one gardener to another

Hello everyone and merry christmas! It was a typical Louiaisana day in winter,cool and very wet.I have had about 7 inches of rain this December and my yard is a swamp!I can't plant any thing or clean my yard and it is a mess!The heirloom roses love the cool weather.It has been 25 degreesF so the garden is about dormant.I have about 40 fruit trees that need to be planted but is to wet.I went to Chambles Nursery last week and bought 51 heirloom roses and have them in my cool greenhouse.I have two greenhouses one is 14 feet X 28 feet and the other is 12 feet X 24 feet.My wife is a brugmansia and datura nut an has about twenty kinds and counting.I don't like them because the get tomato hornworms on them and I have a phobia about them.Just got a camera an hope to have pictures soon.Great gardening Rob

G'Day Cowpea123
I left a message for you on the "Seeds Please" site. Have you seen it ?
Regards

Hello Stake!Lets see,my soil is loam over red iron oxcide clay with the loam being about ten to twelve inches deep over the clay.It can be very wet in the winter and dry in th summer.The back of my property is a bit more sandy.I have small old stock pond in the back to.The weather in my area is strange.I have a freeze in the low twenties and the next day it will be 70 degrees.Summers are hot with highs between 90 and 110 degreesF and 100% humidity.Fall is nice but they can be dry.Winters are wet with average lows in th forties but can fall as low as 15 degreesF a couple of days during winter and somtimes it won't get above freezing for twentyfour hours.The low so for this year has been 25 degreesF.Spring is short before summer gets here.We get about 40 inches of rain a year mostly in fall and winter but some summers are wet.So what is your garden like?Do you have a good climate gardening?Great gardening Rob

G'Day
Your heat and dryness wouldn't worry our local plants but the humidity and high rainfall then long periods of cold would, I think. You might be better off with plants from the "High Country" where they have more rainfall than we do and have snow in Winter. Their Summers while not usually as hot as us can get pretty warm. With your high rainfall I would expect you to have plenty of sub soil moisture to see the plants through the dry periods. Most of our plants are experts at finding that deep moisture.
Would someone who has knowledge of the snow country care to comment and help me out as well as helping Cowpea 123.
Re my garden, as stated on the other site, I'm a lousy gardener and would never rate as a "true gardener" I grow plants because I like messing around with them from raising seed to grafting and budding and I reckon my plants should attend to their own house keeping but they don't and every now and then I go mad and chop out the weeds and sweep up the leaves but not too often.
When I was still earning a living I had about 500 or 600 (I never actually counted them) fruit trees & Vines for trial purposes consisting of Apricots, Peaches, Nectarines, Plums, Cherries, Pears (both European and Nashi) about half a dozen Apples, Pistachios, a couple of Loquats, Quinces a Walnut, a few Olives, Grape Vines and sundry rootstock parent plants and a lovely old Mulberry tree that I planted in 1951 when I first started work and it is still there producing fruit and making a mess of any kids that get near it. We also used to have Citrus but a big freeze in 1982 killed them all other than a Cumquat and they were never replaced. When we had the citrus we had fresh fruit all year round but when they died we started with Loquats in October and went through to June with the last Pears and Plums.
Regards

This message was edited Dec 26, 2008 12:22 AM

Hello cowpea. I agree with Stake. You will find a range of Australian plants to suit and those from the higher regions would be more tolerant. Our plants are surprisingly hardy though. They are used to millennia of weather changes. It can be very hot and dry and in an hour can turn very cold at different times of the year.
I would look first at a good native catalogue to see what Australian plants are available in your country.
Sending of seed can be either limited or not allowe according to what the various customs etc say.
Here in the southwest of Victoria, we have very dry summers but can have sudden downpours. Winters have been dryer lately but can get down to below 0 C overnight. Our extremes as, Stake mentioned, don't last as long as yours do. I would look at Callistemon ( bottle brush) , Grevillea , and some of the small flowering gums (eucalypts)
It sounds like you already have quite a garden. I do like the Brugmansia but am cultivating their cousins, Iochromas.
My main interest is in Epiohyllums ( I have around 500) and tall Bearded iris of which I have 200 named varieties. I find these keep me occupied so the main garden fends for itself mostly. The plants are big enough now to survive on what rain they get. My soil is mainly clay based which sets like cement in summer and sticks to your shoes in winter.
Have a good day.
Jean.

