Pest management is complex, if you want to learn, a good place to start is here: Integrated Pest Management This lecture is presented in two parts. Each part is 90-minutes in length. Recorded in Sacramento County in California's Sacramento Valley, this lecture is by Mary Louise Flint, Ph.D., Director, IPM Education and Publications, UC Statewide IPM Project and Extension Entomologist & Cooperative Extension Specialist. Education: B.S. Plant Science, University of California, Davis Ph.D. Entomology, University of California, Berkeley Appointment: 100% Cooperative Extension Research Interests: Integrated pest management of landscape, agricultural and garden pests; biological control of arthropod pests; alternatives to pesticides; adoption of alternative practices by practitioners; innovative delivery of pest management information. Topics discussed in the Integrated Pest Management Lecture: * IPM references and resources * Preventing pest problems * Natural common enemies * Making less toxic pesticide choices * Controlling aphids, scales, caterpillars, coddling moths, tree borers, snails and slugs, and lawn insects. You can watch the programs now online: Just make sure you have Real Player installed or download it free. Integrated Pest Management Part1 90 minutes Integrated Pest Management Part 2 90 minutes You'll want to bookmark the following link to Professor Flint's Lab Research on: Controlling Pests in Gardens and Landscapes: Vegetables and Melons I promise you'll learn one or two things to put in your gardening bag of pest management arsenals. ;)

Now comes some tidbits from a Floridian! First, Rexes do not thrive in FL. They are grown in temp controlled greenhouses with swamp coolers, which is why you see them for sale. Although it may feel muggy if you are in one, the temp is lowered during the day and cooled at night - relatively. There are newer rex/rhizo hybrids I am growing with success, but pure rexes never make it in our hot, wet summers. It is truly the hot nights that kill them. 80F lows are not uncommon. In habitat, rexes see 68-70F at night. Secondly, whomever started this thread is growing in soil that is way too heavy. I use Fafard #2 with additional perlite and pine bark added. I also keep my begonias barely potted up - like a few inches larger when they need it. That ensures the soil does not stay wet, which kills begonias. If you struggle to pick up a bag of soil, it is too heavy. I have five foot canes in 3 gallon pots. I can easily pick up a 3 gallon cane with one hand - that is what they prefer. Keeping that in mind should help you grow great begonias! Picture is my bench of 'River Nile'! Greg Sytch, ABS Horticultural Corresondent

Sneaking in under the wire for 2008 is my holiday gift activity: Sugared Cranberries - three cups Carol's Sweet 'n Hot Confetti Jelly - two one-cup jars and eight half-cup jars Madras Pickled Eggplant Indian Cucumber Relish Thai Chili Sauce - four one-cup jars of each of the above, for putting into gift baskets for four couples I usually exchange gifts with at New Year's Indonesian Satay Sauce - eight one-cup jars (also for the gift baskets-- I was bummed not to have leftovers of the last three recipes for myself, so I made this one a triple batch, and it came out even more than expected) Carol, the Hab jelly went over particularly well. I canned one of the cups in one of those low, sturdy wide-mouth jars called a "salmon jar," and gave it with a matching jar of Roasted Red Pepper Spread to my 22-year-old nephew and his girlfriend, who is in pastry chef school. I packaged them with a box of nice crackers, some cream cheese, and a couple of little dip bowls and spreading knives. This went over VERY well; these guys are in their first-ever apartment together, and I think liked getting the same kind of homemade food package I gave my middle-aged siblings, as they are feeling very grown up in their own household these days. My nephew is in one of those stages young men seem to go through of exploring Hot Sauces (loves to boast about how many scoville units he withstood yesterday, etc.), so he was thrilled with the hab jelly, especially since I told him it was made a little extra hot with him in mind, and he should be careful what guests he served it to. (Nothing like a hint of danger to perk up a Christmas gift when you are 22!) ;-) Zabby, wondering if she can squeeze in one more little batch of cranberry sauce before the new year.....

