Howdee there I dont have plants to trade but I have an idea for you. Ebay... I was just there looking and they have piles of tomato and pepper plants for a pretty decent price. I have over 200 plants but tons of them are orders that are all sold. Happy looking Acres ps : Please email me directly I rarely am at the forum. Purpleacres17@aol.com

I am looking for Salvia splendens 'Yvonne' seeds. Have many different plants or seeds to trade. Please see my trade list. Thanks

Let's see, I have over 100 varieties of hydrangea, at least 300 varieties of roses, around 20 varieties of peonies, about 40 varieties of magnolia, dozens of different lupines, and more coming, about 10 or so species of poppy, about 50 different iris, 6 or 7 varieties of trillium, and that just barely scratches the surface. I should someday try to catalog everything, it might prove quite interesting! I have a friend with over 4000 varieties of roses alone in his garden. He's got tons of other stuff besides that, all on about 2 or 3 acres. --Ron

Hi, everyone. Melissa, I don't know whar our annual rainfall is, nor exactly what kind of rock it is I have mostly. I think it might be the raw material for terracotta though. It is predominantly this very soft rock that in many places literally makes up the only "soil" that is there. It is a total b###h to dig and work this type of earth; as of now I have all the paths covered in mounds of this rock which I've removed in the course of making the beds. Once exposed to the elements, it starts very quickly crumbling into smaller pieces,which in time very gradually will continue to break down until it becomes clay. So I think it's very poor and alkaline. I gave in and watered some of the new implants the other day. Probably not necessary (none were wilting) but I felt so bad for all of the roses. Many have leaves that are turning yellow,so that means they are going dormant. There are a few, very poor quality flowers. I agree, sort of pointless when it's so hot and unpleasent outdoors,you don't want to encourage roses to bloom in July here in Italy at least. IMHO, they just exhaust themselves. Paul Zimmerman said he treats summer as a dormant time for roses, and I think he's right.Contrary to what tourist publicity wants us to think, in reality summer is the beginning of the year's decline. A few years ago, I tried soaker hoses, but gave it up:I'm still changing too much in my garden,it's on such a steep slope that I'm not confident that the water is being distributed evenly, and above all I just don't have enough stored-up water to really SOAK the roses. When I dug up some roses that I had watered artificially to move them, they really did, quite literally, have roots growing UPWARD to the soil surface!So, I stopped . Maybe one day I'll have my act together enough to lay down the hoses under a thick mulch, and use them to distribute water, not with the idea of watering the roses, but only in the spring, with the idea of maintaining the soil moisture as far into the season as possible.This past year, we had good rain during autumn and winter,but the "drought" (I put that in quote after reading about greybird's situation)in April messed things up. regards, bart