Carol, Do you know if you're headed more towards Dallas or towards Fort Worth or towards the mid-cities or outer suburbs?

I love Harriet's suggestions of Calloway's (their motto is "With all we know, it has to grow" or at least that's what it was when we lived there) and they are all over the place from Fort Worth to Dallas to everywhere in between.

Other favorites of mine down there include Redenta's Garden Shop (the original one is in Arlington and there's also one in Dallas), Mike's Garden Center (the original one in SW Fort Worth and a second one in Southlake, Weston Gardens (not too far from the Mike's Garden Center in Fort Worth), Marshall Grain (mostly for organic supplies, gardening accessories, seeds, etc. but they also have plants in a greenhouse outdoors across the parking lot from the store...or they did....I haven't been there in a couple of years now), and over in the Dallas area, there's always North Haven Gardens, Covington's Nursery, Rhodes's (native plants and nature stuff), and Shades of Green in Frisco. If you have a whole weekend to kill, don't miss the Dallas Arboretum, though it might be insanely busy on Easter weekend.

Harriet, Archie's Gardenland is still there?!! Wow, I haven't been there in probably 15 years...not that I have forgotten it, but just that there's always so many places to go down there (usually it is to visit family so my nursery shopping is sharply curtailed). I need to make a point of going there the next time we're in Fort Worth.

I could spend a whole weekend in Fort Worth-Dallas just visiting the nurseries.

Dawn

I came back to add that a perfect day down there would include going to Zeke's Fish & Chips to eat fried everything and, if it were still open, then a trip to The Back Porch to eat ice cream. I guess we'll have to find a suitable substitute for The Back Porch, but I cannot imagine anything would have the charm of the original Back Porch there on Camp Bowie. I heard that not only is is gone, but that area has been redeveloped/rebuilt to expand the medical college there. Wow, we haven't been down Camp Bowie in about 10 years either....cause it is alway so much faster to stay on Loop 820 and zoom around the city.

Hmmmm, I think Tim is on call this weekend, so we could take his work car and go on a tour of our favorite Fort Worth places. Then, if some disaster happens and he has to rush in to work, at least we'd be closer to his HQ if in we were in Ft. Worth than in south-central OK. It would mean giving up a day of garden work, but I don't mind the break (and he'd be ecstatic to not have to work his way through my outside chore list, which includes some tree pruning and mowing).

Dawn, thanks for all the suggestions! By the way, my name is Dawn, too, lol!

Oh sorry, I thought you were one of the Carols. Well, have fun, Dawn!

Okiedawn, I think there are more organic/organic-leaning nurseries in DFW area than most states! (Thanks to Howard Garrett, the Dirt Doctor, I'm sure) ;) Even the big box and farm stores carry some products that Howard recommends. I wish OKC radio stations would carry his program. I remember when his competitor was also on the radio there - it was quite a competition of ideas!

Harriet, I agree, and it was that way dating back to at least the 1980s, though it got even better in the 1990s. I do think Howard Garrett had a lot to do with that---it seems to me that there was a huge number of folks gardening organically in the D-FW metro area long before it became nearly as popular in other areas. I still prefer shopping down there, although at least many of the organic products are now found in stores only 20-30 miles from where we live, whereas in our early years here we had to drive 80-90 miles, one way, to find those same organic products. So much has improved for organic gardeners in recent years.

I grew up listening to Neil Sperry and have nothing but the utmost respect and admiration for him. His books are my gardening bibles dating back decades. I listened to his gardening show from when it first started, which I think may have been in the 1970s when I was still in high school. I read his columns. I remember when he was our county extension agent back even prior to the radio show.

Then at some point I became aware of Howard Garrett too, probably in the 1980s, and began reading his newspaper columns/books and listening to his program on the radio too. To this day, when I mention Howard Garrett, Tim quips his tag line from the end of the radio show "and don't forget to feed the birds". Maybe that is why we feed the birds to this day.

When Neil Sperry and Howard Garrett had a sort of quiet war between them on the radio waves, with each of them making pointed remarks about what "other people" recommended without saying one another's names, I knew who those barbs were aimed at, and I hated it. They both are fine people, with different philosophies, and I bet if they knew each other outside of horticulture, they'd like each other just fine. I just tried to learn from both of them and to find my own way to garden based on what I know and feel is important. I've always been 95% organic though, so even when Neil recommends synthetic products, I tend to let that part go in one ear and out the other. I used a miticide (Kelthane) once in the 1980s and Round-up a few times, and Bug-B-Gone for grasshoppers once in the 2000s. That's about the extent of my synthetic product usage in terms of miticides, herbicides and insecticides, but I do use Daconil to prevent/halt the spread of Early Blight sometimes. So, I guess I garden more Howard's way in terms of the philosophy and general practices I use, but from Neil I have learned so much about everything involved in horticulture that I appreciate---his knowlege of plants, pests and diseases is huge and vast and there's just no one like him. I still get his e-newsletter weekly and devour every word. If you've read and listened to Neil all along, you know that he is much less chemically-oriented than he once was. He was, after all, a product of what he was taught when he was in college and they all were taught the chemical way back then. I just happen to prefer Howard's natural way a lot more and it generally works well for most things.

You know how when you have two friends who you get along with just fine, but they cannot stand each other? Well, that's how I felt it was with Neil and Howard, though I did not know either one personally. I just kept wishing they could get along and appreciate one another as much as I appreciated both of them. I guess that never will happen though.

Dawn

That's pretty much what I do - Round up on the curb/street weeds and any other place where I can't pull or mow them. Otherwise, I use ladybugs, beneficial nematodes, & parasitic wasps, lava sand, coir, dry molasses, and compost all I can.