Hi, A couple of questions: -Would hardy pricklypear cactus (Opuntia humifusa/compressa) be the only hardy pricklypear to endure zone 6 winters? -Would sweetshoot bamboo (Phyllostachys dulcis) be suitable for zone 6? -Comment: Pawpaw, Asimina spp. (including Asimina triloba), contains the compounds associated with increased risk of atypical Parkinson's; you'd have to it is frequently enough, I would suppose. -Comment: I believe that ginko nuts must be eaten in moderation - I remember reading some materials describing them as toxic to some extent. I wonder if making tea out of the leaves would be a good thing, however. -I know Lucky has some varieties survive his zone 6 winters, but anyone have any varieties of Pomegranates survive zone 6, 6a or 5b? - and fruit? -What are the best Amelanchier spp./Juneberries/Serviceberries w/regards to taste? I think that the only berries I absolutely loved must have been A. alnifolia - 5' thin suckered bushes with dark, sugar-sweet berries; the A. canadensis and A. canadensis x laevis I've tasted are not as good as what ever variety that happened to have been. -Will American hazelnut/filbert & American beaked hazelnut hybridize with the European species? -If I were able to obtain a true American Chestnut selected from a stand that showed great disease resistance, would the taste hold up to the Chinese and/or English varieties? -In comparison to a straight D. virginiana or D. kaki, would there be any taste improvement in the hybridization between American x Asian persimmon? -Would you think that a fully ripe Wild Mandrake/Mayapple would be at all toxic; or would it be risky if consumed in excess? -What are cold-hardy, reliable varieties of Black Mulberry (M. nigra)? [non-hybrids] -In zone 6b, my 'Brown Turkey' Fig never dies back to the ground; I do nothing to protect it. -I purchased a grafted D. kaki 'Saijo' and a friend of mine showed me his orchard containing grafted Asian persimmons - the grafts reject after several years; he explained that if you had an American x Asian hybrid as the inter-connection between the D. virginiana rootstock and D. kaki scion, the graft would last indefinitely. I hope the tree will last, contrary to this - probably won't. -Are the berries of native/American shrub-dogwoods and tree dogwoods (other then the toxic Cornus florida - Flowering Dogwood) really edible? C. sericea/stolon., C. alternifolia, etc.? -Besides Black Oak, any other good oak nuts? -I'll contribute a few I can think of here (edibles): Salmonberry, Thimbleberry, 2 varieties of Ligonberries - American/European, Bearberries, Wild Wintergreen Berries, Berberries spp., (water lily and lotus/parts, arrowhead/parts, pickerelweed/parts, Acorus - sweetflag, not iris!), various man-made blackberry x raspberry hybrids, the man-made 'jostaberry' - ribes spp., a wide array of vaccinium spp. (blueberries, deerberries, bilberries, false huckleberries), Garden Huckleberry (not a huckleberry), varieties of cranberry, Akebia, Orange trifoliate, Crabapple spp., nuts: chinquapin, species of hazelnut/walnut/varieties of hickory (including pecans), forbs: daylily species, various flowers, Monkey Puzzle Pine, Pine Nut species, syrup from Walnut & Maple species, Prinsepia, Asparagus, Globe Artichoke, Jerusalem Artichoke, various greens, various man-made stone fruit hybrids, foxgrape (including 'Concord' & 'Neptune'), purple passionflower, Mountain Ash species, Aronia spp., Western Sandcherry, Buffaloberries, native Silverberries, Sala, Yuka spp., Magnolia virginiana for tea - leaves and culinary, chokecherry, wild black cherry, pin/fire cherry, American wild plum, Chickasaw plum, Beach plum, cloudberry/bakeapple berry, smooth & staghorn sumac, teas from birches, American larch, and others - be cautious, tall & stinging nettle tea, the species of Jujube, Streptopus amplexifolius - I forgot the name - I call it watermelon berry, but it's not the above mentioned Che/Melonberry which is a good one to have. ____ When you think about it, there really are only a few fruits out there: Apple (4 types), brown or green Pear, Cherry otherwise know as Bing or Yellow Cherry, Melon, Apricot, Nectarine, Orange, Grapefruit, Grape, Kiwi, Plum, and Pineapple - if you don't believe me, just go to the supermarket or your local cooperate sponsored fruit consumption advocacy materials. Well, they do have around 5 other rare ones: Starfruit, Date, Fig, and Fruit-roll-up Fruit.

