Brian,

I love hollyhocks, grow a lot of them, and don't have trouble with rust most years, but then I don't have Tulsa's rainfall or humidity, or at least I don't have similar conditions very often.

With hollyhocks, I have found it easier to prevent rust than to "cure" it once the plants have it. Also, I've noticed that the fig-leave hollyhocks (Alcea ficifolia) and single-flowered forms have less trouble with rust than other forms.

I've had the least rust problems with hollyhocks that are in an open area, away from buildings, so that they have better air flow around them. Planting them in soil that has been well-amended with compost helps, and so does spraying preventatively weekly with compost tea or Garrett Juice. In addition, mulching the ground around them helps, and sprinkling a layer of cornmeal on the ground and lightly dusting it onto the plants helps too. Corn meal is a great anti-fungal agent.

Some people use baking soda spray but I have found it to be only moderately effective. Some use a milk spray and some use neem or dust the plants with sulfur. I don't use chemical fungicides but, if I did, I'd probably use clorothalonil (Daconil) if it is labeled for use on hollyhocks. Daconil, though, is more effective as a preventative and is not nearly as effective once fungal symptoms appear.

With roses, it is very, very hard to grow them without black spot although some people do it, albeit with a heavy reliance on chemicals. Most of the chemicals used by rose growers should not be used in an area where food crops are being grown though.

For roses, the organic solutions are about the same as for hollyhock rust and prevention is the key.

In areas where you have any sort of fungal problem, the spores can overwinter on diseased plant litter, so be sure to clean out all the dead plant matter lying on the surface of the beds.

I have a few roses and some years they get black spot and some years they don't. I'm just about "done" with the roses.....feeling somewhat inclined to yank them out and replace them with something that is lower maintenance.

Some of the newer Earth Kind and Knockout roses are supposed to be more resistant to disease, but I haven't planted them myself so can't say if they live up to their billing. I grow David Austin English roses and love their appearance, growth habit and scent, but they still get black spot most springs so I don't love them quite as much as I used to. I also have some old climbing roses on the fence by the butterfly bed, and they get some black spot, but not as much as the David Austin roses do.

After we moved here, I made a deliberate choice to only grow plants that I can maintain organically or with a very, very, very minimal amount of chemical intervention. Thus, my plantings have changed a lot in the 9+ years we've been here, as I remove chemically-dependent prima donnas and plant more native or strongly naturalized plants that can tolerate the conditions here. In the hollyhock world, I grow more and more of the Queeny line every year. Summer Carnival and Blackcurrant Swirl have been relatively rust-free in my garden too. I also grow a lot of malva 'Zebrina', aka French Hollyhock, in areas where I used to grow only hollyhocks. The malva is related to the HHs and has a somewhat similar appearance, but is disease and insect-free, or at least they are here in our garden.

Dawn

Thank you Dawn ... not sure why these got rust ... it appeared after we had our heavy rains and were into the dry period. Up till that point the plants were growing great (Old Barnyard from Wayside) and were a couple feet across. By the time the rust got done I was down to stems and a few leaves. Interestingly enough, these are planted against a chain link fence so there's airflow. Those I had in Atlanta were planted against my house and never had rust ... and Atlanta is wetter than Tulsa when they're not having a drought.

I finally dug them up and put them in pots ... then cut all the leaves off and destroyed them. They grew back somewhat but it was fairly late in the year when I did that ... we'll see what they do this coming year. I have a bunch of seeds from my Mom via my Grandmother so I'll start some of those too and see if they do better.

Roses ... I'm done with them ... gave all mine to my Mom and I'm digging up the two climbers (they planted them in a bad spot) and moving those to her place too.

One thing that did incredibly well were the dahlias. They literally took over the spot they were in and the number and size of the blooms were incredible. When I dug them up I was a bit shocked at how many tubers there were ... and the size of them ... all in one summer. I've never had dahlias grow like that but I did put quite a bit of compost in the bed.

Other than that I'm probably going to stick with assorted dasies, sunflowers, nasturtiums, hibiscus, brugmansias, columbine, yarrow, butterfly weed and some new vines and call it good for next year. Basically because I'm going to concentrate on the veggie beds and fruit trees I'm putting in ... and a pergola I'm going to build for kiwi's. It should be enough to keep me going :-)

Brian,

Well, the one thing we know for sure is that the rust spores had to come from somewhere in order to infest your plants since they don't overwinter in soil. Perhaps someone in your area had either hollyhocks or mallows or something related to them and the spores were blown into your yard and settled on your plants. I think rust spores can survive on seed, but I would have thought Wayside would have used treated seed.

Dahlias have grown better for me here in Oklahoma than they did in Fort Worth, one zone farther south, but the large dinner-plate types still suffer some browning in our August heat. Last year I only grew the ones with smaller flowers, like Bishop's Children and Redskin (or red something), mostly because I was trying to add more purplish-reddish foliage to my beds. In spite of the drought here, they grew incredibly well and were in bloom until November.

