marcia, I am so sorry to hear this! I didn't have a lot of luck with the Morden roses (Morden Blush and Morden Sunrise) before, but the John Davis that I planted last year had NO die back whatsoever and is growing very well already! The Hope for Humanity rose had some die back but is doing fairly well. However, the Morden Belle is something that I am thinking of getting rid of.... over the last 3 years, it had significant die back every year, and also the new branches tend to flop a lot. The roses were not spectacular either. So, in the end, it just survived but not thrived. Since these are all in my yard, I think that it's more to do with the species than me... LOL! Wayne, I am curious to hear about your Double Knockout, as I had a hedge of it in my zone 5 garden before, and it grew as tall as 5 feet and it was an unstoppable blooming machine! Do they really survive in zone 3 then? Marcia, I think that your theory that it was the cold weather after the warm temperature had a lot to do with it. Isn't it such a pain to garden in our FAR NORTH location!? Sigh.....

I have a few that do that all year. The leaf out profusely and drop them all. Then flower profusely with no leaves. It looks weird and pretty. I have others that do not to this at all, they leaf and bloom simultaneously. I notice that ones that are heavy bloomers drop their leaves. The others only get 8 or 10 blooms at a time.

Oh, I think they are very unhappy plants. I have 6 zucchini plants. 4 of them are living in a small kids pool of MG potting mix. Sadly the mix settled since I planted them, so I think they don't have as much soil as they would like. The other 2 are in a larger kiddie pool I bought for my son's pumpkins. I didn't think the pumpkins would live since I was transplanting them, so I filled the pool 1/3 full of dry leaves and the rest of the way with MG garden soil to avoid wasting $ on plants that wouldn't survive. I threw the 2 zucchini plants I had left to transplant into one side of the pool. After I read you guys say that garden soil isn't meant to be planted in without mixing with regular soil I threw some more soil from the yard into the pool and mixed it in the top few inches. The weird thing is that while I wound up with 6 large zucchini plants, the ones in the large pool (leaves and garden soil) are way healthier looking than the ones in the small pool. Apparently more crappy soil is better than less better soil. The cucumbers are actually very happy. I've got them growing in a city pickers box and they seem to be loving the constant supply of water. I originally had 6 cucumbers (3 of straight eight on one side, 3 pickle barrel hybrid on the other) planted in the box and asked you guys what to do about thinning. I built a little trellis in the box and cut out the weakest looking one, which seems to have been a mistake. The two on the side I cut are producing a TON of male and female flowers and the three plants on the other side are only producing male flowers. Oh, and I went an checked out the pumpkin flowers this morning. There were 6 flowers and they were all male.

Every now and then I look at the supermarket for powdered Cheer, which I remember being recommended on the laundry forums ( in particular with mamapinky may she rest in peace). I think only once did I see some and for some reason I did not buy it that day. Since then, whenever I look, I swear there is none. So I keep using liquids and have yet to try the powder. So far I have had no issues but just saying.