This last week has been pretty hectic.... I've been finishing up my raised garden/flower bed, mowing and weeding, planting, cleaning yard, etc the last week, as well as the other nursery stuff.

Hopefully, the cold fronts are done for, as I've got everything out of the greenhouse and don't want to have to put it back. It's suppose to be getting to 80 degrees today. I don't know if it'll ever hit 80, but it's been going from cloudy to sunny off and on the first half of the day, and now it's windy. My Texas Sage, Elder Elms, and Loquats have been falling over in their pots from the wind.

The raised garden bed was a project that I thought of which I estimated would cost around $60. Right now, we're at somewhere around the $150 mark, and it could possibly go as high as $180 before it's done. It's pretty much done, with the exception for some small in-between flowers. The raised bed is 10' x 4', 6" deep and took appx 22 bags of soil to fill in.

I've been messing around with plants for around three years, but this is the first time I've really messed with flowers, for the most part. Of course, we have always had some flowering plants, like redbuds, dogwoods, magnolias, mexican petunias, and a couple others, but with the exception of the petunias, the rest are landscaping trees versus flowering perennials, biennials, or annuals.

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The next project I'm working on is going to be a large wildflower garden, not raised though. I was originally going to buy live plants and separate them by color. You knows, reds and purples on one side, yellows on one, whites and pinks on one, and whatever on the other, but it would be expensive and hard to find that many native flowers live. However, the seeds are easier to find, but they're not separated by colors.

There will pretty much be a walking section, down the middle and to the sides, raised slightly, although the plants themselves will be outside of the walkways and not raised. On the fenceline, I will probably have lilies, iris, maybe some tulips, flame azaleas, mountain laurels, etc.. On the side facing the barn, I've already started planting two species of ruellia (one blue, one with like multiple shades of red and purple.)

The types of wildflowers will be something like:
Flax, Phlox, Primrose, Viola, Poppy, Alyssum, Sweet Pea, Snapdragon, Baby's breath, Dame's Rocket, Foxglove, Dianthus, Wild columbine, Cornflower, Coreopsis, Rose Mallow, Spiderwort, various Sages, Butterfly Weed, Blazing Star, one or more mint species, False Foxglove, Dandelion, Wild Mustard, and more.

This is a huge project to take on, and it could take a whole year or more before it's completed.

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Other than that, I've been gathering a bit more parent stock for the nursery and trying to propagate a few things here and there. The last few things I've bought were two types of oleanders, including a dwarf one.

Other things we're going to propagate this year will be some citrus, some mangoes, hopefully a few more pomegranates before it gets too hot, muscadine grapes, oleanders, various mallows, a shiznit load of mexican petunias and arrowhead vine, probably a few pecans, a few red maples, a few oaks, wax myrtles, crepe myrtles, confederate rose, hopefully a bunch of palm trees, a few carambola (have some sprouting as I type), maybe some dogwoods, a few white mulberries, hopefully a couple more pakistan mulberries, a few japanese persimmons, a few pine trees, a few japanese yews, a bunch of pear trees, a few fig trees, maybe some pampas grass (ornamental, used a lot in arrangements), hopefully a lot of sago palms, a few coral ardesia, umbrella palm, canna lilies, daylilies, iris, various blueberry types, maybe a pineapple guava or two, hopefully a few passion flower vines, a few snakeplants, a few begonias, a few spiderplants, maybe a few jade plants, elder elms, possibly a few althea/rose of sharons, possibly papayas, loquats, a few anna and other apples, and who knows what else?

So, what's this "a few" or "maybe" or "possibly" or "hopefully" business above? I say those for a few reasons. The biggest reason is because #1: I don't have a lot of parent stock built up yet, but three other possible reasons are #2: we already have enough plant stock of that species and #3: some of the plants are just going to be harder to propagate #4: some plants may be hard to overwinter and we may not want to work with them much lol.

A few examples:
#1: Not a lot of parent stock built up - Just around last fall, we got cuttings from two rose of sharon/althea plants. One is a red and the other white. A few didn't make it, and a few did, but they're just starting to come out of their spring growth. Now, I don't even know which is white or which is red, until they start flowering, but there just isn't enough parent stock on them yet to take more cuttings.

Pampas grass.. We planted this last year, and it did pretty much nothing until the last few months, but it's still small. We figure we'll get a plant or two from it this year and hopefully more plants each and every year from it.

The Pakistan mulberry we planted from seed about three years ago, and it was only one of like 2 or 3 that came up out of around 120 seeds. The other plants died after sprouting for some reason. This one hadn't grown a lot until the last two years, but it died to the ground the winter before last but luckily lived through it and regrew a lot before this last winter and is currently growing. With that being said, we've only been able to get two cuttings from it, one that is full rooted, but hopefully will get a few more this year.

It's been about the same with our apple trees. Since we bought the trees to actually use in our own landscape first, before using as nursery stock, I'm mainly taking crossed branches as root stock. Crossed branches are what would normally be pruned off each year in winter. The Anna apple gave us only one plant last year but we are already set for two more in the next month or two. In the coming years, as the trees grow bigger, we'll get more and more. It's like our pear tree... last year, we got around 20 plants from it, although we probably could have gotten 40 or 50, as it's a mature tree.

#2: We already have enough plant stock built up - White mulberries, red maples, and elder elms, we generally have enough right now, although we add new stock off and on year round.

#3: Harder to propagate plants - I've had bad luck rooting grapevines for some reason. Only a small percent have rooted, even with rooting hormone.. Hopefully, I'll figure it out.. Also, the passion flower vines, I'm getting plants by suckers, and so far, my plant has only suckered once.. This year, it should hopefully be more vigorous though. We'll see.

#4: Plants we may not want to work with a lot - One of our large experiments this last year is papayas. Papayas, like mangoes, don't exactly grow this far north. We started out with around 400-500 papaya seedlings last winter, and the greenhouse took its toll on them. Most of the seedlings were pretty small when they died off, but only around 20-30 made it. One or two of the larger ones even died, for some reason. They just seemed to rot at the bottom. Papayas are said to be grown this far north, if overwintered in the greenhouse and then planted in the full sun as soon as the last frost is over, and treated like an annual (meaning when it dies in the winter, it won't come back.) - There is always the possibility that we could have a mild winter and they survive an extra year or two. We'll see though.. It's about time to plant 4 or 5 of mine in the ground. Even if this experiment is semi-successful, it still may not be worth it, although papayas are like $1.38 a pound at our wal-mart right now...one papaya could weigh 3 pounds or more.

Papaya is a fruit that if good, is like the best fruit you can eat, but if bad, one of the worst.. It can be extremely bitter and nasty, or really cantelope-like, juicy, and sweet. Many Hawaiians are said to eat them with their breakfast every day. I like to put them on maybe some unsweetened cereal, kind of like how some people slice bananas on them, and eat it like that, or just by itself. Just don't eat too much!

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Sorry, no video game news eh :/ Hopefully I didn't bore everyone!

As soon as spring break comes along, I am digging into Lost Odyssey for the 360. I need a good rpg...anyways also been checking out streetfighter 4 previews, I can't wait for that. The best was during the interview, the creator said he would love to make another marvel vs capcom game. Part 2 was my favorite fighting game

Seriously man! You write way too much!! Where do you live where your mowing and cutting and digging?

I'm a Floridian, not these tourists and retirees that come to Florida to live the rest of their lives in the sunshine. I live out in the country, not the big cities like jacksonville or gainesville, miami, or daytona.

My area use to be swamp land, but between having 10k worth of dirt hauled in, as well as the city putting in a new drainage system about 10 years ago, much of the land is habitable, although in my new home, I do get the occasional flooding... We still have to get more dirt hauled in to build up the drive way and a few other various places though.

I've only got 3 acres of land, and it's about a quarter acre in which I have my potted plants on right now and another small piece for my greenhouse, although a lot of the parent stock is growing all over my land.

Many people think of Florida as just a place that has oceans, sunshine, and old people. Those things may be fun to some people, but that's not what Florida is about. It's about swamps, natural preserves, pioneers, orange groves, farmers, ranchers, hunters, boiled peanuts, mosquitoes, and women with tattoos for some reason. If you travel along the backroads of almost any of our large cities, you'll see a lot of horse and cattle ranchers, lots of crops from corn to cabbage, lettuce, tobacco, eggplant, tomato, strawberries, watermelon, and more.

Most of the other stuff is just gimmicks, otherwise known as attractions - disney world, epcot, universal, gator world, medieval times, dragstrips, raceways, etc.

I remember going down to sannibel island one time.. Noticed there were no mosquitoes around at all, even though they were everywhere else... We took a boating tour, and the captain said "see that helicopter?" and he said "that's why there are no mosquitoes here."

Apparently, each of the residents of that island have to pay a mosquito service fee, and the helicopter sprayed each and every day, to keep those skeeters out. I don't know which is worse though: mosquitoes or having to breathe in mosquito repellent each and every day. I tend to think the repellent may kill you faster lol, but that's alright... you can live comfortably in the meantime!

Boiled peanuts... I use to have a friend in Michigan, and she came to Florida quite often. I asked her one day if she ever tried boiled peanuts, and she said she never heard of such a thing. She found it hilarious.. A few months later, she came to Florida again and went out of her way to find some, and she said she was hooked since.

I don't know if boiled peanuts are just a Florida thing, probably not, but it definitely is a south thing. Yankees don't know what you're talking about when you mention it. I buy cajun boiled peanuts at the local flea market quite often myself...

I've been to Florida many times (I have family there too)-

I know it's in some ways not different from here just above you. 231 is chock full of genuine southern life from Huntsville to Dothan and beyond.

It's kind of interesting how you don't see many hispanics in Madrid (AL that is) until you cross the border to Campbellton- as soon as you cross the line you see fruit and tree stands, and it looks like a little Latino village, where the speed limit is 40 mph lower than it was a couple of blocks back. And this is all on the way to Panama City.

The "paradise" Florida most people think of is just on the state's perimeter- the outside edges.

It makes total sense why vegetation grows best on Florida's inland. Plenty of rain from the Gulf and Atlantic.

You'd think we'd get a pretty steady amount of rain in Florida, but we actually get pretty unpredictable weather. We go through severe drought at one time and then flooding the next. Last spring, it didn't even rain one time, and we didn't get any good rain until mid summer.

Last winter, it rained probably at least twice per week, and even now, we're getting rain quite often.

Between that and being in lower land than most, we can't grow a lot of things as easily. We pretty much have to grow things that can take drought, lots of rain, sometimes sitting in water for a week or more, ground being saturated even longer.

There are also a lot of plants that will grow up north and should grow here too, according to the USDA zoning maps, but we have late spring freezes... I know spring in northern states it probably still snows, but here in Florida, the weather warms, trees go out of dormancy, and in to growth mode, and then all of a sudden, the temps may go down to the 20s, and they either suffer a lot or die..

I've been trying my best to keep my mayhaw tree alive for awhile, because of the spring before last, we all of a sudden went from probably 78 degrees to 26 degrees. The whole top and middle of the tree died off, and it is coming back from close to the bottom. Mayhaws can generally take 0 degrees in winter and are a native of Georgia swamps. They can be pretty hard to find in retail stores or nurseries and are often mistaken for a crabapple. They are known for making the world's best jelly, although I haven't tried it before.