I had Elephant Heart 10+ years ago and really liked it. But it rotted too much, that is why I removed it. But I am going to give it one more try along with Flavor King. Howard Miracle was another otherwise very good plum that I took out due to rot, I may try it again some day as well.
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I’m very surprised to hear all these (@scottfsmith, @zendog, @Moley, @PatapscoMike) mentions of people north of me and on the East Coast growing and fruiting (to any degree) Sweetcrisp. Fruitnut’s praise of the variety from years ago definitely caught my interest, and I hadn’t forgotten about it, but until I started grafting blueberries just a few years ago (and only more recently actually seeing that grafting seems to work quite well, at least short-term) I had about given up on being able to grow SHB’s or NHB’s in my location without doing more to amend the soil than I cared to bother with, and then I also got the impression that Sweetcrisp would bloom much too early and the bloom get frozen pretty much every year, much worse than even other SHB’s. To what degree is that actually the case? Apparently not too bad. Has anyone successfully fruited Sweetcrisp in the Carolinas/north Georgia or nearby? In any case, I’m all of a sudden seeing a lot more hope for trying Sweetcrisp than I had thought was possible for my location, even if the flavor won’t come close to Fruitnut’s experience.
I updated my ‘Pomegranate Map’. I’m a bit obsessive this way! - I like to keep track of which variety is ‘where’, in case tags go missing. And then get carried away putting it together on the computer! It must be my graphics design background!
Here is what I ended up with. It’s really handy - and just fun to work with. (I am easily entertained . . . 
I guess!)
POM CHART 2020.pdf (36.0 KB)
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I have never had a frost issue with any of my blueberries. My sweetcrisp is only in year 3, so I’ve stripped off nearly all of my berries the last two years. I did have some berries both years though. This year I will have quite a lot from the looks of it.
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My experience is similar to Mike’s regarding freezes. Although I keep my blueberries in containers at this point, I have left them out in freezes when they were almost blooming and still got good fruit set. The flowers just seem more resistant to cold than some other fruit types. Although if it was a really hard freeze, I’m less sure. I did bring them in one year when they were in full bloom and we were headed to the upper teens.
Although Sweetcrisp should be pretty early and Indigo Crisp, which I also have, should be very early, I actually find Misty to be more likely to bloom extra early. Since they all easily get enough chill hours here, I think it may be that the trigger to get them blooming in terms of warmth, etc. may be a bit different for each variety. They are all early this year, but Misty is definitely winning the race.
Of course this is a particularly weird year and some things are really far ahead here, while others (my peaches for instance) aren’t as far as I would expect seeing other people’s pictures in similar zones. We haven’t gotten below 20 degrees here yet, which actually might make my zone seem closer to 9 based on lows this year.
Cara’s Choice, my only NHB, is way behind both, so I do think it makes sense for me to look at more northern blueberries based on our weather and what Scott mentioned about taste of the southerns in our area.
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You have a whole second page to fill ! 
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Oh…the things I would grow if I lived in 8b !
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Bump that up to 9b and you enter a whole new world. 8b still gets significant freezes.
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Well, roses , which, depending on variety, are a challenge in 5b (often 50/50 unless mounded and mulched and wrapped …I don’t have time for all that)are basically worry free in 8b. I always think it is hilarious that people in Texas are “how do I protect my roses in the winter?” …seriously ?
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All 8b aren’t created equal. In Seattle roses are likely worry free. In Texas it might be another matter. The reason is Seattle has steady cool weather in winter. Texas is up and down. In 2018 we had out coldest day of the winter, 17F, for the first freeze of fall on Nov 13. In 2019 it was nearly the same thing in late October. Figs freeze back in areas with average winter lows of 45F.
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I do the same thing, yet I am not as advanced as PDF, I just make JPGs, tags can not only disappear, they can get damaged, the tags that you scratch the name in can get scratched by other things, the tags that you use ink on fade. There is always something. Sometimes I even make the JPGs before I use tags.
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Well . . . . . I guess I’m more neurotic than you! Because I create the ‘map’ before my plants arrive! It’s one of those ‘dead of winter - can’t wait to do something in the garden’ things! LOL
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I guess what I am saying is that …well first, …you have David Austin down there, lucky you…but I couldn’t order even the hardiest of those Texas grown roses and expect them to survive here…even if the variety itself is designated as “hardy” …not after it’s been growing and propagated and grown again in Texas. Minus 17F …that’s only minus 8 Celcius…we can dip to minus 28 C here for a few days at a time most any winter (though we haven’t come close to that this year…i think minus 22C is the coldest it got this year and the worst is past now). I’m working with limited variety options and it really isn’t the cold here that kills roses…it’s the repeated thawing and refreezing that does them in.
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I am that way when travelling, even with the shortest of trips, trying to figure out what to do when on a trip wastes so much trip time, especially if you don’t have access to decent internet on the trip. Like a 3 week trip, I plan for over 3 months what places I’d like to go, how to get to those places, what interesting places are near those places and so on.
