low mortality rate. I've found that using a soil-less mix is hugely beneficial - people who amend native soils often seem to struggle with growing blueberries. Keith at Backyard Berries gave me the idea for the soilless mix, planting hole and slightly raised bed; my soil is so poorly draining, though, that I adopted the above method for planting using a much larger raised bed. For watering, I recommend putting in a good rain barrel system - I've recently expanded mine to 720 gallons, used mostly for my 29 or so blueberries. I also use a lot of sulphuric acid acidified water to keep the pH right at 5.0. If you plant them right, keep them from overproducing (lots of gardeners try to get too many berries, too soon, to the detriment of the plant), avoid using nitrate fertilizer and manage the water, growing blueberries is pretty easy.

I don't agree with blanket statements that more sun is always better. While this might be true in places with high humidity and lower elevations, here in the hot arid SW at 5000 feet, there is such a thing as too much sun, and plants which receive a few hours of shade/partial shade always produce better and are less stressed. Plants here that receive 12 hours of direct sunlight will develop a blasted look in the summer where the color is more grayish-green than lush green. The lower leaves get leathery faster than shaded plants, and the leaves rarely provide a flattened surface to the sun, no matter how carefully you maintain moisture levels. At a certain point here, sun ceases to be a critical component and becomes a stress factor. Plants grown in buckets in these conditions do even worse. They dry out very quickly, and the buckets can get extremely hot when placed on surfaces like concrete, brick, or stone. To help, you can put a layer of mulch in the bucket to help retain moisture, and if your ground temperatures are high, you can place the bucket higher up on some type of stand. Regarding your plants, yellow pear does have thinner, more sharply jagged leaves. It's typical of that variety. Under the right conditions, they can become obscenely large. Since you only have one plant to compare, it might not actually be the conditions that are unfavorable, but it could be the individual plant itself. When you transplanted the yellow pear, was it still in any type of peat container?

Ok, I'm in California (Long Beach) ... Zone 10. I'm brand new to all this gardening stuff. This year was my first year ever to grow anything and I'm making tons of mistakes (but learning). The entire idea of even growing a garden was sort of a joking challenge on behalf of my wife. I did not trim suckers off my tomato plants at all until I read a couple of articles and saw a you tube video ... and this guy said, "I want to grow tomatoes, not tomato plants." So I started trimming suckers off my tomato plants ... to the point I was afraid I would kill the plant. OMG!!!!! My plants went crazy ... they exploded on me with the tomatoes, they are shooting out all over the damned place. In the picture below, that plant right there (and that's just one) is only about 4 feet high, its growing into my jalapeno plants, into my artichokes ... my cage can't support it (I got it tied off about 4 ways to Sunday) ... you can see all the tomatoes on the plant and that's just on that side ... and ... I've probably gotten 20 tomatoes off that plant already. I totally underestimated everything about these tomato plants! But regardless, I am a convert now about trimming suckers off my plant, if it doesn't have hair and its not growing up ... it gets pruned off. BTW, I'm using Ferry Morris Beefmaster, Hybrid seeds (my wife picked up on sale at Rite-Aid) that I grew from seed in a dixie-cup starting back in February ... and I moved em into the ground towards the end of March and just started watering. I didn't even think the silly things would grow, it was just dirt I scraped the grass off of and broke up (I did stir in some potting soil left over ... a little more then half a bag). We're getting tomatoes the size of my fist (some larger, some smaller). We already have had BLT's several times, gave away tomatoes, had em on our burgers and salads, and made a pot of home-made spaghetti sauce that fed 6. I'm like totally blown away ... its like jack and the bean-stalk!