I grow mostly the same flowers you do, except for columbine. Because we are generally hotter, drier, and less humid here, I also grow all kinds of zinnias, several kinds of daturas, Texas hummingbird sage, veronica, gomphrena, verbena bonariensis, poppies, larkspur, dianthus and a lot of wildflowers.

Have you grown kiwi before? I don't know anyone here who's has success getting fruit although they are lovely vines.

Dawn

I haven't grown Kiwi before ... and if they don't fruit at least they should look nice :-) I'm only starting with 1 male and 1 female ... the rest of the pergola will be for other vines such as passionflower (BTW ... I had that last year and not a single caterpillar). I'm wondering if the kiwi you mentioned could have been affected by too much heat/sun ... I've been warned about that. I'm planting the on the east side of the house where they'll only get sun till about 1 PM.

I'm trying a variety of new plants and doing as much research as I can to see what might work and where. The people that owned this house appear to have just planted stuff on a whim ... and it was usually invasive, ugly, wrong for where it was planted ... or all three.

Since I've moved in I've removed around 50 trees and shrubs ... from the Japanese Maple that was being baked to death on the west end of the house to shrubs planted a foot from the foundation. They even went and dug up sumac saplings several years ago and planted them in the back. I'm from the north and sumac is just a no-no ... and these were dying so I took all 3 of them down. That's when I discovered they'd planted poison sumac. The resulting blisters were impressive.

I'm trying to get rid of the wisteria they put in 3 different spots. This wasn't the variety with the long trailing blooms ... it has short stubby racemes that were only about 8 inches long and the color was washed out. The original is going to be a bugger ... it has runners all over the one corner of the yard. After getting bit by several spiders while trying to get it under control I decided it had to go. Spiders have their purpose ... but you guys have so dang many brown recluse in OK it's mind boggling. Since I've moved here I've had 3 recluse bites (and some other types but I don't know the species) but I also appear to have some type of immunity or resistence to them ... I don't get the severe reaction most people do. They're painful but usually heal within 10 days and there's been no scarring. They're nasty creatures though.

Brian,

For as long as I can remember, anyone I've known over the years who has tried to grow kiwi has been disappointed, and it didn't matter if it was here in OK in zone 7 or down in Texas in zone 8. The plants just don't like our hot summers. You might have better luck there although y'all still have the heat, but at least you have more moisture there.

It sounds like you've had your hands full fixing your landscape. That poor Japanese maple.....and don't even get me started on shrubs planted a foot from a house! I generally won't plant a shrub closer than 3' and that's too close for the larger shrubs.

We have a long-running black widow/brown recluse thread here somewhere. I only occasionally saw a poisonous spider in Texas, although I was bit on the right hand by a brown recluse spider when I was in my late 20s. It was quite impressive looking (in a bad way) but I didn't react very strongly and healed quickly. By contrast, one of my co-workers was bitten by one a couple of years later and almost died. It abcessed and she eventually had to have skin grafts and missed a couple of months of work.

We had a lot of brown recluse spiders (and scorpions) inside the house the first couple of years after the house was built, but eventually got rid of all of them. (I hope.) We still have a lot of brown recluses and tons of black widows in the outbuildings, and for some reason, the black widows like to build webs in the tomato cages, so I have to watch where I put my hands while picking tomatoes.

I have had to give up wearing "pretty shoes", especially sandals and anything with open toes, heels, etc., since moving here, because if I step foot outside the house in those kinds of shoes, every scorpion, red ant, fire ant, spider and snake in the county will find my feet. My favorite "shoes" for country living are men's work boots made by Caterpillar....they are black leather, have steel toes and are as tough as they can be. Oh, if my city friends could see my country feet now! LOL

I have been using a spider web product called Cobweb Eliminator to keep spiders from building webs on the porches, in the tornado shelter and garage/barn, etc. You spray it on the surfaces and it keeps the webs from adhering. It is non-toxic and works pretty well.

I don't mind having the standard lawn and garden spiders around the place--they are great for controlling insects, but I don't like having the brown recluses and black widows in the house, outbuildings or gardens.

Dawn

I hate spiders of any type ... sort of like you with snakes :-) Snakes don't bother me at all ... I'm careful around the poisonous types ... but the others I generally pick up and move out of the way of whatever I'm doing.

And as far as Kiwi goes ... I found this ... maybe it has something to do with the problems people had:

Kiwifruit is notoriously difficult to pollinate because the flowers are not very attractive to bees. Some producers blow collected pollen over the female flowers. But generally the most successful approach is saturation pollination, where the bee populations are made so large (by placing hives in the orchards) that bees are forced to use this flower because of intense competition for all flowers within flight distance.

Brian,

Ironically, I wasn't too bothered by the poisonous snakes when we first moved here. If I saw a copperhead or rattler, I tended to walk around it and not worry about it. After we'd been here about 3 years, though, our next-door neighbor was bitten by a copperhead....and to make matters worse, it wrapped itself around her ankle and wouldn't let go. You cannot imagine what that sweet lady went through with that copperhead bite....including being in a wheelchair for over a month. So, I became more scared of them as time went on.

And, because I had been a Cub Scout leader and a Boy Scout leader when our son was younger, I was used to seeing all kinds of snakes on hikes and campouts and wasn't bothered by them. After the black rat snakes started killing all my baby chicks and keats, though, I started liking them less and less.

So, here at our place, we have a snake compromise. Any snake found in the chicken coop or guinea coop is a dead snake, because it is a threat to our baby birds. Any poisonous snake found on the acre of land closest to the house is a dead snake because it is a threat to the people and pets. The remaining 13.5 acres can be a snake paradise for all I care, and the snakes there are very heavy some years. I generally stay out of the woods during snake season, which is roughly April through October/November here. However, one year I had a close encounter with a pygmy rattler in February, so sometimes that snakes are out a lot earlier than expected.

And, I still like the rough green tree snakes. Last year there was one in the front yard and the cats were trying to play with it, so I covered it up with a bucket (couldn't bring myself to touch it) to protect it until the cats got bored and wandered off. Then I took the bucket off the snake and it slithered off to wherever. We also have glass lizards here that look a lot like snakes and I like them.

My next-door neighbor, who's lived here all his life, is constantly warning me to watch out for the venomous snakes because he has seen so many people bitten by them over the decades. Because we are so close to the Red River, we will always have snakes, so I just try to avoid them for the most part. There's almost always snakes in my veggie garden though.

The timber rattlers really do scare me. They aren't aggressive at all but my Rottweiler-Terrier mix dog, Duke, almost died when one bit him when he was 7 months old. Then I had the horrible encounter with one this summer. This year I had more snake encounters in a two-week period in the fall than I'd had in the last 2 years, so maybe this year I'll catch a break.

I never have a bee shortage here, so the kiwi would be in good shape if I grew them. However, I grew up and lived my first 39 years in North Texas where everyone, especially fairly new gardeners, ordered kiwi fruit vines, planted them and then lost them the first year. Texas A&M University has long maintained that "kiwi fruit will not grow here", and I've never known anyone in Texas or in southern OK who's had any luck with them. I do know some people who've managed to keep them alive for a couple of years, but they've never gotten fruit.

There's a couple of reasons why. Our August heat, which generally has some days that exceed 105 and often has several days that exceed 110, is usually just too much for it, especially since most Augusts are very dry here. Also, I have no idea if cotton root rot is a problem in soils in the Tulsa area, but it is common in our soils here in southern OK and northern TX and cotton root rot kills kiwi plants. I have a huge problem with cotton root rot in our soil and partly that is because our land used to be part of a cotton farm. So, if there is a plant I want to plant that is susceptible to cotton root rot, I have to plant it in heavily amended soil and, even then, I know the odds are against its survival.

I goggled and found you the OSU Fact Sheet on Growing Kiwi in Oklahoma and linked it below. I haven't read it yet, so I don't know if it will encourage you or discourage you. : )

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Growing Kiwi in Oklahoma

Good site ... thank you. They also mention that people have not gotten fruit after having the vines 5 years ... but they don't say why that may be. They just warn against trying to grow them commercially. They list the various kiwi's and it does mention that those that are meant for commercial use/markets are not really suitable for OK. What the heck ... I'm still going to try :-)

Snakes ... my Mom was the secretary of the very small school I went to growing up in North Dakota. The Principal and Superintendent decided that it would be fun to scare her by putting a large garter snake in one of her desk drawers. They hung around all morning waiting for her to open the drawer. When she did, she and the snake stared at each other for a bit ... then she reached in, picked it up and took it outside to let it go.

Ruined their whole day :-)

You mom sounds spunky! I bet she enjoyed ruining their fun too.

My dad worked at Bell Helicopter with a man who was truly terrified of snakes. For fun, the guys would hide a rubber snake in a place where they knew the guy would find it. He was an inspector, and had to come down the production line and inspect certain things at certain points in the process, so they'd hide a snake where they knew he'd find it while conducting an inspection. His reaction was always the same....jump, holler, and run off as fast as he could while they were rolling on the floor laughing. They tortured this poor man with rubber snakes for years....not just on the helicopters, but in his chair, his jacket pocket, his lunchbox, etc. They called him "rubberlegs" because he ran off so quickly.

When "rubberlegs" died, my dad showed me his obituary in the newspaper and I learned the poor man actually had a name because I'd always known him as "Old Rubberlegs". You would have thought he would have gotten over his fear of snakes, but he never did. I guess nowadays you can't pull pranks like that or you'll get fired for creating a hostile work environment.

For a kiwi variety that might actually grow here and possibly produce fruit, I'd go with One Green World and whatever they offer.

Dawn

I'd planned on getting them from One Green World ... they have an Arctic variety called Viktor I'm going to try unless more research indicates another variety. I'll let you know what transpires ... as long as my company doesn't move me again :-)