There are several things you should consider. One of the most important is to get the right varieties for your area. Your county extension should have that information. Find out what they need for a pollinator because if you limit yourself to just three apple trees, and pick them out just because you want that variety, then you need to be sure there is a tree close-by who can pollinate it. If you're serious about fruit production, then you don't want to get smaller than semi-dwarf. Consider frost dates and in Kansas I think that's especially important. Your early bloomers could have their buds frozen out. I lost all my peaches this year, and a good deal of my apples from a late freeze. This is the first time that has ever happened, but once in a while it just will..........nature is unpredictable. But, you hedge your bets as best you can. I keep enough trees for our own purposes and I do a lot of baking, canning, juices and jelly making. Likewise I share with my family things like eggs and fruit and they share theirs with me. So, know your consumption to be sure you have enough. I have four peach trees. Two established and just planted two more last year. Ten apple trees. Just one sour cherry, because the stock several years back when I was installing them, had something 'going on'. Prolly from the same supplier and it was bad. The birds get my cherries every year anyway. LOL. I plan on ordering a rip of them....about a dozen because they're beautiful trees anyway. The more you have, the better chance you have of getting enough left to harvest. And I have a lovely Medlar plum tree, three or four quince trees, and a persimmon. The apricot......well.......I suspect it wasn't true to type because the fruit never survives, gets frozen out. That's not my fault, it was the supplier. The most important issue is finding a reputable source. I had two supposed sugar pear trees and when they fruited up the first time, I chain-sawed them down. They were bradford pears, labled wrong. Man was I peeved. Years wasted is the big thing and then two spaces taken up in my little orchard for crap trees. The same source also sent standard apple trees and charged me for semi-dwarf. You don't find these things out until they're established and in the ground and then it's too late. I'd have had to move my whole flipping orchard. I am fine with standard trees, I'm a professional gardener and have no qualms about ladder work, but that meant they're spaced closer than I'd like.

Oh, I wish I had thought of GardenWeb four years ago! I rescued a batch of tadpoles from the spring draining of my above-ground swimming pool cover, thinking they'd morph out into frogs and go their merry way. Unfortunately (or delightfully, actually) the spring draining didn't happen until mid-summer that year and the tadpoles I saved got a late start. I had set up a tadpole pond for them on the picnic table, on a covered patio. A wisteria branch pulled over to the "pond" was to serve as their highway out. But, come October, I still had about two dozen tadpoles in various stages of metamorphosis and it got cold. Too cold for a container that held water only 2.5" deep. They can take extreme cold, but frozen solid? I had my doubts. My happy mistake was bringing them inside. You have NO idea how labor intensive it is to raise baby treefrogs until you do it. I ended up with five different terrariums set up, for tadpoles, froglets, and frogs; heat lamps; flightless fruitfly cultures in my bedroom; crickets over the heat vent in my bathroom; and it took 9 months for it to get warm enough and them to get large enough to release. They had to be fed at least twice a day and keeping up with the tank cleaning and their food supply made it a full-time job. In the end, some went to live at Zoo Atlanta and some to Fernbank Science Center, with much gratitude to the herpetologists at both places who were gracious and patient enough to answer all my over the course of their little froggie beginnings. Was it worth it? Well, I did it all over again the next year. LOL I had all the equipment and a lot more knowledge, so I wouldn't be totally lost during a second run. I didn't really plan to repeat the experience, though. I only wanted to see if a spoonful of eggs... EGGS, not tadpoles, would be viable, having been laid in chlorinated pool water. All 48 turned into tadpoles! They were the size of that exclamation point, but just large enough to get my heart. Again. My frogs were Cope's Gray Treefrogs. First year, I lost six out of 26. The next year, I didn't lose a single frog. Of the 48 I started with, most morphed out and were released before winter. I ended up raising the last dozen. That dozen now reside at the Tennessee Aquarium in Chattanooga (thanks to a dear friend and fellow froglet raiser who is a volunteer shark tank diver at the aquarium.) I just found this thread today and can't wait to read it all. I have a time crunch, so I could only read about half before I stopped to write this. Love frogs? I adore them. I'll post pictures from my adventure when I can find time to upload them from the little digital discs to my computer.

Hi back, Gill! Thanks for the welcoming. 35+++! Whew! That certainly beats all the concepts about UK grey skies! They all have migrated here to BC it appears..... :) Agree with you on your other post. Perlite doesn't work for me either. Still in a process of solving the puzzle (looking for a chicken grit in a citiy.... - not an easy task!) Happy Growing! L.

Vladimir..thx for the input. I do plan on following the Tapla formula. The only real variable I can see is the nature of the bark fines. We all are rather constrained by what is available to us, so fingers crossed the Soil Pep product will work I'm glad to hear you don’t have to water every day, because that is my main concern with this mix. Every 2-3 days I can handle. Of course I will keep a close eye on things especially during very hot spells. Debbie..my thought on soaking , since I am going to be making a rather large amount, is to mix everything in a large tub and wet it thoroughly. Probably put a tarp over it. Stir it periodically to make sure the bark is evenly wet. I am doing this because it seems one would want the mix uniformly hydrated before use, and to start having the lime do whatever it is supposed to do