Josh, One of the flowers on my Green Dragon was deformed also, I just picked it off. There were only 5 flowers total on 2 scapes, now there are four. I pulled all the pollen off but won't put anything on her. Her profile is sweet too and the back of the flower is even greener...I'm really beginning to like these smaller flowered varieties, expecially the ones with the shorter stems. Thanks Everyone, Donna

I am by no means an expert in the field of Dahlias but can share a story with you. Two years ago I had a poor performer Dahlia which I dug up and stored because the tubers looked strong. Last year I changed its location and increased the fertilizer and it did a little better. This summer I changed both the soil mixture and location and my Dahlia is very strong and the many blooms are beautiful. Maybe I just got lucky but I think all Dahlias deserve a second chance.

Barbara, Raspberries! Yum. I don't have the soil or rainfall for raspberries. If I did, I'd grow 'em too. We're just too hot and dry here and with poor clay soil to boot. I hope they grow well for you. Joellen, It is insane, isn't it? I thinned like a little maniac, and by the time I was through thinning, I looked at the thousands of fruit I'd removed and felt almost depressed. Still, I knew it had to be done. If I'd left all that fruit on the tree, the trees would have collapsed under the weight of it all! And, of course, the plums and peaches would have been the size of green grapes at full maturity, so all pit and little flesh. I felt like I did a very thorough thinning job. Then as the fruit enlarged and the tree limbs begin to sag down to the ground, I worried I hadn't removed enough. Once I started picking fruit I was at first delighted by the yield, and then, eventually, horrified by the thought that all those plums and peaches had to be eaten or processed. Since then, I've been like a hamster on a wheel....pick, wash, sort, eat, process, sleep....pick, wash, sort, eat, process, sleep....someday I'll look back at this year and laugh, but right now I am a zombie. It is SO hot, so I try to get up early (or in the middle of the night) and process 2 or 3 batches. Then I pick fruit in the early morning hours. I process another batch in late afternoon, when Tim is at work and the dogs and cats are sleeping in the air conditioned house, and it is so hot and steamy in the kitchen even with the AC on. In late evening, around 7 or 8 p.m., I try to slip out to the garden and pick again. It is like treading water. As soon as I 'get rid of' some of the fruit by freezing or canning it, I pick more. So, I never really get ahead very much, but I never get too far behind. I've never made much effort with strawberries. They need better soil than my clay, and we have an insane amount of wildlife here, so there's a lot of competition for the berries. Maddie, our 3-year-old granddaughter, wanted them in her Peter Rabbit Garden, so we bought 6 plants, painted an old 8" deep plastic wading pool with green Fusion spray paint,poked numerous holes in the bottom for drainage, filled it with soilless potting mix (which was oh, so very expensive) and planted those six plants in March or April. From them, we have harvested several pounds of strawberries, so now I'd like a hundred more plants, which means, of course, building and filling raised beds for them. They're on my 'to do' list for next year. The pests haven't been as much of a problem as I expected, and the container may play a role in that. In the past, we had pill bug and sow bug problems on strawberries, but now Slug Go Plus makes that a moot point. The birds are a small problem, but I can thwart them with bird netting. I also interplanted red petunias, pink and white dianthus and, more recently, red periwinkles in the container with them and I think the flowers help trick the birds by helping disguise the fruit. "We eat EVERYTHING. We are like locusts." lol lol lol This is one of the funniest things ever, ever, EVER said on this forum. It had me ROTFLMAO. The ooziness likely comes from insect damage or bird pecking, or if you're in the part of OK that had the excessive rainfall a couple of weeks ago, they could be splitting from rapid water ingestion which makes their flesh grown more quickly than their skin. On tomatoes, we call it concentric cracking or radial cracking. I want to plant a LOT more fruit trees and berry bushes and such. It has taken me so many years to get the veggie garden about to what I want it to be that now I feel ready to plant more fruit. I need to start working on a fruit garden plan. I have a great spot in mind for it, and it is already partially fenced. Gardening is not for the dull or faint of heart. I wholeheartedly agree. Fruit trees are iffy here, and are very prone to disease and pests. I refuse to spray so I never have very high expectations. Still, we get a crop about 1 year out of every 3 from the plums and peaches (late frosts get the flowers or plums the other 2 out of 3 years) and a super-heavy crop 1 year out of 5. Our last super heavy crop was 2004, but there was a decent one in either 2006 or 2007. I'm all enthused now and ready to branch out and grow more fruit. Diane, At times I can hardly bear it. On the other hand, it is mostly too hot to be out in the garden much, so I might as well be busy doing something worthwhile. It was hardest the first week when vast amounts of plums had to be processed "right now" and I was doing 5 batches a day. Now that I'm down to 2 to 4 batches per day, it seems so much easier. We won't even talk about how many canning jars, or how much pectin or sugar we've purchased. Let's just say that if you walk into any Wal-Mart or grocery store, or Lowe's, or TSC, in southern OK or in north-central Texas and discover they're out of pectin or jelly jars, it is all my fault. At least this winter, when it is time to make up gift bags for the folks who work for Tim, and for the other supervisors in his division who work alongside him, I know one thing that will be in all the bags....plum jelly. We do about 100 bags for that bunch of folks, so I'm always delighted when I have something yummy from the garden to put into the bags. (In a bad garden year, they get baked goods.) That's when the canning pays off the most....when you can do some of your Christmas shopping in the root cellar! I love canning, I really do, but I like having a little more flexibility in the canning schedule than I've had lately. If I try to sleep instead of staying up late canning, I wake up at 2 or 3 a.m., tossing and turning and worrying that the fruit is piling up on the table and not getting 'done'. The best solution is to get up, can 2 or 3 batches, and go back to sleep around sunrise. So, right now I also have the sleeping habits of a hamster. Marcy, It's been at least a decade since we planted the trees, but as best as I can remember, Plum Tree #1 is Bruce, Plum Tree #2 is Ozark Premier and the Peach Tree is Ranger. Plum Tree #3 is a native Mexican Plum transplanted from the back forty to up front by the house, and I can harvest it for jelly-making any year, but I leave the fruit for the wild things if our other trees perform well. Other peach trees that do exceptionally well in our part of Oklahoma are Harvester, Redskin and Denman. I want to plant more fruit trees, and I want to figure out their ripening dates CAREFULLY to spread the harvest (and processing) out over a longer period of time. We had a good blackberry planting for about 5 years, but gradually the Johnson Grass and drought defeated it. I want to plant them again, but in a better location, and in one where the Johnson Grass seems to have been successfully eradicated. (I had the original blackberry patch too far from the house to water and in our worst clay soil that remains overrun with Johnson Grass. Live and learn. I'll do better this time.) We do have native dewberries, but we eat them as fast as we pick them since they are so small. Lynn, OOHHHH YES! Blueberries always count. Last week, using purchased blueberries, I made Blueberry-Lime Jam and Blueberry Jam. I cannot grow blueberries here. Even if I put them in containers with a good acidic mix, our water is highly alkaline (it generally tests at a pH of 8.2) so it would be a constant problem. I think I'll just keep buying them. We spent a couple of hours at Central Market in Southlake, Texas, which is my version of going to Disneyworld. I was astonished to see Organic Peaches for $4.99 a pound. Honestly now, I love peaches and I truly appreciate the extra effort it takes to grow organic, but how many could we afford to buy at that price? Suddenly, our little ratty-looking tree is a goldmine. Still, it is badly infested with borers, and it is coming down this fall or winter. We'll plant another one to replace it, but in a better location since the borers already found that spot. One of my favorite tree sources for fruit trees is Womack Nursery in DeLeon, Texas. Growing up in Texas, we always had Womack's trees. I'm going to work on a list of what I want from them and order it this fall for winter delivery. They start shipping again in December. I've linked their website in case y'all want to browse it and drool over their many wonderful varieties. They sell pecan trees too! In a few minutes I'm off to the kitchen to make a batch of .....Apple Pie Jam. I know. I'm losing my mind. I'm canning something that isn't peaches or plums, although they both are sitting there on the table waiting for their turn. The Police Chief, who is Tim's ultimate boss, was mentioning on Friday how much he loves the Apple Pie Jam, so I thought I'd make two batches of it just for him and Tim can take it to him at work on Tues. or Wed. He's a great guy, Tim's always enjoyed working for him, and I like the idea of surprising him with a lot of Apple Pie Jam at once. Dawn

