Thanks PJ! I do protect the Livistona and Serenoa and Med fan palm. I protected the serenoa with Christmas lights, a frost cloth, more christmas lights, and then a garbage bin. It worked really well. The Livistona was protected with only a few Christmas lights and a frostcloth and garbage bin. The fronds that were not near the lights got damage because livistonas are actually have very cold tender palms even though it will recover from much worse cold then it will be damaged by. The med fan palm just gets lights and a garbage bin, no frost cloth. This winter it did not get protection too much. Only about 4 nights total did it get protection. I was really happy about the sweet potato vine! It saved me about 7 dollars! As long as the tubers dont freeze, they will come back. The soil this winter didnt really freeze at all, but next winter (assuming its an average winter) I will mulch it and see if it will come back during a true NYC winter! And I noticed that I messed up with one of my Butia pics so I will repost that one..... "This Butia is going into it's second year and it has been a really good grower unlike the other Butia. The Frostproof Gardenia is also going into its second year. The gardenia is making some buds now so it should be blooming in another 2 weeks!" And here's a pic of the med fan palm blooming! I was really excited to see this! -Alex

Hi Harry, SO that Jean Ellen grew at least 4ft+ in one year! That is amazing. I wish I could get that kind of growth on my Maha but then agai, I got it so late in the year, it reall didn't have much time to adjust to its new surroundings before it could start growing. I still don't have much growth on it. The claws are starting to grow more conical now but that's it. I am thinking it may still take a few weeks before they really get going. That was one thing that blew my mind last year with my mang trees that I lost. It may take some time for the inflos to start growing upward but once they do, it seems like you could measure the growth every few days!! I am going to move it into a larger pot but I think I will wait till the inlfos are done growing. I have not decided yet if I will remove the fruits. I am thinking of leaving just one for me to enjoy, IF it decides to hold on to maturity. Right now, I am finding that it needs to be watered every 4 days or so. When I brought it in, I watered once a week and that ws plenty. This tree took a while to adjust to the HPS but now it is really happy. I have been feeding it a liquid fertilizer at helf strength at every other watering, sometimes even every 3 weeks along with a peletized fertilizer that I apply to the top. I all ready told you about that and once summer gets here, I think I will just swith to the Osmocote. I have definetly learned a lot from you guys and also from my own experiences. So far, this mango has done the best for me out of all the mango trees I have had. How are your cherimoya seedlings doing? Did you protect them during the cold nights? They may not have even needed it. I accidently left some of them out when we had 30 degree nights and I didn't realize my mistake until the next day. When I checked on them, they were fine. No damage but then again, I had them up close to the foundation of the house. My grafted 'Fino de Jete' is actually starting to grow and bloom now. I counted 6 flower buds on it. I am keeping my fingers crossed that I can pollinate them and at least get one fruit to hold. Good luck with the rest of your winter temps. I really hope that you don't lose your mang ocrop like last year! WOW! I cannot believe how large your Carrie mango is! I can't believe they consider it a condo type! Is it just a slow grower? Andrew

Thanks Ethan. The bent stem on the rootstock mango was not an accident. I will usually do this to stimulate the pushing of the buds on the scion once it has been at least 1 month and it is still green....especially if the buds have not pushed themselves. In this case, the scion actually had some portion of it that wanted to die. Luckily two of the buds at end of the scion remained viable with one pushing out nicely (as you can see) and the other getting ready to push now. Of course you don't see the other 8 attempts I had at the same time that didn't take.....I didn't think anyone would be interested in my failures :-) Keep trying those grafts.....practice makes.....well, not perfect, but at least occassionally successful. Harry

Lol, mustbenuts, you have quite the aviary there! I love the blue jays too but they can be big bullies so they may drive out other birds. I am pretty thrilled about my birds exploits too. I used to have a very old, beat up and rotting out bird house and every year a family of house sparrows would move in and I'd get to watch them hatch and fledge. Well it finally just bit the dust. It was so old and falling apart that it wouldn't hold together anymore. So I replaced it with a beautiful new one. Nothing too fancy but a nice one. I put it out in March just like I had done with the old one. Nothing. 4 years of nothing. Not a single nest ever built. I was heart broken. Well after 5 Michigan winters it doesn't look pristine anymore. Some of the cedar shingles have chipped off and the paint is faded out and guess what...it has a nest in it! I was sitting on the patio the other day and saw a flash of something by it so I turned and looked. There she was, a beautiful yellow finch carrying a twig into the house. Now I'm thrilled!