I'm always glad to hear from you, Kippy! Thank you, Nastarana and Campanula for your info. Hi Camp: you are right about "a few handfuls of native topsoil into sterile potting soils". Two books on roses in container recommended the same. ... (one by Douglas Green in Canada and the other by Field in Texas). Since I love to do experiments, I'll going to try the 2-20-20 low-salt index of 7.2 (compare that to high salt index of other soluble fertilizers with urea at 74 index, and ammonium sulfate at 88.3 index). Kelp4Less sells 2-20-20 at $14 per pound. I tried the Schultz Bloom plus at 10-60-10 on my petunias in pots. That was GREAT! Triple blooming and triple root growth. That's sold at Lowes food on-line for $2.99. If I see that at Menards, I'll grab it (my soil is tested low in phosphorus.) What's special about 2-20-20 formula, besides being organic and low-salt, is the blend of Mycorrhiza fungi added: Soluble Inoculant powder Mycorrhizal fungi and 19 beneficial bacteria inoculants. Beneficial Endo Mycorrhizal fungi species ..... They also added molass, which fungi loves. It would be interesting to compare the results on petunias using chemical 10-60-10 plus my clay mixed with potting soil, versus organic 2-20-20 with endomycorrhizal, bacteria, and molass. Here is a link that might be useful: Low-salt & organic 2-20-20 at Kelp4less This post was edited by Strawberryhill on Wed, Mar 6, 13 at 12:31

Why you should not be using MSconfig to control startups!! http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=149804 Many people frequently use MSconfig as a long term solution to control startup processes and services. You will also see many websites condoning use of MSconfig and teaching you how to use it for controlling startups. This is a very bad idea for many reasons. 1. MSconfig was designed to be used only as a temporary debugging/troubleshooting tool. It was not meant to be used for long term solutions. 2. MSconfig does not show all startups anyway. 3. If you uninstall programs while they are being disabled with MSconfig, they will not be uninstall properly and you will have to resort to manual registry editing to properly get everything removed. MSconfig will leave orphan entries if/when installed software is uninstalled while under the control of MSconfig . When/if MSconfig is turned back to normal startup, it will give errors on boot due to those orphan entries. 4. MSconfig and Services: o If you uninstall programs while you have some of the programs services being controlled with MSconfig, the programs will not be uninstall properly and you will have to resort to manual registry editing to get everything properly removed. o When you uncheck a service in msconfig, you completely disable it. If you uncheck the wrong one, you may not be able to restart your computer. o It is safer to control services by using Control Panel, Administrative Tools, Services (this runs services.msc). 5. You can lock malware items into your registry that you may not see anymore until some point in time where you switch back to Normal Startup mode and now you can cause total reinfection of your PC with the malware. You need to remove the malware not mask it. If you still don't understand why not to use MSconfig, see what Microsoft writes here: The key point is stated as such: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/310560

Hi, I think most retired people would like to move into an efficient home given that they are going to be paying the heating bills, which just go up and up. Making homes more thermally efficient is a no-brainer -- it saves money on heating bills and reduces carbon emissions. If a mandatory program was put in place (which I would like to see), it could be set up so that the savings in fuel bills more than offset the cost of the extra money that would have to be borrowed for the improvements -- this is a win for everyone, and should improve homes sales, not reduce them -- I think you guys need to take a longer and wider view rather than fight everything that might cost you a little bit of short range adapting. Isn't a housing stock that people can afford to heat going to make for more qualified home owners and more sales? I'm a retired person, and its important to me that we get moving on doing something meaningful on carbon reduction for my grandkids. Gary

Exotic_lover your comment is indicative of the I/me/my mentality that is slowly destroying this country across the board. You want to import just this and that to add to your collection. And some body else just wants to import a different this and that for their collection. Multiplied by tens of thousands of individuals across the country who all just want to import one or two things for their collection and we will have a biological recipe for ever worsening environmental, agricultural and economic disaster for this Australia and future generations. Fortunately our MPs and authorities are starting to belatedly see the environmental light and clamping down on this national behavior if only due to the economic impacts it is having for agriculture and the country in general. You are not going to win on this because your insignificant little hobby or business is not going to win against the national economic agricultural impacts. Finally we environmentalists and ecologists have the ear of government. Besides Australia has over twice the biodiversity of Europe and North America combined. And much of that is plants and many of these plants are succulents that are different and unique from the rest of the world. So stop judging native plants by the pathetic array you find in Bunnings etc, and start doing some real exploring of the universe of Australian flora through the Australian Plant Society. Did you know that, technically, Brachychiton (commonly known as bottle trees) are in fact succulent plants. Wood does not swell significantly with water but the trunks of bottle trees do, much like the giant saguaro cacti of the north American deserts. What about the epiphytic ant plants of QLD - a unique and very drought tolerant alternative to stag horn ferns etc. Or the plethora of pink flowered Calendrinia from the outback. Or the Doryanthes that are closely related to the Agave. The native glassworts from the coastal salt marshes. Sarcozona, lithophytic orchids and many other species featured in Attila and Michele Kapitany book "Australian Succulent Plants" http://australiansucculents.com/ There is a life time of collecting in that single book and undoubtedly even more that Atilla, and those who follow his example, are yet to discover. Time for you to stop living in the cultural cringe based horticultural past.