I pre-plan a lot of things yet I am not neurotic, I am just prepared, yet I have had to adapt because things never go exactly as planned, so I try to not be as detailed about my planning, and I expect to have to re-plan. Like once when I was returning from a trip visiting my family, I decided to spend a few days in NYC on the way back, someone layed down on the subway tracks, so some of the subway trains were messed up, they had to skip subway stations to avoid hitting whomever it was. There is always something new to experience in life, LOL
@alanmercieca Do you agree? . . . that One ‘man’s’ beautiful planning is another man’s neurotic’!
LOL Just teasing you! - And my claim to being a neurotic is also somewhat in jest, as well . . . because compared to most of the population - I DO look neurotic! But - like you, Alan . . . I just enjoy being prepared. (and love my charts! )
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No one complains when I have great travel advice for one of the very few travel places I visit, I seem to have visited over 20 times more than I have. I sometimes know about places that the locals don’t know about.
Also it’s people who plan far ahead that do best in business, companies that mainly think what’s best in the now eventually go bankrupt for not thinking far enough in to the future, yet still usually some very wealthy people come and buy such bankrupt companies, and the original owners wind up very wealthy with the sale of the company. Average major business has become a game of passing around the debt.
@jcguarneri It’s really difficult to know for sure what kind of variety is that one because even if the name is clearly italian, there are some spell errors that make me think that the original name given to the original importer must have been transmitted orally, and maybe it was just the name which locally was used for such clone, which may be (or may be not) known with some other name in other parts of Italy.
There are literally tens of different clones for “Sanguigne” peaches (which sometimes are collectively called “the vineyard peaches” because of their pulp color) mostly in northern/central Italy, and some of their names don’t even make reference to their colour (Here for instance you have a Pesco Sanguigno whose alternate name is “Pesco Carota” - Carrot Peach: Il Germoplasma della Toscana: Scheda . This clone instead just grows on Elba island: Il Germoplasma della Toscana: Scheda just to give you a quick reference)
To sum it up, the tardiva, doesn’t implies a neither make easy or possible to identify a “precoce” because it could only refer it as being tardiva compared to some other peach cultivated in the same area, probably sangigna, but not exclusively, which may be known with an entirely different name.
I am in Northern Virginia near DC zone 7a.
Muscadines: Hall and Early Fry are the best in my yard overall. They are reliable and ripen on time. Early Fry hung on until frost and taste very sweet. Lane is the best tasting/sweetest if you prevent it from over cropping. Paulk is also very good. Black Beauty is amazing in flavor but once a while the cold comes too early and half of it won’t ripe. Muscadines are my favorite to eat and grow. Probably the easiest and tastiest thing I have ever grown.
Fig: I only have Celeste and it seems to be very good.
Persimmons: Fuyu, Jiro, Saijo and Giombo are very good and reliable. Our favorite is Saijo. My second favorite fruit for ease of growing and taste.
PawPaw: Susquehanna. For some reason we get tired of paw paw very quickly. I eat 5 at most per season.
Asian Pear: Olympic/Korean Giant
Raspberry: Joan J. This thing produced from summer to frost for me.
These are all no spray for me. They fruit reliably and in abundance every year.
Peaches: Loring. I am reducing my peaches because they are too high maintenance.
I am trying apple and Kiwi next. hopefully I can juice ugly apples unlike peaches. I hope Kiwis will be easy like muscadines.
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I feel kind of the same, and I think it is a good time for me to share some of my good experiences this year:
Apples: Rubinette, Evercrisp, Kidd’s Orange Red and Hawkeye are excellent. The first two were more consistent, i.e. most of the fruits were very high quality. The latter two were less so, but the better fruit were very remarkable. The good thing about these four is that they are fairly different from each other in taste dimensions.
Pears: The two Magness from my tree were fantastic. Seckel was surprisingly bland, perhaps because of inadequate thinning.
Nectarines: Arctic Star, Snow Queen, Honey Blaze, Honey Kist, Honey Halo, Sunglo and White Diamond were all amazing! Good to very good were Zephyr, Arctic Jay, Honey Royale, Honey Diva and September Honey. I hope the latter group improves to the same level of the former as the trees mature.
Peaches: Baby Crawford has a special flavor, and even though was not very sweet, it was the only peach that can compete with nectarines (of course the nectarines win).
Plums (pluots included): Flavor King, Flavor Finale, Flavor Grenade, Flavor Punch and CHP were all excellent! The good to very good ones are: Dapple Dandy, Vision, Coe’s Golden Drop and Empress.
Apricots: White Knockout is a revelation; very tasty and very sweet apricot… Lasgerdi and Early Blush are very good. Blenheim and Cot’n Candy were excellent, but the tree was sick and the fruits were few and did not develop well.
I actually found Kidd’s OR to be aromatic. I wouldn’t categorize it in the sweet category. To me the sweet category has things like Red Delicious (and Hawkeye), Gala and Fuji, which I love all of them.
Hoople’s was nothing more than a good Golden Delicious. I ate some Gibson strain GD from a local orchard, and they were fantastic, much better than my Hoople’s.
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