lavender

You're welcome. Hope it goes well.

I don't think that sounds like very much but you can always add more in the spring when you see what you need to fill in space, color and bloom time. Lilies should go about a foot apart. They will make clumps but it will be 3 or 4 years maybe more before you have to divide them. Gloriosa daisies should be planted about 8 inches apart. Stella d'oros go about a foot apart. It will take about 4 years before you need to divide. Plant the crocus, hyacinths and tulips in clumps of 2-4 bulbs with the width of one bulb between them. The thing that will spread fastest is the black-eyed Susan give it at least 36 inches if it is one of the standard sized ones.

Glads supposedly aren't hardy around here but I've had them come back year after year if they are dug in deep enough and have good drainage. Then one year they disappeared. I actually had some forgotten pineapple lilies come back one year and they are tropical. You just never know.

Dahlias aren't hardy so you did the right thing by bringing them in. In the spring after all danger of frost and when the soil has warmed up, put each tuber in the ground about 5-6 inches deep with the eyes pointed up. You can dig deeper and fill the bottom of the hole with some good compost and add a handful of bone meal. Make sure the ground is not soaking wet as dahlias are prone to rotting. A foot apart sounds good to me for average size dahlias. You can go closer for smaller varieties and up to 2 feet for the really big ones.

Good luck!

I know people who have used the mushroom compost and are quite happy with it. It is mainly used for texturing the soil like any compost. The nutritive content isn't high. You can put bulbs in until the ground freezes but now would be a good time. I hear it is going to get cold and rainy next week.

Sorry, I meant to say that American chestnut trees do not produce female and male flowers on seperate trees (dioecious trees). There are definitly trees that do, the ginko is one of them.

I don't think that there are trees that just produce female flowers but cross pollination will make your trees more fertile. There are still chestnuts around here that have sprouted from the stumps of the ones that were done in by the blight. If you have two that sprouted from seed you have something much rarer. You might be interested in sending these people some samples for identification. http://www.acf.org/ I don't think there is a charge for it..

Parsley is a biennial. It will come back but it goes to seed the second year. You don't get much in the way of leaf growth from it. Dill is an annual at least in our area. The plant won't come back but it reseeds for many people. (Not me!) :'(

You're welcome, someone might as well benefit from all my mistakes.

Good luck with it!

I did soup like that this year. I had tons of cabbage so I made the stuffed cabbage soup and canned everything but the rice. I'll put that in when I use it. I usually do vegetable soup that way at the end of the season. All the odds and ends of veggies go in and I add meat or whatever when I open it. This year I had to toss the whole batch. Something got into it that was so bitter it ruined the whole kettle of soup.

This is not the world's greatest reference but all I could find. When you plant a privacy screen or windbreak the idea is to have the trees grow into each other. Blue spruce doesn't grow very fast so maybe that is why they suggest putting them so close together. http://www.trees-online.com/types_of_trees/blue_spruce.shtml This is a little better http://www.ext.vt.edu/pubs/envirohort/426-712/426-712.html

You have the makings of a very nice perennial border. First of all August flame lilies are probably Gloriosa superba (that is what I get when I google it) which are not hardy around here. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gloriosa_(plant) They seem to be fairly tropical so I don't know about them making it through our winter. You could try growing them and lifting them in the fall. Or maybe they are something else. The black-eyed susans are going to get to be 2-3 feet tall and bloom in August-September. They will make a large clump. You might stick them to one end of your border. Gloriosa daisies are the same genus and species as black-eyed Susan's but come in different shades or rust and yellow. Some have a green center. They get to be about 2-3 feet tall. Both of these are very hearty and could go near the back of your border. The Stella d'oros are fairly short, start blooming in mid summer and will rebloom. They only get a little over a foot tall and make a nice edging for a border. Magic lilies are Lycoris. They are the ones that put up flowers from the ground very late in the season with no leaves. The leaves come after the flowers are done blooming. I'm not sure how hardy they are around here but I have seen them. You might want to mulch them. I'd plant them as a cluster. I'm not sure what your "lilies" are. If they are daylilies you certainly have enough room in a 22' border for all of them. Daylilies will get tall flowering stems but the foliage is usually not too high. You are kind of heavy on the yellow shades here and on plants that don't bloom until mid summer or later. Maybe you could get a few bulbs for spring. Some veronica might be nice to add a touch of blue/purple when these are blooming. Liatris or gayfeathers are a good plant around here. You might want some plants that bloom earlier in the summer and in spring. Borders are an ongoing thing. You will be adding and subtracting plants for years. Don't forget small shrubs like spirea or some interesting evergreens to anchor your border. This perennial selector might give you some ideas of what you might need when you find places you want fill in with specific colored flowers that bloom at a certain time. http://www.rydersranch.ca/perennial_border.html

I heard a good one today. Cut the tops off 20 Roma type tomatoes and split them down the middle. Toss them with coarse salt and olive oil. Spread them on a cookie sheet and dry them in a 200 degree oven for 8 hours or overnight. Layer them with large leaf basil in a quart jar. Cover with olive oil and store in the refrigerator. Garlic optional. I'm going to try it.

I picked up two from a sale rack last year. There were no tags. On the way home I dropped one off at a friend's house. I had a sneaking suspicion that it was a passion vine and when mine bloomed it confirmed it. Friend says hers is blooming away. Mine is a mess.

Six feet is recommended for a screen.

Do apples grow well that far south?

I know people who use them in pies but it doesn't sound very appetizing to me. I passed on trying a piece.

I use the pressure canner for everything even tomatoes, apple sauce and pickled beets. It is so much easier than dealing with the big pots of water. Never hurry the cooling down process in any way; don't even remove it from the burner after the heat is turned off. I learned this the hard way in unsealed jars and leaking contents.

I did the blender thing one year and had orange tomato sauce. Still haven't figured that one out. I canned some stuffed cabbage soup a few weeks ago. Had 10 pound cabbages in large numbers. I put in everything but the rice. I'm curious to see how it comes out. I'll put the rice in when I use it. I thought it would make it too thick to seal if I tried canning it with the rice in. Also did tomato, tomato puree, beets and pickled cauliflower. I freeze most things these days.

Wow! Yours did a lot better than mine which is still trying to recover from a bad bout of mealy bug. I've never tired rooting them but I'd say take some actively growing shoots with 3 or 4 leaf nodes. Take the leaves off the first node and stick it into something that is sterile (potting soil, vermiculite). Do this in a container like the ones that you get take home in with the clear plastic lids. Water it and put the lid on. Keep it in good light but not in the sun. It will probably root since the plant is in such active growth and this method works for most things. Just for the heck of it put some in water. A lot of things will root in water. Let me know what works. I might try mine.

Pick your tomatoes from a ladder! Regular tomatoes, the indeterminate ones, can get fairly tall if they are staked and encouraged to grow upright. In the hydroponic green houses they get about 7 or 8 feet.

The moonflower seeds are listed as seeds that have to be "stratified" or subjected to a cold period before they germinate. Anyone who has grown them knows that they will sprout in the pot or ground the same year or even next year without being subjected to cold. They will often come back the next year even if you do nothing or just scatter them in the fall as tipcat says. All I can say for sure is that fresh seed from your own plant will germinate better than bought seed. I usually have small plants in the spring if anyone wants them.

Yes, plants use a lot of energy setting seed. If you don't want the seed there isn't much point allowing them to expend the energy. We deadhead to encourage more bloom but also to allow the plant to save its energy to produce better roots, tubers and bulbs.