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Stacey, what a great man he was. I would love to come across someone like that here locally. I would so love for you to take a picture of your garden and put it as your avatar so we could get a glimpse of it.
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LOL!! It is a sad day for our country for sure and without debating politics, I hope to take the irises with us when we move to Idaho...a very republician state....but Agricultural check point like we have here coming into California. Eh!!!
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Hi Sharyn! That is good news-Iris can be so pretty-I just love it when nature takes care of most of the gardening.
In one planter there is narcissus growing again this year-forgot they were even there.
I may not be able to take any plants with me if I immigrate to Canada.
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Send, surprise!!! I have a few irises growing from the bulbs I planted last autumn!! I am surprised. The bare root rhizomes are thriving, will probably not grow much taller now until spring, but am pleased with how they are progressing. While bare root rhizomes are more expensive to purchase, I recommend it if possible to anyone wanting to have an iris garden of their color choice.

The orchid is doing great, the flowering stem is coming along with little tiny buds that will hopefully grow to beautiful flowers in the coming weeks.

Our weather here is still quite warm with 70's during the day....this blows me away really as I remember growing up how we would be shrouded in fog with high 50's temps after the first rain.
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CW, oh, I'm all too aware. Decided against replacing dead dogwood (in front yard) in Fall, instead hoping for a "for sure" thriver next Spring. I don't know how to start and stop the gardening according to the seasons around here -- that's much of the problem. My neighbor lady's got it all on lock. She gets cuttings of flowering perennials that do well around here, plants a couple, a few years later she has a more than she can handle - all for free - and they're no-maintenance. I'm watching her, learning.

I killed several small rose bushes the past few years that I think I should have put in pots and brought inside for over-winter... and they would've lived.

So... really... I'm on this thread now in preparation of my next gardening faux pas. Instead of screwing up and killing things, I'll be asking for input. ;-)
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There's always micro greens under glass on a sunny window sill? Seize the day, Ali!
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Sweetie, in case you haven't noticed winter is approaching and you are in Chicago, not a lot of gardening going to be going on for a while lol !
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I want to be a better gardener, so I'm posting here so I can follow the thread.
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One year, I was out driving and noticed this yard, filled with Gorgeous Dahlia's, and I stopped by to admire. There was a man outside tending to his garden and we got to talking. It turned out that he was the President of our local Dahlia Association and at the end of every growing year, he sold off his tubers produced by this year's flower crop. He was quite organized about it, had an order sheet and everything, and I bought about 12 tubers (and so nice to be able to actually see the ones that I liked and wanted), to be retrieved in the spring. So the next Spring, I recieved them, planted them, and being an amateur, most of them were lost from the slugs that Loved their tender shoots! Waaaa! So, lesson learned, and I've since bought several more from him, and I just Love those mass producing plants! We don't dig them up, as our winters aren't to cold, usually, and we still have about 8 in our garden, now 10 or so years since we originally planted them. We do dig them up in the spring and thin out the and give away the new tubers. We don't have room for more in our already overpopulated gardens. The man has now passed away, but Wow, he had the most Amazing garden!
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We do have blackbirds, but no thrushes or mistlethrushes; and the hedgehog who helpfully dealt with most of the slugs seems to have decamped before he got round to the snails. I've got sharp grit round a few plants (you can almost hear the little beasties going 'eek! Ow! Ootch!" but the grit didn't save that dahlia) but the Fullers' Earth and the sheep wool barriers I got conned into buying were worse than useless. I won't use slug pellets but boy! - is it tempting sometimes!

I was chatting to the Chaplain the other day when suddenly we heard a brief, high-pitched squeak and a zoom of wings, and he said "wow! Was that a merlin?"

So we may have had mice, too. But not now we haven't.
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CM, are there any bird eating snails in your yard?

I'm sure you probably know that their underbodies are sensitive to sharp objects, and that surrounding beds with stones can be a preventative measure. Those who succumb would probably just quietly fade away behind any stone borders that you could erect to prevent the rapping librarian to be cross with you.

(Your comment reminded me of Poe and his rapping Raven.)
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Grump! I won't mind a bit if the population plummets - I spent most of this summer causing my thriving snail community to "plummet" over the high stone wall between my garden and the library, until one of the librarians caught me in mid-throw and rapped crossly on the window.

After that I put them in a bucket and took them down to the river, but evidently rumours that ducks and geese love them are groundless, sigh.
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Fifty years hence... due to the escape into the environment of mutant, "lefty" snails the population of snails in the environment has plummeted dramatically, causing unforeseen environmental chaos...
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🐌
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Here is a story to cheer everyone up. It was first reported as a lost cause a couple of weeks ago, but thanks to the internet...

"Suitors come out of their shell for the lovelorn snail.

It was thought to be condemned to a loveless existence after being born with a one-in-a-million anatomical abnormality.

But now Cupid's arrow has found Jeremy the garden snail after a global campaign to find it a mate elicited two suitors.

To mate, snails - all of which are hermaphrodites - slide past each other while facing the same direction so that their genitalia meet.

