John: My eugenia is doing well. The local nurseryman said to just keep doing what i'm doing -- let it get some sun and don't let it dry out. I've got lush green leaves but no flowers yet :-( But he's been adamant about not repotting. I guess it's too soon. I had no idea this hobby would take so long to actually do anything. Seems all you do is wait for this plant to arrive before doing anything substantial. Perhaps that is part of the allure of this hobby. There's no hurrying involved. You think about what you want to do and then you think again...and again. And then you just water, give it some sun, and let the plant do its thing.

It could be insects, like J said, or a culturally induced deficiency of Fe (iron) or other nutrients. Some things that come to mind: High root temperatures can be a major problem and cause the symptoms described. Over-watering can impair root function & lead to many different nutrient deficiencies and chlorotic plants. pH is a big possibility. Your MG fertilizer contains Fe and Mn, but if the pH is too high, these elements would be locked in insoluble compounds. Try adding an ounce of white vinegar to each gallon of irrigation water & see if that helps. If you have pH paper, add enough vinegar to reduce the pH to 6.0, and note how much it took. This will neutralize alkalinity and reverse the normal upward creep in pH. Your fertilizer (MG) contains neither Ca or Mg. Mg deficiencies usually show up in light green foliage. You might try adding the acidified water to a couple of plants and spritzing a couple of plants with 1/2 tsp MgSO4 (Epsom salts) in a gallon of water. If the plants you spritzed green up, yopu should include 1/4 tsp Epsom salts in each gallon of fertilizer solution when you fertilize. BTW - Ca deficiencies often show up as distorted new foliage. If you have a Mg deficiency, and you're using MG, a Ca deficiency is likely not far behind. The Mg deficiency usually shows up first because Mg is about 125x more soluble than Ca. Al

When you say " 3D landscapes", do you mean pictures, or do you want to work with real plants?: I am assuming you mean pictures, and here is my list: (I am most familiar with eastern Australian plants.) 1. Eucalyptus, Angophora and Corymbia. ("Gumtrees") These are all very similar plants. There are more than 700 species of them in Australia, and almost every Australian landscape has several species,(and Australians love them) so they are essential for your picture. You should use at least one smooth-barked species such as E. camaldulensis (River Redgum). There are many of these growing in Italy, but see some paintings by Hans Heyson for a more typical Australian shape. They grow by rivers on open plains, and are AustraliaÂs commonest Eucalypt. E. maculata( also called Corymbia) (Spotted Gum) is very well-known, and has a tall spotted trunk. E.grandis (Flooded Gum) has a very big, tall straight creamy-white trunk. It typically grows in wet forests and needs a strong green background of rainforest foliage to look authentic. E.saligna has a typical bluegum trunk and is a big tree of the same habitat. E.papuana (ghost gum) is a well-known gumtree of the desert. See some paintings by Albert Namatjira for the setting. Of the rough-barked Eucalypts, the best known are ironbarks such as E.crebra or the blue--leafed E.melanophloia. They have black trunks with deeply furrowed bark, and would be very suitable for your picture. For flowers, the Angophoras and Corymbias are better than Eucalypts, as the flowers are held on the outside of the canopy. A.leiocarpa (Rusty applegum) is very well-known and popular. It grows in many environments including rocks where its roots make good pictures. Western Australian Corymbias are small trees with the showiest flowers. E.ficifolia is very popular and well-known. In Australia gumtree leaves typically show insect damage, and this is considered to be part of their beauty (see paintings by May Gibbs) so you should include insect damage if you are showing close pictures of the leaves. 2. Acacia (Wattles). There are more than 800 species in Australia. Typical Australian landscapes would have up to six species. The species with showy flowers are usually small. A.podalyrifolia is well-known and has blue-green leaves and grown in many environments. (A typical Australian landscape should feature plants with blue-green or silvery-leaves) A.harpohpylla (Brigalow) is a silver-leafed tree of the plains. For a typical landscape you might like to choose one wattle with phyllodes and one with leaves. 3. Grevillea. I would choose G.robusta (silky oak) which is a tree of rainforest margins, very well-known. There are more than 300 grevilleas in Australia and most are from heath environments. 4. Brachychiton acerifolius. This is a popular garden plant which drops its leaves in spring, and becomes covered with red flowers at the same time as the silky oaks are flowering. They look very picturesque together. This is a...

