I dont think you want to fall fertilize, usually you dont want a flush of growth before winter. Someone advise when the best time to fertilize and why please? 75% petal fall. I dont agree with spraying pesticides while bees are still interested. Usually a storm knocks the flowers off here before it even gets to 75% petal fall. If you dont want to use imidan, spectracide trizide once and done labled for fruit, has worked well for us in pc alley. Its cheap also, and is almost odorless unlike imidan. I stopped spraying on 1 tree june 20th , the others july 12th. Just to see what I can get away with. Seems like im in the clear. I think my schedule here next year looks like this: Green tip to pink oil and immunox ,100 % petal fall (imidan immunox + captan) and 3 cover sprays(also imidan immunox + captan). I am channeling harvestman.. "OK, I don't know where you live and your spray issues are going to be greatly affected by your location but here's my spray schedule for the scores of orchards I manage around SE NY. No dormant oil- do an oil spray somewhere between the point where emerging shoots are 1/2" and the flower clusters begin to show pink. Mix Nova (myclobutinol =immunox) at highest legal rate with 1 to 2% oil. If it's closer to pink use 1%.( Remember oil and captan are not compatible.) Don't spray again until petal fall when petals have mostly gone from latest flowering varieties and bees have lost interest. Than spray Imidan + Nova + Captan mixed together at highest legal rates. Repeat in 10 to 14 days. Where I manage orchards, the space between earliest flowering Japanese plums and latest flowering apples is only 2 weeks or so which usually allows me to wait until the latest flowering trees are ready to begin spraying anything. Plum curculio seems to time its appearence conveniently to the rythm of the last flowering varieties. This may not be true where you are. Sometimes it leaves me with plums too far along to spray oil by the time I do the apples and Euro plums sometimes get mites because of this- so you may need to spray oil on different trees at different times. If you can't find or bear using Imidan- an organiphosphate that is restricted in a few states, you best use Sevin instead but add an extra spray and apply at about 7 day intervals. (OR spectracide trizide once and done labled for fruit 10-14 days) All this is based on plum curculio being your primary insect problem which is the case most areas east of the Mis. River. These sprays will also absolutely control scab, CAR and Mildew as well as most of the crop fatal insects. Apple fly maggot is an exception, but I haven't had much of a problem with this pest in the orchards I manage. This pest can be controlled with a lot of fake apples smeared with tangle trap. If you don't want to use synthetic chemicals, you will probably have quite a battle on your hands. You'll probably have to do at least 4 applications of Surround about a week apart. Stone fruit will require the addition of another fungicide application or 2 (Indar) starting 2 or 3 weeks after final insecticide spray. Because I manage so many orchards so far apart I have to resort to a spray schedule that is based on expectations rather than actual monitoring. You may be able to reduce insecticide sprays with monitoring but PC are quick and sly. Other problems may occur later in the season and you will in time learn to monitor and react to the pitfalls. Good luck, Alan Haigh- The Home Orchard Co.

I consider a "smart" controller a device that irrigates by zip codes, and allows remote control by smartphone and web browser. Other people might consider "smart" to be better measurement and use of rainfall and temp measured by the controller. I plan to buy OpenSprinkler, because of how it connects to my home automation system, and it's active user group (look at the forum). The variety of web based system under $300 is surprising. It's hard to keep track of all the players. Personally, I don't see the need for a complicated interface on the controller itself anymore. I want it on my phone and laptop. People with a large water bill would undoubtedly benefit from changing out their old controller to one of the new predictive units that use local meteorological info. The questions is "which one". All the companies have access to the same data, so who has built the best model to run your system? Anyone considering these system should look at how far the nearest Weather Underground station is from their house. Vendors trying to use the most local data possible is going to use this data. It's also possible to spend $600-700 on a Davis weather station and connect it to Weather Underground. If you then chose a controller vendor that uses WU, your own local data would be combined with forecast models to run your system. We live in interesting, and complicated times. As a gardener, I plan on continuing to make my own irrigation decisions. I just want a system that can do it easily from anywhere, and can do complicated programs on hot days.

My old one is a Richdel Model R416PR. My father installed it for me 30 yrs ago and it's been very reliable. It's straight forward, with 6 stations and 3 programming modes. I need more stations in the new one though. Price is not too important, as long as I'm getting what I pay for. I'm looking for a good price/quality/reliability/longevity combination.

Well I grow Sizaia Ptitsa, Piilu, Duchess of Albany, and Fascination. Royal Velours was just purchased last year from Donahues so it is still in its sleep stage although it has put up a fair amount of foliage this year. Fascination is relatively new for me as well and here are its first blooms and buds this season. I really love Duchess of Albany for its vigor. Here it is this year. Not sure if you can tell but it grows up against the wall, originally climbed the white trellis, but its vines are now sprawled out over the japanese maple and the otto luyken laurel on the right. I love the integrifolias and integrifolia hybrids as well so Sizaia Ptitsa is a great one I would recommend. Although not a huge fan of the type IIs, I must admit that Piilu is a great early season bloomer in my garden. I have posted pictures previously this year of mine and now it is even more covered in blooms than it was previously. As Karen pointed out it tends to be a shorter variety of clematis, but then again I treat mine as a type III clematis (which is why I never get double blooms on it) and this year it was whacked back to ground level and it is still going gangbusters and well over 5 feet tall. Mine is planted in the ground.