One of my columbines, OkPrairie, has done surprisingly well in the heat. I wouldn't say it looks stunning, but still has its foliage. I think it is 'Texas Star', so maybe with that name, it has been bred for heat tolerance. The other one is Nora Barlow - the double pink and white, without spurs. It always suffers, so I pulled the dead foliage off, and it has already sprouted new. EEs are tropical and hence, need lots of water. They will let you know, like the spathephyllum does by its weeping foliage, that they need water. In fact, the spaths are also aroids, as are the elephants ears. Do you have regular colocasia esculenta? I have two of these, and they seem to be the worst for water needs. I bought new ones this year, Alocasia plumbea nigra, A. wentii (36" high max, with dark green leathery leaves with maroon back), colocasia esculenta 'Ruffles' (leaves have ruffled edges), colocasia esculenta 'Illustris' (also common), colocasia esculenta 'Black Magic', colocasia esculenta fontanesii (black stemmed with dark purple green foliage), and colocasia gigantea 'Thai Giant' (leaves eventually get 5' long). I also have remusatis vivipara (foliage is like an EE, but at summer's end, like now, they produce these funny little tubercles that come up from the ground about 8" high, and produce bulbils that can be planted for new ones). I also bought another aroid (these are all aroids), pinellia pedetasacta (green dragon), which is a fast growing shade groundcover. It only had 1 leaf on it, and in two weeks, it now has 5 coming up - very pretty! I can't wait until the fontanesii flowers; the spaths are supposed to be white with purple vertical striping! Next year, I am going to break down and grow Amorphophallus konjac and philodendrum binnatifolium, which should be hardy here, according to Tony Avent, and Troy of Bali (who grows amorphs out the gazoo). I would also like to start some of the species calla lilies. I have gone aroiderserk! Sorry, I'll get off my aroid bench now! Susan

Hi everybody, I'm a newbee. I've gardened in Memphis for a year, but live close to Covington. I grow all kinds of perennials, a food garden (about 20 x 50'), and roses. I have crepe myrtles, shrubs, evergreens, dogwoods, and all kinds of traded flowers I just stuck in the ground and kept alive. A lot of it was here when we bought the place, and the rest has been added over the years by us. I moved 12 tea roses to another location in my yard at the beginning of July (eeek!), after researching how to do it safely, and now they are full of leaves and flowering out. Then, my friend and neighbor, who is a plant rookie, bought us both an Eden climbing rose. She said she had lived there ove 20 years, and SHE WANTED HER YARD TO LOOK NICE. She then said we needed to go in together on a rose order of English roses. HAH! She said ten roses each. I ended up getting 24 roses in all, and I'm now the official baby rose nurse until they get planted when the weather cools off. I didn't know that it was going to get over 104 degrees during the time when they were supposed to arrive. NOT TO WORRY. My husband, the ever present plant genius, told me how to keep them from frying. I took them into my bathroom, unwrapped them, and watered them with cool water from the shower. Then I potted them up to 1 gallon pots (they were only band sized rooted cuttings), watering the soil before putting it around their sensitive roots. THEN, I prepared a bed in partial shade in the back of some evergreen bushes on the shady cool side of my house, by using 4x4 timbers stacked two high, and filled that with damp peat moss. (All this in 104 degree weather) Then I BURIED the pots up to their rims in the peat moss bed. Every day I misted them 5 times a day. Every one is living and only had maybe one yellow leaf, and one is even putting out flowers (actually one flower, but it IS a beautiful one) The main thing with pots is that the roots get overheated, and the damp peat moss takes care of that. You could bury the pots directly in the dirt, but in 104 degree weather you might heat stroke out yourself digging all those holes!!! The peat moss is pretty expensive, but you can use it elsewhere when you don't need it any more. The second batch of roses (six bands) came yesterday in the mail, and it was so hot I was afraid to even put them in the peat moss bed. So, again my genius husband told me to just set them on the porch, and bring them inside the house when it got hot. And when the weather cooled down to the 90's, THEN put them in the peat moss bed. (He really is a genius. He's the one that designed all the flower beds in our yard) I think I've lost my mind ordering roses during a heat wave. I probably should be posting this in the rose forum, but y'all were talking about West Tennessee gardeners, and here I am! BTW, I also do a LOT of plant research on the internet, and have a huge inventory of info that I've collected over the years.

Mimulus, what soil mix have you tried with the odora? Alocasias are adaptable but don't like 'wet feet' or very dry conditions. Here in central Fla I let the mix dry to an inch or two before watering, but daily rainy spells doesn't seem to bother them. I have mine in a mix of primarily unsifted pine bark mulch (from WalMart), with a little peat moss or styrofoam balls and a little perlite. I've successfully grown them in many other mixes using various proportions of Miracle-Gro, peat moss, pine bark mulch, perlite and/or vermiculite. They're really not too particular as long as the mix has air spaces and drains well. It would help if you turn on your Messaging. My email is bluesea14808@yahoo.com. If your interested in trades, I have quite a few alocasias and colocasias, including A. macrorhizos variegata. Also have a large collection of philodendrons, aglaonemas and other aroids, and sansevierias. Russ

My young Caladium Rubicundum has 2 sprouts after I let it dry and kept it dry for over 8 weeks. It turns out that I may be in S. Orlando for one of the Caladium festival days this summer. I'm going to try and attend for at least a half day. I'll take a ton of pics & post here if that works out. My Thai Caladium now has 2 full leaves and a spike. But the varigation is not showing up because I think I've been giving it too much sun. The 2nd sprout was mostly white until I gave it too much sun. The first leaf has a dime-sized sun burned dead spot on it. So I'm backing off on any direct sun. This pic shows the burn area in the center. The pic seems to accurately show its pinkish & purplish tones: My potted 10 lb Alocasia black stem corm had rot all over it when I attempted to re pot it last week. After getting rid of that pot, away went most of the fungus gnats. I sliced off the top 10% of the corm and put it in water but it seems to be getting rot when underwater too. This is my Alocasia Calidora at almost 3 1/2 mos - it was potted on Jan 31. It has 2 deviled-egg sized chunks cut out from near the top of its corm from rot when the corm was bring dried/stored. Earlier in this post you can see that I modified a black kitchen trash can to use as a pot for it since the corm was about 14" long. To reduce the soil that may be desirable to fungus gnats I put it in a smaller pot. It has 2 leaves now: