My favorite plant is my Tiffany fragrant rose bush. I will do a seed post on the exchange. Hope others will participate so we can start swapping locally, in LA and MISS.

Best,
Quiltingfox

I am recently moved to LA this year from Miami, FL. I would love to join a plant support group here on this site. I have questions about growing potatoes here. Mine seem to do so poorly and never get to the browning stage. I dig them up when the plant keels over, but the potatoes are small and sparse. Using compost with sand, river water, with partial shade in the morning. Any ideas appreciated!

I haven't been involved in growing potatoes since I was a child. Mainly, I remember the days we dug the potatoes. I know the field was NOT shaded!!!! However, I can check around for some info.

Where are you in LA, generally? (Asking to get an idea of the terrain and soil.) When are you planting potatoes? What type potato are you planting?

Hi, I'm late to the party. Grow antique roses, daylilies, and most things in between. Seems that whatever happens to be in bloom is my favorite for the moment. I live in Ponchatoula. I start cuttings of the roses and hybridize my daylilies. Right now in this heat I have a bumper crop of weeds.

hi to all,i to wish this part of GW forums would take off.i kinda hang on floida and texas where there is more action.we in louisiana need to stick together.i live in carlyss,just south of sulphur...anyone near give me a holler.best to all of you,patricia

It's good to see some activity. I won't be around much for a while. However, I will check in every now and then. My son was in a serious accident on the 13th. He has made remarkable improvements in the last couple of days. He has always been my gardening partner. My plants are suffering right now. Neither one of us is available to care for them.

I live in Zachary, just north of Baton Rouge. However, I grew up in the northeast corner of St. Helena Parish, actually near Kentwood.

I would love to find more Louisiana gardeners here. I am just NE of New Orleans. I have been checking this forum for a while and was also disappointed that there weren't more LA/MS ppl here.

hi good to hear from some more louisiana gardeners. I'm fairly new to gardening but it has become a real passion for me. i love going to swap meets and garden seminars as well. i'm especially looking forward to the fall flower and garden fest coming up in october. if any of you have not heard about it let me tell you it is fantastic. 2 days of gardening tours and seminars and it's all free. The mississippi state university ag dept puts it on every year and it's a great place to meet other people that are just as hooked on gardening as i am. i'd love to chat about your gardening triumphs and disappointments. i'm really fighting this heat and with no rain on top of that it has been a struggle keeping everything alive. i'm mostly into perennials but also like annuals for fillers. Some of my favorites and the ones i've had success with are salvias,coneflowers, angles trumpet, datura, butterfly bushes, lantanas, daylilies and such. well thanks for letting me ramble and i hope this thread keeps going.

Please tell more about fall garden fests and tours, and MSU and LSU events and any others.
I'm in the Tupelo area, originally from New Orleans/St. Bernard.

I want to join.LOL :o) I have been a LA gardener from birth.:o) My grandmother had a whole green hand and infected my sisters and me as childeren. Now our favorite pasttime is to trade with each other and brag who can grow certain things better then the other.:o). Love to grow old southern favorites and trees, Just started a water garden also. The heat is about to kill me on my water bill. Wish it would rain. Look forward to getting to know more people around here.
Pattie

http://s188.photobucket.com/albums/z308/urraymcbdz/plants/
http://s188.photobucket.com/albums/z308/urraymcbdz/PondJuly2008/

Glad to see this post is very active. I have just recently started collecting succulents and am having fun with it as container gardening on my porch. We finally got rain this week which was much needed.

Best to you,
quiltingfox

Wish we would get some rain. Edwourdo(?) has just given us a few clouds. At least it didn't reach the hundreds
Pattie

I just moved to Louisiana from Vermont--talk about culture shock, LOL. I'm thrilled to be here and see all the things I can grow now. I don't even know where to start. I'm in NE LA...quite a ways from most of you.

Hey, Kim, sounds like you could be in my neck of the woods.
:o) I'm in Doyline which is just outside the Bossier area.
Pattie

louisianagal the fall flower and garden fest is just south of jackson mississippi. This is a wonderful show were you get to see some of the latest and greatest in perennials, annuals, vegetables, ornamental grasses etc.. there is a web site just google fall flower and garden fest and they will have the date for this year. they are usually a little late in putting out the seminar schedule but they should post it in the near future. I can't tell you how much i enjoy this fest. They always have really knowledgeable speakers. Another great thing is that most of the new plants you see growing in the test gardens are also for sale in the plant vendors section. there are usually at least 20 plant vendors with excellent prices.
i have gone for the past 5 years and look forward to it each year.

thanks for the info on jackson ms. maybe i'll get to go this year.

Yea! Finally some people to talk to that garden in Louisiana. I know there are a ton of gardeners in LA but most of them are computer illiterate I think ;). I am a young gardener (22 yo) and it is quite rare to find someone my age to talk about gardening with.

I just went to Lowes today and stocked up. They have really good prices right now. I got a bougainvillea vine, a hibiscus shrub, an exacum (never heard or seen one, but it was so beautiful that I had to pick one up) and a creole tomato plant. I'm sure that planting a tomato this late in the season is just hoping but I figured that since our summers are so long that I can at least get a couple tomatoes out of it.

A quick question...I live in a garden home, so all I can do is container plants. What fall/winter vegetables can I plant?

Also for all those in the BR area, Blue Bayou Water Park has a huge hibiscus sale coming up in September. They sell their plants for $5 each. Hibiscus hates being transplanted but it can be done. I got two last year and one survived and is starting to put out a lot of blooms.

gtuccil, I used to live in LA for 48 yrs. If you plant right now, you should get a tomato crop in before frost. Check out LSU cooperative extension service or LSU Agriculture or Baton Rouge Master Gardeners. You will find a bunch of info and should be able to find timetables for planting seeds or transplants for every season's crops. Here in north MS we can plant lima beans, summer squash still and getting ready for broccoli, lettuce, and the like. You are further south, so it might be too soon to plant the cool season crops. There is a book by Dan Gill (he used to be on the radio each Saturday morning) on month-by-month gardening and it tells you what to do each month for veg, shrubs, annuals, bulbs, perennials, etc.
Laurie - LSU '79 and '91

I pass Blue Bayou every day during the week -- actually twice a day. They are beginning to set out the pots for the hibiscus sale. If I remember correctly, they were $5 each or 5 for $20 last year. I missed the sale then but hope to make it this year!

gtuccil-I did lettuces in the spring in containers, you should be able to do the same in fall. All of my herbs are in containers (basil, sage, thyme, rosemary) and some of them have survived the heat! I've had luck with peppers, tomatoes and greens in containers. I haven't tried it but I'm told small varieties of okra can do well in pots. I have a 1/2 in ground, 1/2 in pots postage stamp sized garden in New Orleans. I water the pots and leave the ground to nature...it's worked out pretty well. I have roses (knockout and an unknown miniature) in pots that have done well for over a year. I even have a confederate jasmine in a pot.

Hello mrskjun,

I have a daylily question for you. I have several day lilies I inherited from my mother when she passed away. One produces new plants from the flower stalks. Any idea what the variety. By the way I live at 1st and Highland.

Dan McGehee
Ponchatoula, LA

does naybody grow cassia aka candlestick bush in the shreveport bossier area? i bought one last weekend at the bonnie and clyde trade days and was wondering how to over winter? the vendor i bought it from said it would come back but i was wondering if it should be cut back to the ground after frost. Everyting on the web says it's tropical and should be treated as an annual. the plant vendor assured me she had several and they come back every year. i'm a little confused. any help would be appreciated.

Hi Dan, I'm over on E. Oak St. Those proliferations can form on the stalks of any daylily. Just free daylilies, plant them and they will grow. I noticed a few on one of mine that I have to get out and plant.

livinlarge, I planted a candlestick bush last year, it froze to the ground but came right back this spring. Maybe a nice mound of mulch would help. I didn't even do that.

May I first suggest for all LA/MS gardeners to start up a new subject/thread with some of these topics, so we can keep this forum active. I'm sure there are several of us that check regularly for new topics and would love to get this active again. Second, to LIVINLARGE, you are in zone 8, north LA, so the potential is there for a big freeze every few years. They are hardy in zones 8-11, so that tells you they like a warmer clime. When I lived south of New Orleans in zone 9b, such plants lived a good while, but once every 10 yrs or so, we'd get a hard freeze, like in the teens, and some of our usual flora would die. I agree about the mulch, that may protect it even in a hard freeze. Growing it in a protected microclimate might also help. In any case, enjoy it while you have it, you may have it forever, the older it gets and more established, the better it will tolerate changes in temps, usually. Happy Gardening!
Laurie aka Louisianagal now in Mississippi

I'm so excited to see all the new posts since I was last here.!

Louisianagal I was from St. Bernard also in St. Tammany now

I am in zone 8b..my fovorite is Pampas grass, cane, lantana, cashmere boquet, rose of sharon, etc. Easy to care for, plant them and forget them.
I do have a veggie garden too. I use the square foot method. My favorite are yellow squash, peppers, onions, tomatoes and bush beans.

Here is a link that might be useful: GARDENING ON THE GULF COAST

i'm glad to see posting again too ...

Hello, I an new to this site and to gardening. I am trying to do beds in front of my home. I get west sun all day. I was thinking of doing knockout rose as a hedge across the house. Would this work...with west sun? If so, how do I plant? What spacing to create a hedge?
Thank you for any advice

Yes you can do knockout roses. My advice would be to make the bed area big enough, meaning deep enough. The roses can get pretty big, probably 4x4 or bigger, although they are easy to keep trimmed if you want them a little shorter. The best way to trim them is to just snip off the faded flower clusters plus some of the foliage every couple weeks. They will take the sun. Mulch them and water freely the first year. If you want them very thick together as a tight hedge I guess you could plant them 2 ft apart, but you can certainly space them abuot 3 ft apart and they will fill in pretty well with mulch in between. I think you will really enjoy them. I have a very big knockout rose garden (red) in the middle of my backyard with a sundial in the middle (up on blocks becoz the roses get too big). My mom has some across the front of her porch.

Just joined this forum. SO happy about this. I try to grow every vegetable i have ever tasted and liked. Im a new gardener started this year. Looking for those who live in Central Miss, who try to grow tropicals like papaya etc... just found out about tradeswindsfruitstore.com. Also would like to Grow Year around-Looking for those who have done this before. I have mine charts planned out but their are some holes... Please help thx

and now im addicted to growing tropical plants... havent gotten my seeds yet but will soon!

I'm in Baton Rouge, learned the ropes fast on insects, bothe beneficial and the crop destroyers! Plenty of gardens. Pictured here is a starter veggie garden. In this one I have pumpkins, watermelons, acorn squash, potatoes, sweet potatoes, carrots, sweet peas, snow peas, green beans, wax beans, sunflowers, artichokes, radishes, jubilee tomatoes, homestead tomatoes and cpl dozen pots seeding the next round. (Three rounds so far and we are only in July ;-) ) I have 2 other gardens dedicated to veggies & herbs, fig trees, grapefruit, satuma orange, kumquats and Loquats. There are another 6 gardens for flowers and tropicals. Even with a few pest attacks all the gardens have been producing well enough to feed us 6 and have plenty to share. I am working on timing larger crops to sell locally. Once timed right I'll get licensed (fairly priced down south here!) And be able to share my goodies! I am happy to share any info about these plants I've had or take recommendations on growing unique items year round (I have a temp controlled space too) but get bored with potted seasonal veggies from a market.

Sounds good Angelisci. I hope to have mine set up like that eventually. I just started gardening this year. Pictured is a few of my crops, with a newspaper and card board experiment. As you can see i have a major grass problem, but will get rid of that very soon. Im in Central Mississippi. I am wondering do you garden year round? Also what is this license you were mentioning?????

I do garden year round. Last winters lettece, broccoli,cabbages, spinach & peppers. (The pictured garden was put in this year - can't wait to fill it up with all sorts of stuff! )

I had put an ad on craigslist to clean up/trim some Sago palms last year around the area for $20 and the pups lol got TONS of calls (guess people don't enjoy fighting the Sagos for pups or pruning) sooooo....I took the extra pups, potted them and offered them to a local nursery for cheap. They wanted them! Then found out I didn't have the permit to sell plants commercially O.o so I looked it up and there's a cpl diff ones but in general $100 or so permits an individual to sell to a business. (Fruit stands may not require this I dunno) figured i'd have to get more organized first to make it worth it. We enjoy a ton of variety and right now. If it'll grow I'll plant it! (Like my peas, everybody laughed n said no way you'll get um in the brutal heat! I have sweet peas and snow peas for my salads-just not many hehe) but realistically that space should have been used for something more productive for the season.

Angel, I'm curious about the first raised bed you posted. How wide is it and how do you manage to access everything in it?

Also question about citrus. I have a Meyer lemon and satsuma. Have fertilized twice this year (late January & late April). Should I do it again this month?

Hi Angelicisi,

Your gardens are beautiful!

I just joined this site and hope to meet other gardeners from my area. I'm on the Louisiana~Mississippi border about 45 miles north of New Orleans.

I hope everyone did ok in the Issac storm last week. We did ok, the gardens were thrashed worse than I imagined. I have been replanting veggies found dug/wind whipped outta the ground (not workin well but have saved some things. Lost almost all my tomatos :-( but, family is safe - so I set out to clean up.

Welcome GardenHeart. I'm new here too, nice site, I like that one can locate others growin in the same areas. It is def a unique exp gardening down south!

Natal: the 1st pictured bed is about 8ft wide x 16ft long. Access was limited due the forest behind it! We have woods not 3ft from the rear of this one and the animals thought it was a buffet! Using 4x4's with a "pathway" cut out was like makin them a trail. So we added a major drainage for each of the boxes, eliminated paths (which also helped with water distribution during downpours. Previously we had a lot of good soil wash away thru paths, now it just shifts but stays put) my kids and I have walkways along the edges of each box to access plants and just step over the lower boards to get in and out. The inconvience was well worth the reward in this case. The racoons and moles avoid the wood frame here.
As far as the Citrus, we have a satsuma but it failed to produce this year. We fert with these 6inch stakes once a year and always had a plentiful harvest. (Time release ferts) this year we did it to late and it may have affected that :-( usually in Feb I add the stakes and it wasn't done til April. Shame on me I know. But a few friends have them and they failed to produce too so maybe a weather or bee problem :-( they spray A LOT for mosquitos down here and it can kill bees too...so I dunno