Dose of reality: Growstone floats when inundated (a very few particles sink), which says that it's not openly porous - that most individual pores are isolated from other pores by walls impermeable to water, and it's water holding ability depends primarily on its irregular surface and surface porosity - just like perlite. There are 3 sizes of Growstone listed. The large size is not appropriate as a fraction of a solid grow medium. The middle size is also very large, ranging in size from 4-9.5 mm. For reference, and as a guideline, I consistently note that for best results the upper mineral soil particle size limit for gritty soils should be a maximum of 4mm or about 3/16", and 1/8" is better in a perfect world. The medium size Growstone ranges from about 3/16 to 3/8". That leaves us with the product called Gnat Nix, which ranges in size from .63 to 4mm, or from 2/100 to 3/16", so it contains a large fraction of fine material that would need to be screened out if it was to be used in a medium like the gritty mix, which derives a great deal of its value from controlled particle size. It's reusable, so that is a plus if you can find a reason to use it in the first place. If the grower's aim is to decrease water retention, a product like crushed granite or perlite would be a better choice (cheaper, reusable, does the same job). If the intent is to increase water retention, there is a large selection of superior products that are less expensive, hold more water, and offer some significant CEC benefits Growstone cannot claim. There is actually a product on the market (Haydite) that is available (just recently) in an appropriate particle size and offers roughly the same physical properties as Growstone, but costs only a fraction of what Growstone costs. That puts in front of us the simple question of what reasons are there to use this product other than the ideological one, that it is made from recycled class? Glass has no CEC. That is to say it has no ability to hold nutrients - they wash out of the soil straight away, except for nutrients at attachment sites provided by particles other than Growstone. It is pH neutral, so use of the product as a significant fraction of media tends to preclude the use of dolomite as a liming agent. It is much more expensive than other products with more favorable particle size and either greater or less water holding ability. And what about that water holding ability? From their website we can clearly see that the product is not one that would logically be chosen for it's ability to hold water. An answer to a question about Growstone's "drier nature", offered by the Growstone team, says, "Growstones [sic] drier nature also help suppress root diseases such as Pythium. Also allows for faster recovery from human mistakes that lead to Blossom [sic] end rot (BER) for example [they don't say how, but a reduction in water retention can facilitate Ca uptake, which is presumably where they were headed]. These characteristics facilitate crop management compared to substrates with high water holding capacity which water content takes longer to change [sic]." A poster upthread laments that because "...... half of the citrus planted in the Al-approved gritty-like mix actually died". Presumably it must be the fault of Al and the mix that person made and Al gave a nod to, with grower error having no potential to be causal. What the heck is an "Al-approved gritty-like mix", anyway? If I look at an image supplied online and say, "Yup, that should work", am I forever married to the performance of anything planted in that mix? Scheech. If I kill a plant, that's the end of it. It's no one's responsibility but my own. When a grower dismisses, out of hand, a "gritty-like mix" concoction for lack of water retention, it says that he sort of put his faith in a recipe substituted for another that others found well-suited to their plant's needs w/o really understanding the recipe is meant to represent a singular way to embody a concept that can be embodied via an infinite ratio/variety of components. The water-holding capacity of "a gritty-like mix" can be increased significantly by increasing the volume of Turface or a Turface substitute like calcined DE while proportionately decreasing the volume of grit. To my way of thinking, tossing the entire concept out the window before it's actually implemented isn't a reasoned (sounds much more like frustration to me) response - especially when the exit path leads right back to roughly the same methodologies that led him to the alternative concept in the first place. Edited to say: When I read what Greg said immediately above. I thought to myself - this is the kind of person who will be successful growers in spite of the adversities they encounter. Often, a gritty mix isn't made with the same ingredients the basic recipe is designed around, and that can change its physical properties substantially. Greg understood the concept, so knew how to remedy having to water so often w/o abandoning a perfectly legitimate concept. The next time Greg builds a soil, he'll know enough to adjust his original mixture ratios to increase the volume of water-holding ingredients and decrease the volume of particles that decrease water retention. Or, if the physical properties of his ingredients change, he'll also know how to adjust for that change. Al