However, due to a rare genetic mutation that means its shell spirals anticlockwise, and therefore everything was on the wrong side, it was never going to happen for [Jeremy]. Angus Davison, at the University of Nottingham, wanted to learn about the genetics of left-sidedness, or 'sinistral mutation', and appealed for a partner for Jeremy so the offspring could be studied.

Two snail enthusiasts responded to say they had found fellow sinistral mutants, and now Jeremy is in Ipswich with one suitor, "Lefty," while he awaits the arrival of another from Mallorca. Ms Melton, snail enthusiast and Lefty's keeper, reported "flirting of the snail kind."

Next in line is Tomeu, found by snail farmer and [gulp! - Ed.] restaurateur Miguel Angel Salom in Mallorca. Rescued from the kitchen, Tomeu is now on its way to Britain."


Half of me thinks not more flaming snails! And the other half goes awwwwwwww
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Linda, I think that is great idea for your granddaughter!!!
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Every year, I plant seeds from beans that were grown by my granddaughter's maternal gma, now passed. I'm hoping to grow some every year so that when my GD has her own garden, she'll have viable seeds originally grown by her gma.
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I don't have major issues with hybrids - I think in many cases, the plants are good ones. But I also am grateful for people like Seed Savers Exchange for preserving the old varieties. It's important to preserve varieties that may contain traits we will need in the future, like drought resistance. I love seeing seeds like Anasazi beans and Glass Gem corn being grown out to where they are widely available.
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I am not denying the Texas corn incident, but all I find is something back in 1968 which says it was an isolated incident. If those of you who know more about it can pm me a link...I am interested in reading about this.

I am excited about my orchid. I know this is an indoor plant or a greenhouse plant...but I am excited that it is growing a blooming stem.
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I am not familiar with the hybrid seed issue in Texas, but you have sparked my curiosity. Gonna research that too.
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Thank you CM and GA, I will research it.
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I'm with Linda. The Texas incident is a good reason why hybrid seed can be unreliable. They might be bred to resist certain diseases, but not others.

I would never rely on hybrid seed for vegetables that I absolutely have to have.

Sharyn, research natural methods to control white flies. Organic neem oil might be one way. If you're planting the cosmos in the same area and they repeatedly are attacked by white flies, try another area. That's one thing that organic gardeners do is rotate their crops.
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My trio of infallible, long blooming annuals: cosmos, zinnias and marigolds. Bonus that they are all easy to save seeds from because I am cheap! It is fortunate that I favour a more naturalized garden plan because they do tend to over grow, I haven't been able to walk the sidewalk from deck to shed because the plants got so big they spread across. They are still looking lovey too, at least from a distance, but any day now there will be snow or a killer frost and I will have to get to work tidying up.
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French marigold, apparently - tagetes patula, to distinguish it from the African marigold - deters whitefly. Is it whitefly that's the problem, or just small flies that are white? Might be worth a try next season, perhaps, anyway.

Of course, that doesn't help if you can't take marigolds at any price. I know people are always yakking on about how useful they are but I must admit I can live without them.

I've tried cosmos before without success. This year I saw an especially pretty variety and decided to give it a go. Double flowered frilly white jobs, supposed to be eighteen inches tall. Well! They're currently four feet tall, they've taken over half the bed, they're not only still flowering they're still budding, and although they are indeed just as pretty as the packet said they would be, and the dill-like foliage is lovely, they've been at it for nearly three months and I have discovered that you can get quite tired of even the loveliest flowers. Especially when you are anxious to start digging in compost and dividing your perennials and rearranging your borders and they're in the WAY...
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What about companion planting, Sharyn? I haven't checked, but there are usually some plants you can grow alongside that flower slightly early that the insects won't like, or that prevent them from scenting the ones they attack.
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Linda, I love cosmos but every time I plant the seeds, they are attacked by white flies. I have not found a why to control the white fly issue even though cosmos are very easy to grow from seed.
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If memory serves me, there was a situation in Texas many years ago where the corn farmers all planted seeds from the same strain of hybrid. Disease hit and they all lost their crops. I like using my own seed for the simple reason that the plants are stronger and bigger because they're acclimated to my climate etc. I have a cosmos plant taller than I am....third year volunteer. Lettuce bolts later.
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It is not exactly GMOs themselves that effect pollinators, it is the increased use of neonicotinoids and herbicides such as Roundup on GMO crops. And it is not the GMOs that are threatening biodiversity in and of themselves, it is the fact that farmers around the world are abandoning older seed strains and almost exclusively planting GMOs, which offer better disease/drought/insect resistance and thus higher yields.
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There are also concerns about how GMOs affect pollinators. Some long term effects haven't yet been identified.
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You are correct CM....that is why the company I worked for had a seed library with packets of hybrid seeds for growers. The search goes on for new hybrids each growing season, sending the seeds to Australia in our autumn so they can grow them out for further testing during their spring/summer. 2 years of research in one year...basically.Once these hybrids are approved for the grower to use in their fields, they are mass produced by the acreage, stored and available to the grower until the next hybrid is approved.

GMO's causes much concerns about it affecting our own DNA, leading to the wide spread problems we see now such as dementia, cancer, birth defects. I admit I am not educated or knowledgeable enough to understand it in the full context, but...I am concerned enough that when I can find organic, I buy it.
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