The thing I like about about a 50-50 sand and peat mix is the sand never breaks down and drainage is assured, but I'm guessing if pH is a huge issue, pure peat's lack of drainage may be an advantage- especially where there's not much rain during the growing season. You needn't add as much alkaline water to keep soil moist. Until I started reading about using pure peat for blueberries on this forum I'd never known you could use peat by itself as a suitable potting medium. It's hard enough to even get wet without a wetting agent. Last year we were discussing a southern grower's good results in pots and he put small plants in large pots with 50-50 ground pine bark and peat as I recall.

Hi Brad, Welcome to the Oklahoma Forum and thank you so much for the kind words. We have many knowledgeable gardeners here and all of us learn so much from one another. Onions ought to be easy to grow here, but they really aren't. Your onions are forming seedheads because they are undergoing a process known as bolting, which simply means that stress has caused them to begin setting seed. Once it starts, you can't stop it, and once the seed stalk forms, the onion usually begins to split in half, stops maturing and needs to be pulled while you can still salvage it and use it as an edible. Onions are biennial plants and that means they grow vegetatively during their first year, undergo a period of cold-induced dormancy, and then produce seed the second year. However, cold stress at the wrong time in their growing cycle can fool them into setting seed early and that is why your plants are setting seed now. There is very little you can do to prevent cold stress from inducing bolting in onions. