I discovered spider mites last season late July, a few weeks before the start of harvest. At the time the plants were big and the mites were impossible to eliminate. My only hope was to slow them down so that new growth outpaced my pruning tick infested branches. By that time it was too late for anti mite oil to work because there were too many of them. Hard water showers every day helped slow them down a lot. This meant spraying the hose directly at the plants at full blast. At this point in the season when the tomatoes are little the anti mite oils might work. I got these mites on my eggplants and cucumbers as well but the tomato plants suffered the most. It was finding them on eggplants last season that led to my discovery of them killing my tomatoes. Here is a link that might be useful: Link to my log entry on mites written last July

Remove the bottom few leaves of each cutting so that you can insert the stems without having any of the leaves touch the soil...or another plant. I've never waited for a succulent cutting to callus over...so get them into a coarse medium pronto. Water them well initially.

What you have is an Agastache, not a true mint (Mentha). While they are in the same family, 'Golden Jubilee' Agastache acts entirely different, it does not have underground runners like mint. It does reseed readily, but the seedlings are very easy to pull, so I would not consider it invasive in the least. You can simply cut back the flower heads before they go to seed if you want to avoid pulling seedlings in spring, but the chickadees like the seed so I don't mind ;-) The foliage on mine starts of low and mound-y (with lovely purple tinge to them) and then it begins to grow up into a plant like yours. In my garden it reaches about three feet tall and maybe two feet wide. I agree that it isn't as nice looking at this stage, when you can see the "skeleton" of the plant, lol. By the way, my plant always seems to have those pale sickly looking leaves at the bottom and interior. Think that is just the nature of this plant... Planting something in front of it that is bushy will help hide it. It certainly isn't my favorite plants, but I would not consider it a mistake on my part to have planted it. ;-) I agree with gardenweed. Wait for the daffs to die down and then move the Agastache if you want to keep it. CMK

Hi Bernard, I hope I don't repeat something because I only got about halfway through this thread before I got sick of reading and decided to go ahead and post. #1. I don't know where the idea come from that calloused roots are good. Callouses can't absorb water. It's dry scar tissue that keeps in/out moisture, thereby protecting broken stems and so on. When a plant's roots are partially exposed by wildlife digging, etc., the exposed portion callouses to keep the plant from dehydrating, but that calloused portion will never absorb water again. We don't want roots to callous (except maybe Bonsai growers who like to expose some roots over a rock or something). Putting a root system into dry mix is never good for it. I challenge anyone to prove how dehydrating or callousing a root system can possibly be good for it. The previous poster who said the dry mix will dehydrate the plant is correct. Always use damp mix for re-potting a healthy root system. If the roots are dead, it might be a different story. #2. As you've already learned, it's easy to under-water gritty mix. Since it's pretty close to impossible to over-water grit, I'm with the posters who say to soak it deeply and often. If you're paranoid, soak it daily, or even twice daily, but then give the pot a quick, little down-up motion to dislodge any perched water. That way it'll always be just barely moist. If it were mine, and planted in grit, I'd just water every day or two until the roots are well-established. As one who has killed off whole, healthy root systems by under-watering grit (once weekly), I feel confident in telling you that you're extremely unlikely to drown a plant in grit. I'm watering my succulents daily right now, and some are STILL too dry. BTW, Danny, I think mentioned he prefers soil for jades. I don't disagree with him. The one I have in soil has grown much better than the ones I have in grit. Furthermore, the Aeonium I had in a 1:1 soil:pumice mix has a huge, beautiful, healthy root system. The big one in grit has puny roots. These aren't experiments with standardized variables, so something else might be going on, but for now, I'm also not certain that grit is always a better medium.