Bellsmom, Ice cream freezers are a pretty mature technology, and Cuisinart isn't likely to turn belly up during your warranty period, so why not? :) I like that the 100 has the different paddles, though I don't know how big a difference it makes. I donated counter space that wasn't all that useful anyway to mine, but I wish it did a magic appear/disappear act. :) Yours should be fine in the pantry if you have a solid counter and a plug. It's sure to vibrate a lot and needs some clear space for the circulation of warm air (i.e., not right up against your foodstuffs because they want cool pantry, and a freezer will warm it up). Those are the biggest problems with putting it in the pantry. Do you have a laundry room where you could put it? Maybe keep a cloth over it when not in use to keep away lint, etc. Or even a protected porch? The lack of water shouldn't be a big issue because of the removable bowl. You can take all the main parts to the sink for cleaning (maybe keep a little dishpan with the machine to dump them in, and just bring a sponge or rag and a small bowl (or the dishpan) of water to the machine for wiping it down. Kids love making frozen treats, and it's also a great way to teach them about what's in what they're eating. Be really honest with yourself, however. Do you really want to be carrying the ingredients back and forth? And the clean-up? Would you rather have it on the kitchen counter? Would giving up freezer space be no issue because you'd be using the space you usually fill with bought ice cream for the bowl of a non-freezer model? Will you use it more if it's just ready to go? Will you use it less if you have to unearth the bowl from a pile of stuff in the freezer? I know the arias are beautiful, but imagine yourself doing the conducting. Read through the instructions online and imagine yourself doing the work. See which model you'd really rather have to fit into your real life and way of doing things, and your particular cooking setup. You're already well informed. That's the next good step to making a choice.