We grow a couple different varieties of white pumpkins each season and have grown Lumina....they can be a little touchy some seasons and we stopped growing them and moved onto better. Some of my favorite...Cotton Candy...they are nice round basketball sized pumpkins that grow on semi bush vines. We have grown these each year for past 6 yrs and always get good production. Also last year we began growing a white pumpkin called Valenciano...they are nice creamy white pumpkin that will get to be about 10 -12 pounds. They have quickly become my favorite and are pretty easy to grow and you get quite a few pumpkins off each vine. So don't give up on the white pumpkins...there are some better varieties out there. One thing also we have found that growing them next to corn or tall grass gives them the protection they need from the sun scorching them. Can find seeds thru Johnny's Seeds, Rupps Seeds or Reimer Seeds...

I'm very good at sewing,crafts,quilting and gardening. I'm also very good at basic math,and can do fractions in my head,which seems to blow peoples minds,especially when i worked in a quilt store. I'm good at gardening and love to start things from seeds and plant something that someone tells me won't grow here.My motto is you don't know unless you try!! I hate cooking,and so glad i have a dh that enjoys it,otherwise i might have vending machines in my kitchen!! LOL,NOT I have a good outlook on life in general,and try to always see the positive. I'm a good mom,nana,to my kids,GK'S GGK's. Kathi

*** and their roses should rightly (by your logic) be termed 'English Roses'. *** Not mine, Lozza. I've just said, even if we go after that logic (the place of origin), it woudn't be incorrect to conclude why David Austin calls his roses English roses. Other growers, like Kordes and Harkness, were happy to call their roses by their own names. They've put their names before their country, because that's what they think is more important, maybe. Isn't that a little self-ish on their side if David was self-ingratiating? Plus, they weren't doing the same thing as DA did -- they were happy breeding something else, not introducing something completely new. But sincerely, I don't give a damn how they want to call their roses -- I call them as they suggest me. Kordes wants 'Kordes roses'? It's ok with me. If he wanted 'German roses', I'd be happy with that too. But let us be polite and say: o tempora, o mores. This discussion goes nowhere, because word 'English' is too strong a word for a today's rose marketing. Let me paraphrase Steve Jobs, the CEO of Apple, when he was asked why Apple puts on all their products 'Designed by Apple in California'. Was he separatist, not loyal to his own country (USA)? He said something like this: "It happened that we just like where we are -- we just like California." Will Sun Corp. be unhappy, because they're in California too and make computers too? Lozza, many people are just bored today and see problems in everything. Please let's not join them. - Tom PS. Why don't we investigate about Dutchess of Portland and about her whereabouts?

I love making soil. I love it even more when someone else is doing most of the work for me. I'm itching to start some spring planting in my tiny garden, but it's technically still a bit early (our last frost date is supposed to be around the 18th or so, but these days who even knows) and I'm impatiently waiting for the contractors to show up and replace my rotted fence before I can do any planting in the back half where the pile of rock mulch over weed cloth used to be. The fence would have rotted anyway, but the bottom of it was completely eaten away where the rock mulch was piled against it. I have already put down a tiny new tree (Amelanchier x "Autumn Brilliance") which arrived bare root and needed to go in the ground ASAP, but it's not next to the fence, so it should be fine as long as the fence guys don't step on the 18 inch high forked stick which, seen with my eye of faith, is already a handsome small patio tree. The tree went in the spot where the old, scrawny, unhealthy cherry plum used to be, where I have been piling vermicompost and leaves ever since last summer. I didn't amend the planting hole at all - just dug and filled in. Enough leaf mold and vermicompost just fell into the hole to make me feel fine about the start my new tree's roots are getting. Anyway, the "someone else" who is working for me outside is a healthy passel of earthworms, which I can see out there every time I pull back last autumn's leaf mulch, which I diligently collected from the sidewalk in front of my row house and brought out back. Even if I can't set to work yet, I like knowing that they're hard at it. I've seen some of my red wigglers who rode out from my indoor worm bin, and at least three separate species of native earthworms: slow gray short guys, some really huge red nightcrawler types, and a longer, thinner, super-active wiggly worm that's new to me. I've also scattered out some seeds and grains for the sparrows and squirrels, inspired by some videos of composting chickens I've watched on Youtube: so there's been lots of pecking and scratching and digging going on in the layer of leaves, which is both fun to watch and will serve to further shred down the leaves for incorporation in the soil. When I do get to the planting along the back fence, I'll try to remember to post a soil pic as a "before and after" to the one at the start of this topic.