Don, with all your great input, one thing puzzles me. You still assume that OFM is an equal problem everywhere east of the Missisippi. I have posted many times that in all the orchards I manage, which includes hundreds of peach trees in about a 100 mile radius, consisting of southeast NY, and a wide range of CT, OFM is usually just a minor problem once you've dispatched of plum curculio with pedal fall and first cover spray around mid-spring. Most sites the OFM damage is negligible even on growing shoots and never in 20 years has it been an issue in fruit that is given the aforementioned sprays in orchards I manage. David, I wouldn't start growing nectarines unless you've already succeeded with peaches and want to try something more difficult. Controlling insects probably won't be harder than for apples up there, but cracking and brown rot probably will be. I have one variety that I've grown for years that always cracks but most years I can get a crop with several applications of Indar. Last year I harvested a few fruit from a very young Summer Beaut that had no cracks in spite of lots of rain. The fruit was great so I have a young Redgold that I left a few fruit on this year and if they don't crack I may put it in my own orchard also(I have a bearing age fruit tree nursery). Red Gold is said to be crack resistant and very high quality. Expect to have to work harder to keep brown rot from destroying the fruit of any variety of nectarine. Sorry I don't have more experience with nectarines to provide you with more complete info. Let us know how you do.

They love heat,no doubt about it. Mine was from a cutting in 1998,..grew well,I planted in the ground in 2010,it nearly died as all roots and all but two main branches rotted in a wet year ..and looking back,letting grasses grow under it was a very bad,near lethal mistake. I now have planted out a second white plum..bare ground all around it. Slightly amended soils from years of being the vegetable garden years ago. All my other Plumeria in the central bay area are pot plants.

I had quite a few achimenes a few years ago. But I lost many of them. They are easy to grow and easy to keep. However, I have too many plants so I put these outside to live. They handle my climate pretty well, but a squirrel discovered their edibility, and dug through my pots, eventually eating up quite a few of my varieties. So, now, I have a more manageable collection, which is in the greenhouse, taking up space I really need for other plants. My plants dried out quite a bit this summer, getting poor attention from me. They didn't go dormant but wilted and then came back with damage, just like any other gesneriad. At a local meeting one of our members brought in some beautiful flowering plants. She has an unheated greenhouse, where they get too hot at times, but not too hot to do well. They are tolerant. However, she taught me a trick, so I will pass it on. She grew her plants with high clear plastic saucers--which are about 4" high and not much wider than the pots. When she waters the excess fills the saucers, and then keeps the pots moist as the water is drawn in. Sitting in water like this didn't harm the plants at all! Maybe this wouldn't work at all for others in different climates and water quality. But, it is a thought. Achimenes are tough, easy, and seasonal. They like high humidity in summer, and they go dormant in winter. In nature their domancy period is roughly December to May. But, when grown in cultivation they can be grown with altered seasons. Sometimes indoor plants will be growing in winter, under lights and do well, then going dormant for three months, getting their seasons all mixed up. Parks carried many kinds of achimenes at one time. There is a reason for this. George Parks, the founder, was a gesneriad fan. He popularized this genus because he liked them. I guess they also did really well for him in his Georgia climate. Over the years, Parks has carried fewer and fewer gesneriads, as his influence has waned. I think that also the superficial similarity in achimenes to impatiens has also led to their decrease in popularity. But, achimenes are much more elegant that impatiens, if not quite so easy. In dry summer humidity, I think the trick of growing them with deep saucers or wicking makes sense. Those water holding crystals aren't necessary, but are an interesting strategy. I leave mine in their pots, which dry out in winter but still retain some moisture. If the soil really gets baked dry, the rhizomes will shrivel. My pots get some water and the rhizomes don't rot. They just don't want to be kept really wet or in wet heavy soil in winter. If I try to remove and store the rhizomes two things happen. One, I never find all the rhizomes, so they sprout in my used potting mix containers, or in pots if I reuse the soil as I sometimes do. Second, I am not so systematic that I plant the rhizomes at the right time. So, store in the way that suits you. There are many wonderful cultivars. Spring is the time to order the rhizomes from Lauray. Judy, unpots her plants and collects the rhizomes sometime in late winter. Email her and ask her for her list (Lauray of Salisbury). She has around 200 kinds. The most common color for achimenes is the range from light lavender to deep purple. But, the reds, oranges, and pinks are the most popular. The biggest flowered types will be in purple range. I like them all, but some of the more unusual colors and forms get my attention, such as soft salmon pinks with contrasting eyes. I also like the very few that have wide throats, that make the flowers more three dimensional. Most have a tiny opening to the tube, making them basically flat flowers. Jon

Waas, trees aren’t the only plants that make life possible lol. Plus, grasslands are typically more “species rich” (biodiverse) than temperate forests and on some scales even beat tropical rainforests in plant diversity! Couple that hat with the fact that grasses are more resilient to climate change since they are more drought tolerant and fire resistant than trees and they are better at sequestering carbon because most of it is stored underground in their massive root systems rather than in huge above ground trunks, stems, and leaves. Have I made a prairie convert of anyone yet ;). To to be fair, while I gree up out here on the prairie and I have a special fondness for it, it’s only my second favorite ecosystem. If I had the opportunity to move back down to the low desert in southern Arizona I would be out of here in a heartbeat. The Madrean Sky Islands south of Tucson is my favorite place on the planet. You go from low desert-grassland populated by scrubby, green barked palo verdes and towering saguaros up in elevation through mesquite bosqes and into subtropical and montane forests of sycamores, oaks and conifers. If you’re lucky you might even catch a glimpse of a jaguar. I don’t know if it was the blazing desert sun or what, but the forests there seemed much brighter and less closed in than other forests. The rugged basin and range of the Sonoran desert just west of there is equally as beautiful with is craggly, weathered mountains where agaves, ocotillo, and organ pipe cactus thrive. Then there’s the Mojave desert and it’s savannahs of Joshua trees. If there is one place on this earth I live above all others it’s the desert.