Hi leafy02, from a fellow central KY gardener. The Valley is out in Scott County. You may want to select an uncommon small tree, if you want it to stay within the constraints you've selected. However, you are probably like most gardeners and want something with size already since you don't want to wait for shade. The usual dilemma... I'd vote for one of the small Asian maples like Acer triflorum, Acer griseum, or Acer maximowiczianum. These will have much more of a tree-like habit, with the dry seed samaras that won't be a nuisance along a walk. Great fall color and winter bark interest supplement reasons to use these trees. Other smaller trees rarely used in KY landscapes include the many-season interest Stuartia spp. (see also Stewartia, but this is being changed). Early summer flowers, dry seed capsule, lustrous foliage, wow fall color, and very interesting jigsaw puzzle flaking bark cobbled onto a slow growing species. Fun plant. I'll throw in a few more, just so you can spend more time looking: Viburnum rufidulum Symplocos paniculata Chionanthus virginicus and C. retusus Osmanthus americanus Magnolia virginiana All are good plants, and can be grown well in central KY on normal soils. You may need to decide what your minimum starting size requirements are, determine availability, and then go from there.

My only concern is the amount of sun. Peonies,like Roses, bloom best with "full" sun. Tree peonies will do fine with less sun but the space looks a little cramped for them. Any herbaceous peonies are Ok. Work the soil up down to two feet and dig in lots of compost. Space your peonies four feet apart when planting to allow for air circulation and avoid disease problems as they fill the space. The one complaint with peonies is they do not rebloom, but do remain green and attractive through the summer. Plant them high enough so you can see the buds for next years growth through the winter. Too deep and they might not ever bloom. Depending on the plant you start with they may not bloom for a year or two, even if you do everything right. Al

Ilene, You know, I think it would be 'fun' (though tedious at times) to keep track of the number of pounds of each veggie harvested all year and then, at the end of the year, try to compute what it would have cost to buy those at the store. I do sort of get a headache just thinking about weighing all those tomatoes, though. LOL Some, like conventionally-grown potatoes, are going to be cheaper at the store. However, since I grow organically and often grow potatoes that are less common, like the fingerlings, I might even fine my potatoes are cheaper than the same ones at the store that are grown organically. Peppers are a great example. Although you can get jalapenos pretty cheaply at the grocery store (they were 99 cents a pound at our Wal-mart in mid-July thru August when the main crop came in), they aren't grown organically. At Central Market in September, organically-grown habaneros were $4.99 a pound, and I had pounds and pounds of them from our garden all summer long. So, I think if you grow organically and you're comparing your costs/yields to grocery store prices for organically-grown, you come out ahead for virtually every veggie. Onions are a great example. The average person can walk into a garden center, buy a bundle of 60-80 (or more) small onion transplants in February or March for about $3.00, plant them, give them an inch of water a week, and harvest pounds and pounds of organic onions in June or July. The only 'great' price I saw for tomatoes from the store was 4 lbs./$1.00 at a local Mexican market and I think it was right around July 4th. I did buy some of them and made some salsa, but I normally don't buy any grocery store tomatoes because they lack good texture and flavor. (Sometimes I'll buy Romas for Tim to make fresh pico de gallo in winter.) Some things are frustrating to grow at home---like the corn because we have to fight the earworms and the European corn borers AND the darned raccoons for every ear, and then I walk into the store and see 10 ears/$1.00. However, that's for conventionally-grown, and mine is organic, so at least I know our corn wasn't treated with chemicals. I think one of the biggest savings for the average home gardener is in the herb area......if you grow just one plant each of basil, parsley, rosemary, sage, thyme, mint, and dill, you'll save a fortue compared to buying herbs in the store. At our local stores, tiny packages of fresh herbs are usually about $3 or $4 for about six little sprigs. For the price of six sprigs, even if you don't raise your own, you can buy one plant in the spring, plant it and have herbs all year....or for much longer if it is a perennial or reseeding annual. Some fruit trees are very productive, although not necessarily every year. In 2004, I bet we got easily 100 lbs. of peaches and a similar amount of plums, plus about 40-50 lbs. of apricots from Fred's tree. My trees weren't that expensive when planted and require little care other than pruning once a year and thinning when the fruit load is heavy. Blackberries and blueberries produce most years and are fairly low maintenance, although blueberries need a whole lot more soil prep at planting time. I do think more people are paying attention to where their food comes from, and I credit Michael Pollan's books like "The Omnivore's Dilemma" and Barbara Kingsolver's book "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" with opening up a lot of folks' eyes and making them think about where the food comes from, what is in their food if it is processed, how it is grown/shipped across the country or even around the world, etc. And, I think, many people are like us and are saying 'there has to be a better way". I think a lot of us have found the better way. And, too, I wonder about the current economic hard times. What if the economy doesn't fully recover? What if the current higher unemployment rates more or less do become "the new normal"? What if grocery prices stay sky-high? And, you know, we cannot blame the farmers for sky-high food prices. The farmers get an average of 9 cents from every dollar we spend on food and the rest goes to wholesalers, processors, distributors, etc. What if swine flu starts running absolutely rampant this winter and we'd rather avoid the stores as much as possible for a few weeks to avoid wider exposure to the virus? How many of us have enough of everything stored away to allow us to avoid the stores for a few weeks under that circumstance? It is food for thought. Dawn

Actually I never had any devastating disease problems with my plants. Most of the plants I lost (and these were no more than only a few dozens over the past 4 years) during the winter months because I wasn't able to provide adequate conditions - lack of space, poor ventilation, not enough light... Avoiding these and generally working on prevention had saved me from any real trouble so far. The reason I have asked for a book was to have a quick and easy reference to help me to identify some problems that I can't currently relate to anything particular. It is far more efficient to look at some description and photos to identify a problem and if needed to dig further do discover all possible reasons, instead of taking pictures by myself, posting to forums and asking questions that have being answered hundreds of times probably. For example I have Lagerstroemia indica plants and some of them are having some warts on their leaves as if the leaf is dusted with salt or more correctly like if salt crystals are protruding through their epidermis or maybe like some cysts filled with liquid, it is hard for me to describe it. Obviously I am lacking a basic knowledge in this area. I had troubles with all possible pests on my Clianthus puniceus plants and I am tired of babying them so I am about do discontinue them. They are not dying, but are losing their good appearance and hardly ever get to flower. They are looking good enough for sale just for a short periods of time after intensive treatments with quite poisonous chemicals against spider mites, heavy pruning and heavy feeding to develop some new foliage... I have some Aristolochias that show some browning of the lower leaves that I cant identify. Nutritional deficiency related problems is another topic I need to know more about. Otherwise everything grows as vigorously as it can, making my greenhouse to look ridiculously small... again.... :) Currently I am growing more than 250 species of plants with widely varying cultural requirements - carnivorous, succulents, bulbs, shrubs, vines from all around the world. I am slowly heading to reducing this number and some specialization, but I will always want to try some new plant so it is unlikely that the number will drop significantly. Compared to my tiny space and not so good location this number is big.