Hi everyone..new to this site..but so glad i stumbled onto it!....i have been given my grandmother's crown of thorns that she has had for close to all of my life...will be 50 in june...and my dad said she had it from a clipping from before i was born...she always had a tremendous green thumb...and he knows i love to grow plants as well...so upon her passing close to 16 years ago...i have it...very very tall...loads of green leaves on top..blooms all the time with red flowers..and loads of little shoots down by the bottom...my problem is..its getting soo tall..i am very afraid to clip or cut it down..a) because of not knowing how and what to do with cuttings..and b) dont want to do anything to hurt its growth...i have it in the living room..which is a west window and is cool by the window...i do have a southern bedroom that is always blazing with sunlight..but very cold due to being over the garage and heat tends to have a hard time there...i do have a heater in room..but cool non the less...it has always thrived where it is...it has tremendous sentimental value to it....but becoming out of controll!!! Lol...i would love any advice....thanks to one and all...:)

This is probably the only worthwhile place to talk about hydrangeas, so look no further! But rest easy! The issue here is not ID'ing a problem but ID'ing the plant itself. You have a Preziosa, a cross of macrophylla and serrata types that was hybridized over 50 years ago. It simply behaves this way. In fact it is prized for its combination of foliage color and "washed denim" blooms. See the link to another recent thread below; someone else just had this issue with identifying what was going on with their shrub. Into the fall, the leaves will continue this trend until they fall off, and the process will repeat each year. PS: Cut off those brown stems with nothing on them (or at least down to where there is growth). They're history. Repeat this process about every 1st of June, as you *will* get fair amount regrowth from old wood. Do not prune to the ground or you will lose next year's flowers. Simply deadhead after flowering and prune out dead wood next mid-spring. Here is a link that might be useful: Recent Post about Purple Leaves / Preziosa

I had two seasons in a row where I had a very bad earwig problem. Everything was being eaten and I couldn't see what was doing it. Someone on GW suggested I go out at night with a flashlight and sure enough, I discovered the earwigs. I used a cup of soapy water and just knocked them into the cup. I did that every night as often as I could for a few weeks and got them under control. Pulled off the chewed leaves and the plants went on to produce another crop of leaves. They loved basil among other things. I kept the plants watered and fertilized with Neptune's Harvest half strength weekly. I haven't had a problem with earwigs in at least 5 years now, so things do improve over time. I grow in a neighborhood that is more urban/suburban than rural, so maybe we have less to deal with. No deer, few rabbits, a mole or a chipmunk once in awhile, and two years we had a groundhog that stripped the vegetable garden among other things, in a couple of nights. Lucky you have a cat that will catch moles. My dog sniffs them out when they are around, but is more curious than killer. [g] Some years I get aphids but I let them go since I noticed that when I ignored them, they attracted ladybugs who took care of them in a blink of an eye. Last year I had a lot of cabbage flies laying eggs on my brassicas, and then I noticed I had yellow jackets flying all around the vegetable garden and no more cabbage worms. So, if you have a new garden in a new location, I would encourage you to try to go with the flow. Learn about what is destroying your plants and what natural predator you can enlist to help you. Sometimes all you have to do is just let it work itself out. Sometimes hand picking is needed. I get oriental beetles in small amounts and I pick those off. If things are really in jeopardy - I mix up hot pepper, garlic and a few drops of soap, strain that through cheesecloth and put it in a spray bottle and that has helped in a lot of situations. I've been trying to grow sunflowers and the squirrels drove me crazy last year. I tried covering the seedling area with hardware cloth, but as soon as I removed it they showed up and pulled 6" tall seedlings right out of the ground. I tried a couple of other things and resowed the seed 3x. By then I was determined to beat them, and I decided to try ground cayenne pepper. I sprinkled it around the edges of the bed. Watered the seedlings and sprinkled it on the leaves of the sunflowers and that was the end of the squirrels bothering them. I did the same thing this year and had success without having to resow three times. But I'm going through very large bottles of cayenne pepper powder, pretty fast. [g] I replace it after rain. I did get lazy once a couple of the sunflowers reached about 2ft tall and sure enough, I came out Friday morning to one very healthy pretty sunflower plant broken off just about at ground level. So, it's back to coating everything with red cayenne pepper religiously. :-) It does feel like a battle…lol.

Use distilled water ......... or water from a R/O water filtration system (what I use), or rain water, snow melt, or air conditioner/ dehumidifier condensate, all of which are deionized (no solutes harmful to plants) or very close to that state. N/a - leaves appearing at close to the rate they are being shed, or more leaves being shed than are appearing is an unsustainable condition. Expression of the pigment anthocyanin, which produces the maroon coloration of leaf margins, is usually most conspicuous in the very early and early developmental stage of the leaf; however, light levels are an overarching influence at all times. Brighter light will increase the contrast of the leaves' variegative coloration. Not to chide you, but to others, it's important to understand that because a plant tolerates something isn't necessarily an indication its provisional influence is advantageous to the plant. That a schefflera temporarily tolerates temperatures in the low thirties, or ponytail palms tolerate extended periods of drought and/or low fertility isn't reason enough to adopt those parameters as part of the plant's care regimen. The closer cultural conditions are to the limits the plant is genetically programmed to tolerate, the greater the stress the plant must tolerate to maintain viability. Stress quickly turns to strain, which is an unsustainable condition, unsustainable because under conditions of strain, the plant is using more energy than it's producing. In order to cope with severe stress and strain, plants have the ability to reduce the mass living mass the roots need to sustain, and the mechanism by which mass is diminished is my shedding parts to create a balance between the the plant's top volume and the size/efficiency of its root mass. Good point about the tea leaves. I did know coffee and tea grounds are not good for plants until all harmful chemicals have been leached during the composting process (whether in a compost pile or in the pot), but I wasn't aware of their high fluoride content. I did read that in humans the anti-oxidants act as a counter-measure to the potentiality of oxidative stress in humans. I have no idea if that carries over to plants, but I suspect not - just a guess. Something I wrote about the impact of coffee/tea or used grounds in container plantings: Coffee/Tea Grounds Forum discussions frequently center on the question of adding dilute coffee/tea or grounds to plants as a 'tonic', but Arabica (coffee) and Camellia (tea) are known for their toxic alkaloid (caffeine) content and their allelopathic affect on plants as well as autotoxic (poison to their own seedlings) effects on future generations. Caffeine interferes with root development by impairing protein metabolism. This affects activity of an important bio-compound (PPO) and lignification (the process of becoming woody), crucial steps for root formation. We also know that the tannins in both coffee and tea are known allelopaths (growth inhibitors). There are ongoing experiments to develop herbicides using extracts from both coffee and tea that cause me to want to say they might serve better as a nonselective herbicide than as a tonic. I would not use either (stale coffee or tea) by applying directly to my plants - especially containerized plants; nor would I add tea bags/coffee grounds to my container soils. Al