Hi there, I am one of those professional plant people, and I deal with dracaenas a lot. I had a long chat with the wholesale greenhouse lady where I buy my plants about dracaena marginatas recently. She told me that when they are grown in Florida, they grow them under very high light with lots of fertilizer, so that they grow fast. Time is money, the faster they get the plant to full size, the sooner they can sell it and use the space to grow another one. With all of this light and water, their leaves are very firm, to the point that they can give you an extremely painful poke in the eye, like being poked with a stick (don't ask me how I know this...) A plant will keep these stiff leaves for several months after being put into its office location. If the light is very bright, the leaves will stay stiff. If the light is dim, they will gradually start to droop over time. Once they droop, I don't think they can get stiff again, at least not those particular leaves. The droopy plants that you see the plant company caring for probably only need water every two to four weeks, especially if it is dark and/or cold. I do not recommend moving marginatas into cold. They do not like cold at all, and it will lead to the lower leaves turning a mushy yellow, along with all sort of possibilities for root and stem rot. Marginatas do like to be kept dry, especially if they are in a dim location. Not as dry as a cactus, but pretty darn dry. When in doubt, err on the side of not watering. The ones you see the plant company take care of with the stiff leaves? It is quite possible that they remove them and replace them with new ones periodically, and that is why the leaves appear to stay stiff. Hope that helped!

Stephen and Alan, I definitely deserved your comments... I just had a little trouble reading the lable Helena put on that package of seeds...I will be more careful in the future. I now have a favor to ask: If anyone prays, please pray for the safe return trip of our 27 year old daughter's (Heidi) Task Force to Amman, Jordan. There are 18 of them returning to Indy on Monday, July 11th. Due to the terrorist attacks in London, our family and (I'm sure) the families of the other 17 members are a little worried. Their trip got off to a bad start to begin with because of bad weather in DC, but they were able to rebook their flights two days later. They did end up flying through London, but I'm pretty sure they are going through Frankfurt on the way home. Hope no one minds me asking this favor... Thanks, Verna

Jena, my Perle d’Or did the bud drop thing it’s first year, the whole year. A lot of my roses also had chlorosis, including Perle d’Or, even though they were getting regular Magnesium-sulfate and I was alternating between Miracle Grown and a seaweed fertilizer, all in the hopes of curing them of chlorosis. Mostly it was the Polyanthas and Multifloras that had this problem. Finally I sent in a sample for a soil test. I had plenty of all the minerals and nutrients except for Nitrogen (which I already knew since its obviously devoid of any organics and so I was fertilizing) and absolutely zero Manganese (Mn) detected. Once I put a teaspoon of Manganese Sulfate dissolved in a gallon of water on each rose last fall the chlorosis completely disappeared and Perle d’Or stopped dropping buds. I will now do this once or twice a year; not too often since Mn is a minor nutrient and too much can be toxic. The Miracle grow I was using did have trace Mn, but somehow it wasn’t enough. I wonder if my soil was just binding it up? This just demonstrates that bud drop could be due to lack of an essential nutrient. It might not necessarily be Manganese for you. But since you mention the Kellogg soil might not be that great, I would give it a nice dilute liquid fertilizer once a week and see if it cures it.

You know; it does look like leaves of Asclepias . Odd thing is; I didn't have any and wanted some. I ordered three plugs of it, but they are in container on my deck till I figure out where to put them. I guess I could let it go and see what happens. Didn't really want anything else in my hosta bed, though. I could always yank it later. Lot of strange things showing up this year!