Eric - you've seen my yard. I showed you my row of Feijoas that I grew from seed. I don't think I showed you one plant that I bought at a plant sale, sold as a blooming ornamental. It's up in the flowerbed by the house. It wasn't a named variety but it was labeled as a blooming plant and had a company name on the tag (long lost). The seed came from a tree at the arboretum that fruits almost every year, is huge and the fruit are the size of a chicken egg. I do not remember the fruit being extra tasty but I don't think they were completely ripe. Of the nine seedlings in the garden, they give three types of fruit; some of them are very round, some of them are egg shaped and large, and some of them are small and hard. None of them have much flavor. And I have to hand pollinate in order to get fruit. But the tree up in the flowerbed fruits every year with half sized fruit, lots of them, no hand pollination required, and they are delicious. I'm tempted to try to graft some of its branches on to my row of loosers down in the garden. I love the look of Feijoa bushes/trees, but for the amount of space they take up and the hassle of hand pollinating, I think mine are gonna be moved off to the side and something better moved into their spot. I have no idea what that might be. Oh, and the hardy kiwis had their first (light) crop this fall. I do not regret planting them! so much better than store bought.

Ouch Tammy - deer are worse than moles/shrews/and whatever except maybe voles - they're the worst because they kill before you know what happened. At least the hosta will come back next year. Is there anyway to deer fence your area or electric fence it? We had to put up a 7' deer fence for the seedlings in the field. Stupid things were lined up with knives, forks and bibs the first year we grew seedlings there. Here is a pic of a new area we did this year. Last fall I put the whiskey barrels inbetween trees where we could not plant anything because the roots were too close to the surface. This year I added companion plants and hosta to the rest of the area. Here are some more of the containers I use - these are hypertufa my husband made for me. This picture is two years old but I could plant lots of mini hosta into a very small area. It is my way of cramming lots of plants into a tiny space. I will see if I can find some pics of some Lakeside plants. This year I got Fresh Prince, Color Blue, Beach Bum, Love Affaire, Hoola Hoop and Storm Watch from her but don't have pics of them. I seldom photo young plants since it never does them justice. Lakeside Kalaidescope Lakeside Big Scoop This is a breeder plant I bought last year that gave me lots of streaked seedlings this year. I lovingly call her Mortgage Payment. Lakeside Surfrider Lakeside Black Satin, it might be one of my favorite hosta. I planted L. Coal Miner and Rhapsody last year but whatever tunneled under the plants last year set them back and I haven't taken their picture either. If anyone wants some hosta seeds, please say something in the fall to me. I will have a ton of streaked seeds available from my own seedlings and other known parents of streakers and will be happy to share. I cannot plant them all even though I try. I will also have seeds from some solid blues and golds and will share those also. 90% of those will be solid green, but you will get a small percentage of blue or gold from them. Brooke

Seattle (windy Ballard neighborhood) has been mild this winter, with only a few nights below freezing and the lowest temperature around -25 F degrees at my house. My 10-yr-old feijoa bush still has a few small fruits that drop occasionally. Summer 2017 was a fabulous flowering year, producing a light spring flush and a heavy mid-summer flush. The spring flowers did not form fruit (absolutely NO honeybees this year), so I hand-pollinated the summer flowers several times by touching robust flowers to other open flowers and got probably > 200 fruits. I had read that hand pollination is abut 95% successful, whereas natural pollination is poor (maybe 25% successful). By November, I had harvested about 5 ripe/75 unripe fruits that I washed and stored in the fridge, and air-ripened in small batches on the counter. Most stayed very sour, with a sweeter interior that reminded me of those pastel Smarties candiess (the US candy, not the UK chocolate kind). Only a few fruits achieved that creamy, ethereal floral-scented pineapple-strawberry-kiwi taste that I remembered from New Zealand, but it was enough to inspire me to make earlier hand-pollination efforts this year. It is my favorite fruit, after tomato. One thing I have noticed is that despite the leathery leaves and apparent drought tolerance, my feijoa needs a lot of water when fruiting—like a good soaking every few days—for the fruit to form normally. Otherwise they produce small fruits about the size and shape of my outer thumb joint without much moisture or flavor.

1:White Sapote.It gets no good publicity because it's far best picked off the tree,chilled ,then eaten. Also the fact it grows best in the high tropics or coastal California means all those who list the zone 11 fruits don't know the greatness of this z9-10 tree. 2: Mango-if you can grow it-do it!. 3: Avocado..could be no.1 if I think more about it! 4: Lemon..just so useful. Goes pretty good with Avocado-lol. 5:Orange's.Hard to beat a sweet chilled Orange. close: Pineapple-home grown are mouth watering. NO.122: Agave tequila..you know why,wink,wink.