This is better then Ann Landers(Why do like to read that column) I am off schedule with my plants and it shows. When on schedule, I just love tending to them weekly. Most of them are in plastic or clay pots that sit in a decorative pot. I bring them one my one to the sink and spray or water them so that water runs thru the pot. They sit on the sink until the water stops dripping out of them. I seem to love this actvity. I have been busy over the holidays and into the new year and thus...I am off schedule and find myself watering a grouping of plants at a time and I can't keep strait which group is next. I have favorite spots and favorite pots. Plants that have pleased me will get both a good spot and pot. I don't move my plants around a lot but I have downsized my collection and I am an empty-nester with a big house. I generally move plants so that I can enjoy them more and if I notice this bothers the plant, I move it back to the place I know it likes and leave it there until they all get moved out into the breeze way. Orchids don't seem to be fussy. I just moved two phals into the top pot spot and boy do they receive applause from everyone who walks into my living room. I tend to mist plants when I am stressed and need plant care to soothe myself. It helps me so I do not over water them. Also if a plant that needs more humidity seems to be dropping leaves, I feel misting could possible help. Diane, who is trying to think spring Happy New Year BTW

Tracey, What fun you must have had with your granddaughter being able to stay for such a long visit! It is great that so much of your garden held on and has put out new growth. I stopped watering the veggie garden in July and, despite that and very little rainfall, some veggies have put out new growth and are producing well. Some flowers and herbs survived as well. It is nice to have a little green around, isn't it? Tomato plants often put out new growth in the fall and manage to produce a few fruit, even if the plants looked pretty much dead and gone in July or August. Tomato plants are perennial in their native setting, and people who garden in frost-free areas sometimes can keep the same tomato plants going for 2 or 3 years before disease gets them. Often the fruit you get in the fall do remain smaller because they are getting fewer hours of sunlight per day as daylength gradually shortens, and the sunlight and heat are less intense too. There is so much you can do after a freeze. You can work on soil building. I do that by gathering grass clippings and autumn leaves, spoiled hay, etc. and chopping these materials up into small pieces with the mulching mower. Then I rake them up into buckets and carry them into the garden and pile them onto the beds. If I have finished compost in the compost pile, I pile it on top of them. I leave them there and let them decompose for a while. Then, if I have a chance, I rototill them into the beds using my Mantis cultivator. Or, if I don't get a chance to rototill those materials into the soil in fall, they break down a lot over the course of the winter and I leave them on top of the beds as mulch and plant right through them. Another way to improve garden soil is to plant a cover crop that can be incorporated into the soil. There are a few cold-hard cover crops that you can plant in garden beds. My favorite is rye, and if you have sandy soil with nematodes, then you need to use a cereal rye like Elbon rye(developed at the Noble Foundation in Ardmore, OK, of all places) because the nematodes become trapped in Elbon's roots and die. Sometimes I plant cold-hardy herbs in the fall to get them off to a good start for next spring. I usually do that with parsley, chives, sage and a couple of others. Sometimes I plant new plants from seed and sometimes from small transplants or by dividing old clumps of plants. You can plant garlic in fall for harvest in about June or July of the following year. I also scatter-sow of early cool-season bloomers sometime after the last frost. This includes seed of Texas bluebonners, larkspur in shades of blue, white and pink, poppies and sometimes (in the yard, never in the cultivated garden beds because of its invasiveness) pink evening primrose. You can plant bulbs of spring bloomers like daffodils, grape hyacinths, hyacinths, crocus, tulips, etc. I usually plant them after our first hard freeze here, which normally doesn't occur until mid- to late-November. I do a lot of garden clean-up, but leave most of it until after the first hard freeze because otherwise I encounter too many snakes. There's a lot to do in fall and winter. You can draw up scale models, by hand or using a computer program, of what you want your veggie or herb garden or flower beds to look like next year. I usually make lists of the veggie, herb and flower varieties I want to grow next year, then go through my seed box and check off those that I already have. Then, as soon as the seed company websites are updated (some of them already are updated for next year, but others are not and won't be until closer to the first of the new year), I order the seeds I need. I try to have all my seeds ordered before the end of the year. That way, I am not sitting here all frustrated and irritated in Feb or March waiting for back-ordered seeds to arrive when planting time is already here. After the first freeze, I move compost from the finished 'current' pile to the garden beds, and then start a new pile, using garden debris from garden clean-up, lawn clippings if I have overseeded the lawn with rye grass, chopped or shredded leaves, small twigs, bedding/manure from the chicken coops, fruit and vegetable waste parts like peels, etc., from the kitchen, coffee grounds, etc. It always amazes me how active the compost pile is all winter long. It often gets