I'm bagging here in suburban Maryland, just outside Washington DC. I'm following Jellyman's suggestions: sandwich bags on apples and footies on nectarines. Plums and sour cherries must fend for themselves. I got a couple of sprays of Imidan on the nectarines and seemed to have avoided much curculio damage. I only sprayed the apples once, and then thinned them hard and bagged while they were relatively small. I'm experimenting, so perhaps next time I will spray twice and bag when they are bigger. I also only sprayed my Stanley plums once. It's been pretty windy here this spring and lots of heavy rain, but the bags on both apples and nectarines have held on well. My apples are only starting to fruit this year, so I've only a few dozen apples; wish I had 300! I've rather more nectarines. Last year I managed to bag nectarines with footies, and they all grew and ripened well, but the early frost meant they were few in number. This year has so far been great, and I should get a pretty decent crop of nectarines. What I've noticed so far is that the curculio seem to clearly prefer apples and nectarines to the Stanley plum. I hope oriental fruit moth don't like plums. I know I'll have to prune off the damage to the end of branches they cause on the nectarine, which is one reason I don't prune it too hard earlier in the spring. I never got this kind of damage on the plum in the past, so perhaps I won't have problems with fruit moth and plums. We'll see.

And some of us lots more north are still considered zone 7. Most of Long Island is listed as zone 7. Thats because we almost never get down to zero. In fact I can't remember when we last did get down that low. Getting down to 5 degrees is very rare and might last only one night or so. But our spring does not start as early in the year as the more southern states and of course winter comes sooner. So just adds to the confusion. But I think its great that we are all discussing late bloom and related issures here on the forum lately. I am always for finding more late bloomers. I wanted to add a note about bloom sequence. I have noticed that everything listed as late, and this would be even from the same hybridizer, does not bloom late before some I have that are listed as ML bloom. This would be after a complete cycle here in my garden having gone thru a winter here. I want to use Murphy/Reed intros as an example. ALCHEMIST listed as a late bloomer, is totally finished blooming by the time all my late and very late bloomers are starting to bloom. This is annoying to me because first its in the late blooming gardenbed and second, I bought it because its a late bloomer. Didn't want a midseason bloomer. RED HILL listed as late, really is while NUCLEAR MELTDOWN listed as mid/ML? starts blooming after ALCHEMIST and just before RED HILL. But really close in time. I know that this does not clear anything up but I just thought they were interesting observations.

There are tropical hibiscus and there are hardy hibiscus. Only the hardy varieties will survive outside in Maryland. What color are the flowers? Sometimes you can figure out which you have by matching the flower color to variety. Also where and when did you buy it? If you bought it in the grocery store or a big box store in bloom in the winter/spring, chances are it is a tropical hibiscus. About ten years ago or so, there was a breeding revolution that produced tropical hibiscus that would bloom in a 4 inch pot. This brought about lots of sales as a house plant. Again, if you bought it in bloom while in a four inch pot, it is probably a tropical hibiscus.

Epi's are easy to winter over inside. Just make sure they don't get too much water. The lychee tree will be a bit more difficult. You need more humidity and light. I winter most of my tropicals over in a greenhouse and also use HID grow light systems. The lychee will likely drop foliage when moved indoors. As long as it's kept alive thru the winter it will rebound when it's moved back outside next spring. The only bug issues I've ever had with epi's is scale and it's pretty easy to remove by hand. The lychee is susecptible to more sucking insects, especially spider mites. Keeping the humidity up will help discourage them.