I've used both these mixes from American Soil for years for general landscaping projects. If your question regards extra sensitive succulents that need superb drainage, then you would probably be better off making your own mix of 1/3 native soil, 1/3 ultra bedding and 1/3 pumice, and mounding up slightly(at least 9 to 12 inches), to maximize drainage. Most Aloes and Agaves and many other more common landscape South African and Mexican succulents are more broadly tolerant of our clay loam soils without extraordinary measures; but it does pay to know your plants. Also, if the area in question gets full sun and doesn't have runoff from other areas adding to too much water, creating perfect drainage in our normal winters isn't critical. Speaking from experience with using both "Multi-Purpose" soil and the "Ultra-bedding Mix" as potting mix for succulents; the "Multi-Purpose" can stay too wet in heavy rainfall events when used as a container mix, and things like Kalanchoe pumila, Dudleyas and Graptopetalum pentandrum have rotted out with this mix. When I want a soil mix that I know will work for especially sensitive plants, I generally do use the "Ultra bedding" with perlite with pumice, in one third ratios. If this is going into containers where I don't want water run-off to stain paving, I substitute "Ultra potting" for the "Ultra bedding", as the tannins and chicken manure in the "Ultra bedding" can stain badly. As this mix is light in nutrients, you'll probably want to use a time release fertilizer mixed into the soil, or liquid feed as often as needed.

Juper, I believe it's Aloe 'Hercules', too, not A. d., A. b. or A. 'Goliath'. I think A. 'H' is a cross of A. b. and A.d. isn't it? That seems like a fair price to me, too. I hope you're able to put it into the ground where, I should think, it will flourish. I don't know if this one handles summer watering well, but I suspect it's inherited the A.b. characteristic, so I reckon it will flourish with some summer water. Nomenclatural System Spelling Nag Jeff sez: Please note that hybrids are written differently than species. You're into Aloes, so I'm giving you this advice so you may write them correctly (since you're writing them often, you might as well do so correctly, right?).

Beautiful palm! I also wonder why they arent used more in Cali. They are very common in the Southeast and they are the second most common of the cold tolerant palms around here in NYC (I know of about 5 that are protected and survive each winter, the largest is 14 feet tall!). And not to mention they also make edible fruit. Pretty great palms. The ones in these pics look really nice. They are going to make a great overhead canopy in a few years when they start forming a trunk! -Alex

boy i'll second that, jeffinmonterey. we waited over 6 months for our city to approve our plans and grant us the honor of a permit. they also put us into the design review fasttrack (which dinged us 1800 bucks) all because they couldn't visualize and, ostensibly, are biased against modern design. need to keep the mayberry aesthetic up you know. luckily our architect really pushed us into doing a model early on so when we plunked that down on the table during the design review meeting, the two bluehairs looked back and forth between their bi-focals and said "you know, this doesn't look anything like your drawings." they were wrong, though, it did. anyway, sorry for the rant. we interviewed 4 architects. three i found on the AIASF website and one was a friend of a friend who is a one woman operation in the city. we wound up going with her because we liked her vision and her personality. all four architects came to our house to scope things out and wound up staying between 1 to 2 hours. we did pay a retainer to get things going with the one we chose. she works on a percentage basis, 12% - 15% of the finished price tag. we never felt completely comfortable with that so we agreed to pass the baton after her initial drawings were complete. they were actually very detailed. my husband and i felt we didn't need so much hand holding through to the end and we have brought her in to tweak some things along the way. for that we pay her an hourly fee. we have had some stumbling points when things moved from her to the contractor's draftsman but our contractor is great at working these things out as we progress. it's been about 5 weeks since they kicked us out to start and the framers are really buzzing along. so far i'm quite happy. i'll happily pass on names and numbers if you'd like to contact me directly.