Hello Stake and Jean! Wow it sounds like you like fruit!These are the fruit trees that I have-nashi pears- chojuro,shinko,korean giant,niitaka,megietsu-sand pear hybrids kieffer,leconte,pineapple,moonglo,oriente-common pears-sanguinole,warren,magness,ayers,seckle-figs hollier,golden celeste,celeste,brown turkey,black mission,excell,wuhan,smith,king,lsu gold, lsu purple,lsu everbearing,royal vinyard,conadria,adriatic-apple-anna,dorsette gold,fuji,aunt rachel,carolina red june,horse,kinnaird's choice,old fashioned limbertwig,royal limbertwig,bevan's favorite,gala,gold rush,virginia gold,yates-plum-methley-persimmon-fuyu.Plus some I can't remember without going outside to see.It got super cold here 1983.It got down to 5 degreesF.It killed lots of subtrpical trees and shrubs.I have a giant pecan called posidnik.It is huge.I have a eucalyptus which has little smell to it.It grew very fast 17 feet in four years!Jean do you hve iris albicans or iris albicans madonna they bloom in late winter here.What are lochromas? Great gardening Rob

Hello Rob. Between you and Stake , you must have all the fruit trees. Hubby had planted some here long before I came along . There are a couple of apples, a peach, 2 satsuma plum , oops no, one, the other died last year.
umpteen nectarines. the birds have a ball. I usually manage to get the nectarines though as the birds leave them alone until right at the end. in sympathy for me I suppose, after they eat everything else. I do manage a peach or two but the fruit are all small as we cannot spare the water now.
I have developed a liking for pecans and buy a large bag to throw into salads, stir fries etc.
Be careful planting some species of eucalpyts Rob. They can grow very large if they like the place.. They also can become very dangerous , losing large branches. There are numerous reports here of people being killed and injured and cars and property damaged. There are plenty of smaller ones with very colorful flowers.
I only grow the tall bearded iris but I do have a patch of a very pretty small blue winter iris.
Iochromas are cousins of Brugmansias. Very easy to grow and very hard to find over here. The flowers are tubular in colors from white, red, lilac to purple and pink.
Going out now to pull out another large winter flowering wallflower. They get very shabby after a few years and are so easy to replace with new cuttings.
I took one out this morning and replaced it with a small red callistemon.
Happy gardening. Jean. .

It is raining again.Bummer.Can't get anything done.It is to wet.Got some new iris today.They are both rebloomers.Great gardening Rob

Hi Rob you have a great range of fruit trees there ...which ones do you enjoy the most? We had our own plums ...peaches and apricots for christmas ...I have figs, pomagranites, grapes passionfruit, persimmons, mulberries ...apples ...lemons, limes tangerines, grapefruit, manderines,bananas,Buddahs hand citron,Ice Cream bean and crab apples. I like to grow as many home grown foods as possible.
I am crazy about Brugmansias ...we don't have many different ones here but we are working on it ...yes they do get munching critters sometimes but then so do our fruit trees and we still love them don't we? ...^_^ put your wife on sometime to talk angels with me.
My hubby was born in Italy so he adores the figs and the persimmons ...both are just a little sweet for me, what fruit do you enjoy most? I really love my stone fruit!

