Hi Kay_h, I'd be interested in trading for the lettuce green ice, brussels sprouts falstaff, broccoli coronado crown, tender sweet carrot, succhini jackpot and spinach vital green. Please check my list and see if you can find enough that you are interested in. http://members.gardenweb.com/members/exch/catrina Thanks for offering this trade. If you would like to pick a few extras that would be fine since most of my seed is '07 or '08. Catrina

the driveway does NOT separate the aggressive roots of the maple.. from anything within twice the distance of the height of the maple ... you must insure that your babe is sufficiently watered for the first 2 or 3 years ,... so that it can grow a sufficient root mass to attain maturity ... maples can kill the most invasive weed in the world.. otherwise know as grass ... it can and will impact your little 2 foot stick.. if you dont take care of it ... did you amend the planting hole .. and if you did ... i know where the maple is growing new roots ... been there. done that ... if the maple is a babe.. then the cherry has a fighting chance ... ken

I won't pester you guys anymore after this post but wanted to tell you I tasted my first ever ground cherry (from an Aunt Molly's plant) and it was very good. It did have a bit of a citris tingle and a bit of a pineapple taste but I'd have to say it is unique in the taste department. It was sweet tasting and I didn't notice an after taste. I think it has a taste kids would go for. I also think this plant would be ideal for children to watch grow and then to harvest the cherries after they've fallen from the plant. Peeling the little paper like covering off of the cherry would be something young children would enjoy doing. The fruits are very small, so it would take a lot to make a pie. However, the plant sets a lot of little fruits so if you had the space to grow several plants, that would make a big difference. I remember reading that some growers felt they could harvest 300 or so from one plant and after watching this one grow and set fruit, I don't doubt it. My little plant is growing in a pot. I don't know if growing it in ground would cause the fruits to be bigger. I have very limited sunlight hence the pot, so I could move it around. My original thought was to try and grow it in my small greenhouse, thinking it would enjoy the heat but I don't know how hot the house will get when the daytime temps climb. I do have a shade cloth over the house and it does get some limited shade until about noon. Of course, afternoons are the hot time of the day so I'm skeptical about being able to grow them in there during the summer. Might try just for the lesson learned. I hope you all have great success with your Ground Cherries this summer. Mary

Snuffles, How's your longan doing now? The little plant there looks gorgeous--leaves are healthy and blooms fantastic. If you decide to keep the blooms, I hope you get some fruit forming for you. I would keep the blooms too .. just because blooms aren't always guaranteed year on year. Right now, I have got 3 juvenile longans growing in the ground. One of them actually isn't too juvenile. I got it 9 years ago when it was about 2-3 ft tall. So, it must be about more than 10 years old now. I planted it in the ground at first, but it kept getting sick with white flies. So, I dug it out again and nursed it to health. A couple of years back, I planted it back into the ground and since then it has grown to 8 ft tall with a lot more new leaves, but the white flies came back to attack it. Now that it's bigger, I think it's also more hardy to withstand the white flies attack. I used to clean the sticky stuff off the leaves, but now that it's bigger, it's hard to do that. Anyway, here's a picture of it bearing some fruit now: Longan Kohala at 8 ft now: close up of the little fruit formation: The second longan I have is a Biew Kiew (slightly more than 5 ft tall). I'm guessing the age is less 5-7 years. It was blooming last year, but I got no fruit from it. This year, no sign of any blooms. Longans have a habit of growing long floppy limps. I just chopped off two of the lanky limps in the middle. If you look closely, you'll see the old dark green leaves beneath the new flushes that shot up. Here's a third longan which is also a Biew Kiew. It's a little over 5 ft too. No blooms this year. The problem I noticed a while ago was this tree was in a "frozen" state, meaning the little budding shoots from last year got dried out. I was waiting to see if they would grow, but they never did, so I decided to rub them off the branches. A few weeks later, I saw lots of new flushes coming up. So, I did learn something new. I was having so much troubles with my lychees and decided to pay more attention to my longans to see if they will perform better for me. At least, with the lychees, they are pretty pest free except for web worms ... which unfortunately is prevalent when there are mature hard wood trees around. Oh yeah, we have some humongous Oak trees around here ... lol. I hope you enjoy your little longan tree now and hope it'll do well for you in the years to come.