Last Saturday I bought two Dave Wilson peach trees after taking a very informative class about growing citrus and fruit trees in the Phoenix area through Urban Farm. The sale is also this Saturday. From the Facebook page: 8 am-3 pm on Saturday- Last Purchase Day for FRUIT TREES, BERRIES and GRAPES for this Season! Our Warehouse is located at: 4549 N 7th street, Phoenix click here for a map---->http://www.urbanfarm.org/events/location/53-7th-st-meadowbrook Apples, Cherries, Peaches and Grapes Oh My! This Saturday 1/25 from 8-3pm, our LAST Fruit Tree, Berry & Grape Purchase Day! (Citrus is in February) Here is a list of what is available: Apples - Anna Apricots - Katy & Goldkist Peaches - Bonanza, Desert Gold, May Pride, Mid Pride, Red Baron, Saturn and Tropic Snow Plums - Beauty, Santa Rosa, Burgundy Cherries - Minnie Royal/Royal Lee Bundle Pomegranates - Eversweet, Parfianca, Wonderful Berries - Strawberries, Triple Crown & Tropical Blackberry & Thorn-less Boysenberry Grapes - Concord Seeded, Crimson, Flame and Thompson Seedless Loquats - Big Jim in two sizes Surinam Bush Cherries Guavas - Barbie Pink, Indian Red, Mexican Cream and Hawaiian White

Nice staging, Tom, and nice pot, Keith. Is Monadenium a shallow-rooted plant generally? I hope someday to get a pot from you should I be lucky enough to be in SD when you are for the annual SDCSS sale - you'd likely do very well there. LMK if you're interested in being a vendor there for the June 2010 show - I've still got some pull with Chrissie 'Tongs' Miller (President) and the gang there.

The summer was a tale of three salvia gardens. Two were well established and a third, a newly planted xeric one with no access to water. Here in SW New Jersey we saw weather much like Richard's in North Carolina, but with a slightly different pattern. Rainfall here was well below average from the beginning of June all the way into September, and while we probably saw a little more rain, most of it came in spotty thunderstorms that struggled to maintain themselves. In the well watered gardens the microphyllas and greggii and their hybrids grew quite well. There was continuous bloom on Orange Door, Raspberry Delight, Wild Thing, Navaho Bright Red and a half dozen others. This surprised me a bit. Even at the xeric site the same plants were in continuous if light bloom right through to frost. The size of these xeric grown plants was about half the size of the irrigated ones. Maybe they would have grown more if they had been fed in mid summer, but because of the drought I was afraid to do so. Some other sages never did reach their full size. Involucrata made no attempt to put out a few mid summer blooms like it usually does. Waverly also waited until September. Indigo Spires was not nearly as vigorous as in other years. As the summer went on the guarantica Brazil slowly declined and by early fall were mere shadows of their July selves. The only guarantica to thrive was Van Remsen, it put on a show of a lifetime out in the vegetable garden in August. Mulberry Jam grew just fine, but since it was my first try for the hybrid I have no idea whether it was "normal" Salvia subrotunda did not like the drought at all. The patches that were watered show no ill effects and behaved as usual but attempts to grow them in drier leaner soil verged on failures. Under similar lean conditions the various coccinea cultivars did better. In the xeric beds bloom was delayed by as much as a month and the plants were smaller, but they did OK. Upright macrophylla was new to me so I don't know if an August bloom is late for this species and although the bloom was light the beauty of the flowers made up for that. Splendens Pink from Ginny Hunt didn't bloom until almost September and never seemed happy, I may not grow it again. Uliginosa was skimpy and late. My main patch at a nearby nature center suffered its second year of pretty much total deer destruction. You have to respect a deer which can eat that nasty stuff. The big and total failure of the year was praeclara. The plants hardly grew and by the look of the leaves suffered from some sort of disease. Whatever that disease was it did not spread to the nearby subrotunda. Chiapensis and buchananii grew OK I guess although I would have liked to see more flowers on the later and an earlier bloom on the former. Both were new to me so maybe their growth was normal.

Wow--lots of good information. Westelle, I think the Central Valley may be comparable to our conditions here, so your listed plants are ones that will go on my list. Dicot, since our garden is on steeply sloping land, even with clay soil drainage is good. I let mints romp around in parts of my garden as well, but would Menta varieties grow in such dry conditions? I have a low-growing plant from a friend which I think is a catmint: I like it and am planning on taking bits of it to transplant to other areas for a low groundcover. I doesn't seem to interfere with daffodils coming up through it, is fragrant and pretty, and carefree. Do you use groundcover thymes? T. longicaulis is creeping and very handsome, there are the forms of T. serpyllum, and T. pulegioides is another good one. All these are fragrant, and well suited to droughty conditions. Thanks to both of you for your suggestions: they're really helpful. Melissa