hot enough to cook down during the winter so that I can add more compost to the flower, veggie and herb beds in spring. I clean up and reorganize my potting shed and sun porch in fall and winter so it is all neat, tidy and ready to go in late winter when I start doing more gardening-type chores. Fall and winter are a great time to clean up, sharpen and repair garden tools. We normally do the harder garden chores, like bed-building or making structures like arbors or fences, in the cooler fall and winter months. Chores like that are more pleasantly accomplished in mild weather instead of during extreme heat. Most years, in the fall, I will empty out all the soil from my garden containers, except for those that are overwintering plants, and mix in compost, organic amendments, etc. to replenish the soil-less mix and refill the pots so they are ready for spring. Sometimes I don't get around to doing this until late winter or early spring. We have acreage with lots of fencing, so usually clear our fencelines of unwanted growth and make fencing and gate repairs in fall and winter. After the Christmas-New Year holiday season is behind us, I usually look through all my garden supplies and then go about finding and purchasing whatever I am short of. I like to have all the stakes, row cloth anchor pins, zip ties, garden twine, plant labels, seed-starting containers, organic fertilizers and pest repellents, etc. gathered together, organized and on-hand for planting well before I need them. This fall will involve more pruning and brush removal than usual due to the high wildfire risk elevated by the ongoing drought. This weekend I am working on limbing up trees around the house so that the lower limbs are no lower than 8-10' above the ground. This makes it harder for fire to climb up into the crowns of the trees. As soon as we have the first freeze, I need to clear all the undergrowth in the woods within 40 to 60' of the house. I don't even bother clearing that stuff, other than cutting pathways, in the good rainy years, but I remove it all in the drought winters. We feed birds and wildlife all winter long, so I always start stocking up on birdseed in the fall so we don't run out during a particularly harsh cold spell in the winter. I also repair any damage to various feeders, etc. long before the birds are relying on the food in them to supplement whatever else they are eating in winter. A lot of our berry- and nut-producing plants did not produce well this year, so it is likely the wild birds will rely more than ever on the birdfeeders this winter. Finally, to keep myself happy and busy raising something, I always overwinter a handful of plants either indoors or out in the garage, and I always plant winter bulbs in pots indoors, usually in October. I mainly plant paperwhites and amaryllis, and usually have a Christmas cactus and a few potted herbs inside. In a good fall and winter (with milder days and some nice sunny days), the Laura Bush petunias in containers near the garage stay warm enough (they are sitting on a concrete slab and gain heat from a metal wall behind them) to bloom most of the winter. If I didn't have hungry deer and rabbits, I'd have containers of other winter flowers like pansies or snapdragons, but when I've attempted to grow them, the wild critters eat them, so I just stick with the Laura Bush petunias. Then, of course, fall and winter are a great time to pore through the seed and plant company catalogs, make endless lists of new things to try, etc. Dawn

So, you know it is against the law for others to mail plants/plant parts/cuttings/bulbs into California? We have agricultural restrictions (thus the Ag stops coming in and out of state for cars). Individual choice can have disastrous affects on wild lands and the ecology. Did you know that Citrus Greening - the disease that has almost wiped out Florida citrus crops and is now in California was most likely brought into CA illegally by a backyard gardener? http://ipm.ucanr.edu/PMG/PESTNOTES/pn74155.html  And, to Florida through illegally imported plant material? https://www.invasivespeciesinfo.gov/microbes/citrusgreen.shtml  Other states have Japanese beetles that feed on about 300 species of plants, flowers, and fruit; squash vine borers that attack vine crops of summer squash, winter squash, and pumpkins (I know gardeners that can’t get any summer squash at all anymore without a great deal of extra work, most just give up) and Tomato yellow leaf curl where it is not uncommon for losses of 100% to be experienced in fields with heavily infected plants. The host plant can be very different than the ones we see infected. There is solid reasoning behind our laws and quarantines that no plant material (living, dried, bulb, tuber, rooted cuttings, cuttings) may be shipped in to California unless it is from a company with phytosanitary certificates. https://www.cdfa.ca.gov/plant/PE/transport_animals_plants.html "The importation or smuggling into California of live plants and plant product... will have serious legal and financial consequences for the persons involved". "We are free from many invasive insect, weed and disease species that wreck havoc on agriculture and environments in other states and countries. Our State is surrounded by natural barriers — towering mountains to the north and east, scorching desert to the south, and vast ocean to the west. Most plant pests cannot cross these barriers on their own; however, the State is under constant threat of pest introductions by man". Do No Harm. Please continue to spread the word that trading out of state plants and cuttings into CA or buying them from individuals on Amazon, eBay or Etsy is illegal and a really really bad idea. (quotes from https://www.cdfa.ca.gov/plant/pe/ExteriorExclusion/borders.html ).