My neighborhood is brand new with the oldest parts being about two years old and the youngest still being built (annoying!), and it's absolutely filled the the brim with outside people of all ages. Lots of dog walkers and thin, jogging women in the morning. Stay at home moms with their strollers in the afternoons and early evenings and kids everywhere. Oh, the kids! Seriously, we had so many trick or treaters last year that the ten huge bags of candy I bought for them was gone in two hours. (My husband was a bit generous in handing it out though... "when we run out, we can turn off the light." lol) Not a whole lot of gardening though, we have mostly landscaped yards, but more and more you see new odds and ends making their way into people's yards. There's one man around the corner from me who has a giant yellow austin rose in his front garden that is just magnificent. He prunes it down after every flush and when it blooms... WOW! I'm not totally sure which yellow austin that it is, because I haven't had the guts to walk up and ask yet. I'd be shocked if it were something else. There are a couple of other roses in the neighborhood, hybrid teas, I'd guess. Most people take good care of them, but a couple don't prune and those suckers and clearly eight feet tall and very thin. Eh. My yard is ridiculous. lol. I'm surprised the yard police haven't gotten on to me yet about my cottage-y garden in the front where everyone can see it. Ha! I got out there a little early to prune and tidy everything up so it's looking pretty good now. I am happy to report though, that after I did SEVERAL of my neighbors were out the very next day working on their own front gardens. Yay!

It is true. The gallardia is toast and needs to be tossed. Your soil appears to be compacted and gallardia needs freely draining soil. This means loose soil with tiny air pockets. If there is a Lowe's near you they sell bagged soil conditioner for less than $4. This is what most compacted soil needs as it contains small pieces of pine bark that keeps the soil from packing down again. It gets mixed into the top 6 inches of the soil after you have turned and loosened it with the garden fork or with a shovel. It is likely that tha water you gave it was more than it needed, but not lossening the soil was probably the biggest problem. A free soil test from your county agrigcultural agent would be a great place to start with any amendments that you may need. If I don't have a soil test and can't wait for one, I just use soil conditioner, a little lime, and bagged dry cow compost in small amounts dug thoroughly into the soil. You may not need lime if your soil is not acidic. I never fertilize new transplants. It is best to let them begin to grow slowly into their new soil. Most of us have made the same mistakes as you and learned from our mistakes. Thats why this forum is so helpful. Once you get the area dug and replanted, be sure to mulch, with shredded pine bark mulch if it is available. This mulch will break down and improve your soil also.

I know You want information on the double late flowering red. I am not clear if that is the cultivar name A friend and I got some locally grown 'Corinthian Pink' ornamental cherry trees. their narrow growth was great for us, because we needed them for the narrow strip between driveways and the neighbors front yards. There are also 'Corinthian Red' and I think a 'Corinthian White' cultivar available. The ornamental Corinthian cultivars began to bloom about 3-4 weeks later than my friend's 'Kwanzan' cherry began blooming. The Corinthians' blooms lasted past the time that her ornamental cherry changed over to full leaf. We planted our 5 gallon potted sized Corinithians prior to them breaking dormancy this year, and even though they had only a month or so to adjust to the transplant and did not bloom as fully as they should next year, they still bloomed stunningly beautiful. When we planted them, we poured a liquid sulfer onto the entire surface of the hole and also mixed some into the back fill. Additionally, we also poured over the rootballs some Espoma Bio-tone Starter, which at planting time contributed the most commonly occuring bacterias that help feed trees roots. I think planting them with the sulfur and Biotone kept them from becoming stressed, and that helped to prevent some of the common borer and other bug invaders from successfully attacking. Both her two and my one just amazed us when we saw how beautiful the flowers emerged. I can see how you have been capitvated by the beauty of the late blooming red flowering peach. As for the leaf curl infestation mentioned, that is a common problem with most peaches. The reason it can be difficut to control, is that once the leaves show evidence that they have been attacked with the leaf curl pathogens, it is too late for any treatment to get rid of the problem. For that reason, if there are peach orchards in your area, or homeowners growing peach trees in their yards, it is a good idea to apply the leaf curl preventer prior to bud swell. If you do it during the time of bud swell or for sure during bud break it is too late for the treatment to be effective. My friend and I did not find out about peach trees' potential leaf curl problems until after our trees had already begun to bloom. We could only wait to see if our trees would be infected. Thankfully none of them have displayed any signs of that common, peach tree infection. After flowering, our ornamental corintian peach trees produced a green, pea sized fruit which did not grow any larger and is no longer noticable on the trees. As of yet, we also have not noticed the trees producing ground litter, so they should prove good for planting near driveways or walkways. Even though our trees are not the same cultivar as your late bloomer, the sulfer and bio-tone starter along with the leaf curl information I offered should still apply to your later blooming red peach cultivar.

Chicken moats are real and legitimate and people who use them swear by them. : ) I even saw a photo once where someone put a tunnel underneath their driveway as part of their chicken moat so the chickens could travel safely beneath the driveway to reach the part of the garden on the other side of the driveway. Now I'll have to find and link an example of a chicken moat. I'd like to put a chicken moat around my garden, but our old, spoiled rotten chickens are used to free-ranging and wouldn't take kindly to being confined within a moat. If I ever do it, I'll have to use a new flock of young chickens who've never known the joy of free-ranging. Charles, Are you rural? You need guineas. I had them for a long time (more about them in the grasshopper thread) but after the year in which I had two cougar encounters on our property and we, and everyone in our very rural neighborhood lost all our poultry (and many lost cats and dogs)...and I'm talking in excess of 120 birds....I've never bought another flock of guineas. I was really attached to them and losing them one by one over the course of the summer was really painful. I haven't found any kind of shrub that grasshoppers won't eat. In our worst year here, they ate the young fruit trees, including the bark, the leaves, and the fruit (but left the pits hanging from the stems), and they even ate holes in our fiberglass window screens, the cotton rag rugs on the wraparound porch, etc. When they are hungry, grasshoppers will eat anything and everything. The dog we had when we first moved here would eat a grasshopper now and then, but none of our current dogs do....and he didn't eat enough to make a dent in their population either. Our chickens control them well outside the garden, but I don't like to let the chickens free range in the garden in spring through fall because they'll peck at fruit like tomatoes, which doesn't make me very happy. I will turn them loose in the garden in the fall after the garden is pretty much frozen and dead so they can dig and scratch and eat insects to their heart's content. When I have winter crops, they don't bother them much once they are no longer tiny new plants. Any task on our property that involves sticking an arm, hand or foot into a place where a snake might be lurking just doesn't get done at this time of the year. I do those tasks in winter. If I have to lift something, like a board or piece of sheet metal on the ground, I lift it with a stick because it is just about guaranteed a snake will be underneath it in the summer months. When you live around lots of venomous snakes, you learn to be careful. The closest I have had a venomous snake would be about 3" from my hand. It was in early March about a decade ago and it scared the fool out of me. If you don't start out being careful enough, you quickly learn to be more careful around places where snakes live. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: Chicken Moats