@dani_m08 I use two basic media I make myself. In return for the effort it takes to source ingredients and put the media together, I get media that allows me to water to beyond the point of complete soil saturation with no need to be concerned that I might be over-watering, and a byproduct of highly aerated, free-draining media, which is the ability to have in place a nutritional supplementation program that requires no guesswork. The ability to always water correctly and maintain a sound nutritional supplementation regimen are essential parts of any care plan focused on maximizing your plants' opportunity to realize as much of their genetic potential as possible. My initial foray into growing in pots was the result of an infatuation with bonsai trees. I was thunderstruck when, wandering around a hotel on a business trip, I discovered workers setting up a bonsai show. I fell in love with the diminutive trees and decided right than and there that I HAD to learn how to "do that". I set about chasing that goal but soon discovered I didn't have a clue, and was forever being frustrated because I couldn't keep my trees alive; so, I set the trees aside and hit the books, as this was all in the 1908s before the net was a thing. After about 3-4 years of fairly diligent study, I started over and was blessed by some newfound abilities. Since, I've been devoted to learning how to become more and more proficient in the art. Fortunately, as I learned about soil science and the plant sciences, almost all I learned could be widely applied to almost everything commonly grown in pots. This is the soil I use for mostly succulents and trees: It's made with pine or fir bark, a calcined clay (almost ceramic) product called Turface MVP, and grower size poultry grit or #2 cherrystone. Below, is the mix I use for mixed floral plantings, veggies, and single potted plants other than succulents: It's made from 5 parts of pine bark, and 1 part each of perlite and sphagnum peat, pl;us an appropriate measure of dolomitic (garden) lime. Getting to the place where you can water correctly w/o worry that the soil will remain soggy so long it seriously limits root function or wrecks root health is a real game changer - likely the largest step forward a container gardener can take at any one time. Over the years I've thought a lot about I've given a lot of thought to what represents the shortest route to a green thumb in terms of time and I always come to the same conclusion. It's knowledge. Learning by trial and error, getting bit on the butt by our mistakes, is a hard way to learn. This is especially true in light of the fact that w/o the knowledge to properly evaluate what we're seeing in our plants, we're pretty well doomed to repeat them. Also, our mistakes are often not made manifest until long after the error was committed, making it difficult to put together cause/effect relationships. It makes far more sense to learn all you can and then, use your practical experience (which would otherwise be devoted to trial and error) to validate what you already know. I promise you'll leave the trial and error crowd standing in your slipstream. More often than not, swarms of fungus gnats are the result of watering intervals too short. Often, allowing the soil to dry down and checking moisture levels with a "tell" before you water is all you need to keep populations controlled. Using a 'tell' Over-watering saps vitality and is one of the most common plant assassins, so learning to avoid it is worth the small effort. Plants make and store their own energy source – photosynthate - (sugar/glucose). Functioning roots need energy to drive their metabolic processes, and in order to get it, they use oxygen to burn (oxidize) their food. From this, we can see that terrestrial plants need plenty of air (oxygen) in the soil to drive root function. Many off-the-shelf soils hold too much water and not enough air to support the kind of root health most growers would like to see; and, a healthy root system is a prerequisite to a healthy plant. Watering in small sips in order to avoid over-watering leads to a residual build-up of dissolved solids (salts) in the soil from tapwater and fertilizer solutions - which limits a plant's ability to absorb water – so watering in sips simply moves us to the other horn of a dilemma and creates another problem that requires resolution. Better, would be to simply adopt a soil that drains well enough to allow watering to beyond the saturation point, so we're flushing the soil of accumulating dissolved solids whenever we water; this, w/o the plant being forced to pay a tax in the form of reduced vitality, due to prolong periods of soil saturation. Sometimes, though, that's not a course we can immediately steer, which makes controlling how often we water a very important factor. In many cases, we can judge whether or not a planting needs watering by hefting the pot. This is especially true if the pot is made from light material, like plastic, but doesn't work (as) well when the pot is made from heavier material, like clay, or when the size/weight of the pot precludes grabbing it with one hand to judge its weight and gauge the need for water. Fingers stuck an inch or two into the soil work ok for shallow pots, but not for deep pots. Deep pots might have 3 or more inches of soil that feels totally dry, while the lower several inches of the soil is 100% saturated. Obviously, the lack of oxygen in the root zone situation can wreak havoc with root health and cause the loss of a very notable measure of your plant's potential. Inexpensive watering meters don't even measure moisture levels, they measure electrical conductivity. Clean the tip and insert it into a cup of distilled water and witness the fact it reads 'DRY'. One of the most reliable methods of checking a planting's need for water is using a 'tell' (more reliable than a 'moisture meter'. You can use a bamboo skewer in a pinch, but a wooden dowel rod of about 5/16” (75-85mm) works better. They usually come 48” (120cm) long and can usually be cut in half or in several pieces, depending on how deep your pots are. Sharpen both ends of each tell in a pencil sharpener and slightly blunt the tip so it's about the diameter of the head on a straight pin. Push the wooden tell deep into the soil. Don't worry, it won't harm the root system. If the plant is quite root-bound, you might need to try several places until you find one where you can push it all the way to the pot's bottom. Leave it a few seconds, then withdraw it and inspect the tip for moisture. For most plantings, withhold water until the tell's tip comes out nearly dry. If you see signs of wilting, adjust the interval between waterings so drought stress isn't a recurring issue. Al