Craig, Posting pictures here is pretty easy. I've posted instructions in this forum many many times, but will do it again in hopes it will help. One of the easiest ways to provide your photo to be embedded into a post is to upload it onto an image hosting site such as Photobucket, Flickr, etc. That should be pretty straight forward, and the individual sites will give instructions on how to get your photos uploaded to their site when you sign up. Once your picture has been uploaded, find its web address by right clicking on the image and copying the image location. Some sites may even provide the address in a text box below the photo for your convenience. Let's say, as an example, that the address of the picture you want to post is http://somepicturesite.com/yourpicture.jpg To embed the picture into a post, use the command img src="http://somepicturesite.com/yourpicture.jpg"> For larger pictures, it would be very very very helpful to add a width attribute. Do do so, just add width=600 after the second quotation mark. 600 is a reasonable width for Gardenweb forums and won't mess up the formatting of your post causing people to have to pan around to read the text. So, for larger pictures, the command above could be rewritten as: img src="http://somepicturesite.com/yourpicture.jpg" width=600> Note that I had to use special characters to get the commands above to show up here without turning into pictures, but you can use them as shown (with the correct image location, of course).

"What caused the injury(ies)" Mabel, Montmorency is said to be good to -40F but not under every circumstance. There are so many things that have to be just right for your tree to be healthy enough to survive that limit. For example a tree that has begun to become stressed can become infected easier with bacteria P.S. short for "Psuedomonas syringae", which is an opportunistic disease. Once stressed and established these bacterias then try to kill plant cells in the way diseases do and the P.S. bacterias do "ice nucleate" adjacent plant cells. This means that the cells that are otherwise prepared to survive much colder than below freezing temperatures are less able to because the cells get injected with compounds that favor ice crystallization at closer temperatures to the normal freezing of water, when then the cells will freeze and burst. I would say most extension services are really not prepared to advise all the things you must do (tree health) because this can become a rather involved project in some weather locals and even soil types. You can't always rely on spraying to prevent initial infection sites because many of them have got specialized and resist the chemicals. I would be prepared to tell you to burn the tree after you've eaten the cherries, or at least surgically torch all the open diseased area. And if it is the disease I truly think it is (it happened in the same way to my cherry in Alaska) planting a peach (lower 48 peach experiences) will give you the same maintenance requirements because they are just as susceptible or more, to the same disease as cherries. But if you DO plant peach I've heard about a new peach rootstock bred in N.J. called 'Guardian' that has in trials shown to keep the host tree scaffold in good enough condition to prevent these bacterial infections, for the most part.

Tammy, Those photos of 'Wedding Cake' indicate a heavy infestation of rose scales (in my view, among the most loathsome of all insects). The only thing that would keep me from trashing that plant immediately, would be the knowledge that it was so rare that I'd never be able to replace it. 'Wedding Cake' was in the middle of your pot ghetto? Carefully examine all other denizens of your ghetto. Soon. As for 'Bow Bells' -- return that one to a shaded location pronto. In answer to your question regarding whether you should fertilize that one now: NO. As for those insects . . . I think you may be right in assuming that they're some kind of beetle. They look kind of like Fuller rose beetles (are they more dark gray-ish than black?). If they are Fuller beetles, they'll eat the leaves in short order, but probably not do any lasting damage to the plant. Rather than spraying those critters (whatever they may be) and waiting to see what the morning brings, pinching that leaf off and quickly dispatching it (and them) underfoot is the way to go. Better yet, use your thumb and its 2 adjacent fingers to turn those suckers into a fine puree. I once was very squeamish about bug juice, but no more. Soap and water at the end of a gardening session is almost as satisfying and restorative as a subtle mix of gin and vermouth is at cocktail time.

Got curious about compost tea. This is the second time I checked. Early this summer time I spent 1 hour researching but was disappointed. Here's one link from United Kingdom on compost tea (unbiased, NOT sponsored by compost-tea industry): http://www.telegraph.co.uk/gardening/gardeningadvice/11121288/Compost-tea-does-it-really-work.html " What did they find? In a glasshouse study on lavender and choisya, none of the compost teas had any effect on growth or on susceptibility to botrytis (grey mould) or spider mites. Sometimes plants treated with compost tea were taller, sometimes they were shorter, sometimes there was no difference. Sometimes plants treated with compost tea were of higher quality, but often they weren’t, and treated choisya plants at one nursery were significantly worse. In short, the effects of compost teas were “extremely inconsistent”. Other links from U.S.A: http://www.walterreeves.com/landscaping/compost-tea-does-it-work/ From University of New Hampshire: https://extension.unh.edu/articles/Does-compost-tea-really-work From University of Vermont: http://www.uvm.edu/vtvegandberry/factsheets/composttea.html Excerpt from above link: " It’s not clear whether it’s necessary to aerate during compost tea production. Aeration can speed up the production time, but it may also add to equipment cost and complexity. There are claims that aeration helps kill off the organisms that can cause illness. Very few studies have compared aerated and non-aerated compost teas. Some recent research. A 2-year study by the Rodale Institute and Pennsylvania State University evaluated the use of aerated compost tea for disease suppression and crop stimulation in grapes, potatoes, and pumpkins. During year one, approximately 50% suppression of powdery mildew was observed in the compost tea treated grape plots. A slight reduction of gray mold, along with an INCREASE in the level of downy mildew, was observed in the compost tea treated plot during the first year at one of the vineyards. Compost tea failed to suppress powdery mildew on Howden pumpkins in year one, but reduced the number and size of pathogen colonies in year two. Compost tea did not reduce severity of late blight on Superior potatoes when disease was present in year two. " http://www.uvm.edu/vtvegandberry/factsheets/composttea.html *** From Straw: FOR ROSES, just spraying with alkaline tap water alone is enough to suppress mildew, as testified by Roseseek (Kim Rupert) in CA and rosarian Dave Boyd in HMF. For mildew, just plain tap-water spray (alkaline pH over 8) is enough to contain mildew, as rosarian Dave Boyd in a dry climate (only 13" of moisture per year) testified in HMF: http://www.helpmefind.com/gardening/l.php?l=3.4748