Tiffany, I have the D. surculosa 'Milky Way' which hasn't flowered for me (that I've noticed). The other surculosa, no idea which variety, was on my place when I bought it and was a rampant multi-stemmed bush covering quite an area. But it always flowers and pumps out the fragrance like D. fragrans. It also seeds a lot and I have lots of seedlings from it (weeds in fact). The D. thalioides I bought and it grew well and flowers regularly (during the coldest time of year) with the fragrance carrying throughout the garden. When I had to have some very large trees removed it got burnt badly by the sun, but that never slowed the flowering. My D. goldieana was near it and doing poorly, too much sun, poor soil, and total neglect on my part. Before the large trees were removed (I was worried it would be crushed by the tree removers and finally put out of its misery) I put it in a pot in another part of the garden. It's in filtered sunlight, more shade than sun, and is coming good. Should have done that years ago because it's a fairly slow grower. Of course, it's never flowered before, but maybe some day. It's interesting with the names D. thalioides and aubreyana. I mentioned this sort of an occurance in a previous post. Someone misidentified an aubreyana and lodged a specimen as thalioides. This was later rectified and it's thalioides name became a synonym for it. However, thalioides is still a legitimate name. So you have the case of the same name being both a legitimate one and a synonym at the same time, but not for the same plant at the same time.

Hello Aaron, I'm very new to avocados- have just had one for about six months. I primarily grow plumeria and citrus, but have just one dwarf Fuerte avocado. Have a 16' x 16' indoor greenhouse which has 8 T5HO 4 foot lights. I also have some additional LED lights for the avocado and citrus trees. I live in a wet, cold and very grey year round climate, so everything stays indoors in the greenhouse. My avocado is 4 feet tall and in a 5 gallon container. It's in a 5:1:1 soil (5 parts Repti-bark, 1 part perlite and 1 part Miracle grow potting soil). I water approximately every 5 days about 8 cups water. Fertilizer is a half dose of Osmocote, and then 1/2 dose of Foliage Pro and Pro-Tekt every other week. I bought the tree from Four Winds. It looked terrific when I bought it but within a month leaves dropped and turned brown. Now it looks beautiful again- lots of green healthy leaves popping. I'm out of town at the moment but will post a pic when I get home. Best wishes. Nancy

Yeah, I had a Natal Mahogany and you're right; I don't remember it looking like that at all but don't know what your tree is. P.S., BTW, I am looking to replace my Natal Mahogany (not a true mahogany), those make terrific plants but must never be permitted to dry out (my mistake).

For ficus and other tropicals, I use the gritty mix with a 1:1:1 ratio. If you're using a conventional container (as opposed to a squat, bonsai pot) , you can start with screened gritty in the bottom 1-3" of the pot, and the rest can be gritty mix made with unscreened Turface MVP, which will save a fair amount of effort and should reduce waste (of the Turface fines) considerably, which also represents a monetary gain.Using that type of layering will ensure no perched water but will increase the length of intervals between waterings. Plus - what ToC said just above. A tip about the Fb 'Too Little': It has a distinct tendency to put out new branches just below an existing branch. We know that photosynthate moves downward in the cambium, but it feeds the branch from below. The new branches that grow below existing branches tap into the nutrient stream and rob the branch above of photosynthate, which significantly weakens the larger established branches - often to the point of loss of viability; so, scrape those branches off with some sort of blade as soon as you spot them. This is not a problem with the species tree - only the cv 'Too Little'. Al