Any green thumbers out there?

Originally Posted by Lucille

Robert your garden is gorgeous and I love your hostas!!

Originally Posted by Dennis Hultman

Extremely beautiful, Robert. Oh, that's what green looks like..

Thank you! The hostas can survive here no problem so they are kind of a staple of Nebraska gardens. I have some cute plants, but they are only good to look at, I'm jealous of everyone having so many food producing plants. It is like you have mini farmer's markets in your own backyards.

Originally Posted by WebSlave

Never heard of a "Darcy". We have a "Dancy", though. Actually this is a weird tree. We bought it and a Pumelo grapefruit a long while back and just stuck the pots between two buildings and pretty much forgot about them. They are still there, with the pots ringing the trunks. Never bother watering or feeding them. The pumelo has never produced fruit, but the Dancy produces every year. Strange thing about the Dancy is that the first several years it produced beautiful looking tangerines, but oh man were they BITTER! A couple of years ago we were talking about cutting it down and digging out the stump to put in a better tasting tangerine, and I guess it heard us. The fruits became 100% better the following year and have been that way ever since. We sure didn't do anything to change it.

We have a bunch of Changsha tangerines (which up till a few minutes ago I thought were called "Changshi") that do really well here. We have a bunch of them growing from seed, and this variety grows true from seed. Most of the plants just started from seeds we spit out while walking around the property eating the tangerines. Connie has a whole pile of them in pots now out behind the garage. They seem to take a LONG time to bear fruit when grown from seed, though.

Also some Satsumas, but most are rather small still.

Our absolute favorite tangerine is the Ponkan. Best tasting, by far of any of the varieties we have tried.

Connie likes lemons so she has a couple Meyer's and Ponderosas. She's also propagating quite a few of them from seed now.

Dancy is correct.

So a few weeks ago I decided to make some "reaper sauce."
let me tell you... , that is hot! I only tasted a toothpick tip of it and it got me good for a half hour or more.
Gonna have fun with it when my high school and college buddies are in town for the holidays
I cooked it outside and had to wear a respirator to get near the pot to stir it... otherwise it was like being maced in the throat.

Originally Posted by j_dunlavy

had to wear a respirator to get near the pot to stir it... otherwise it was like being maced in the throat.

Okay, there is hot and then there is crazy out of your brains hot. Jalapenos and I aren't friends. Maybe you need to start your own line of "homemade in the USA" Mace products

On a much colder note, I decided to dig up some of may plants to see if I can keep them alive over the winter indoors, kind of like hibernation for plants. Never tried it before, so here goes. Banana plants and a coleus in Nebraska cold.

Originally Posted by Robert Walker

Okay, there is hot and then there is crazy out of your brains hot. Jalapenos and I aren't friends. Maybe you need to start your own line of "homemade in the USA" Mace products

On a much colder note, I decided to dig up some of may plants to see if I can keep them alive over the winter indoors, kind of like hibernation for plants. Never tried it before, so here goes. Banana plants and a coleus in Nebraska cold.

I love spicy food; habaneros, etc; but those reapers are killer. More of a fun side project... fun to watch other people try to eat them! a friend of mine took a small bite of one and cried. He thought he could eat hot...

dormant plants can be tricky with watering; not enough and the root hairs dry up and then the roots rot with the next watering; too much and the roots rot from sitting in cold wet soil.
You have to find that "Goldilocks" amount of watering which can take some practice (and dead plants). Depending on the plant, you may want to go with slightly more water than a cacti or keep them barely moist.

Well if there is that much thinking involved with these plants ... they are already dead then. Ol' Robert can't babysit plants, snakes and real human kids, something is going to get neglected.