Hello Chrissy100 and everyone out there!Sun!No rain today hopefully.Wow Chrissy you can grow lots of different fruits!The only common ones we can grow easy without spraying are figs,pears,persimmons,blackberries,mulberries,pomegranates,satsumas,blueberries,mayhaws,muscadines and crabapples.Apples,peaches,plums,nectarines and grapes have to be sprayed.We cannot grow apricots or tender citrus because of the cold.Weather here is so bad for gardening.The low temp.for friday night was 65 degreesF and saturdays was 33F. Plants get very confused.The first daffodils bloomed last week they are very early species types.I have about a hundred heirloom roses and I will list them later.If you would like to see the roses we have go to my wifes trade list.Her DG name is TheRoseGirl.Great gardening Rob

Rob, I envy you all those roses. My roses do well here on little water but I don't have as many as I would like. At last count only about 150. I have mostly floribundas and a couple of David Austins. Very few have names as they were grown from cuttings from friends etc. The few that do have names are those I have bought myself.
My great interest is my epiphyllums and tall bearded irises. What Irises did you get ?
I see rebloomer mentioned about a lot of irises, but here , they never rebloom. My Irises flower in mid spring then grow during summer . By autumn they are looking shabby and most die right down in winter and grow fresh from late winter into spring.
better get off here and do something. Jean

Hello everyone!The irises I got are Bountifull Harvest an Orange Harvest.They are blooming now.It rained again today.Too wet!!!!So how is y'alls weather?Epiphyllums are cool.I used to have a red one that spent the summers hanging in a sweet gum tree and it was beautiful.I forgot to bring it in one night and it was frozen.I also got a weeping Deodar cedar Friday.What a beautiful conifer.I got most of my roses from Chamble's Nursery.Tomorrow I have to stake my seventeen foot eucalyptus that was blown over into another tree by hurricane Gustave.I am going winch it upright and cable it to a heavy post.Hope it lives.Narsissus tazette Early Pearl is blooming.It is a heirloom bulb.I have to go feed my rabbits(I have about 48) so great gardening.Rob

It was sunny to day for a change! Short for time.Great gardening,Rob

Glad you have rain Rob. Nothing here but wind. Chilly wind too.
I have seen a Deodar Cedar. It is on a large property near here. It is on the site of the original homestead . The tree was planted by the first settlers in the area back in the very early 1800s.
Your Irises sound lovely. I often look at all the pretty ones on the Iris threads. We are lucky in having all the Barry Blyth ones here but don't you always want more.
Going out to plant a few more bits and pieces. Not a lot to do in the garden at the moment . Everything has a bit of a rest during summer . getting ready for the autumn flush.
Have a great New Year
Jean.

Hello Jean and everyone else!Happy New Year!I am off from work today and I am going to clean up my rose Border.Lots of work to do.Will post a picture when I get it cleaned up.The weather is windy and cold.The eucalypt staking worked.So how is everyone?How are the gardens growing?Got to go so good gardening,Rob

Hi Ozzies

I have very little to teach you about Proteas, but the Proteas can teach you a thing or two about Cricket!

Cheers,

David

Lol cheers David! HAPPY NEW YEAR ...congratulations!
from the mob in the Australian forum.

lol - I work in the bar of Returned & Service Association which is the same as an Aussie RSL but of course our initials are RSA...
so guess who we were cheering in the cricket.
Actually it took our minds off the Black Caps.
Actually lets not talk about the cricket after all.

Happy new year, Chissie and others down south. Have a look at my trade list, I have some good stuff that is too tender for most of the US

Cheers,

David

David,
Have your moment in glory. Congratulations but I must advise you that we let you win so your confidence would be boosted. We will do the same for the Black Caps in the hope that we can finally get some competition. lol, lol, lol, lol. (seriously though the Proteas are the best team I've seen for a while)
This is a good topic for a gardening forum. After all the Proteas played on a field with willow until stumps.
Cheers
Steve

Hello everyone!Sorry I've been away for awhile because of work.How is the gardens growing?It's late and I have to go.Great gardening,Rob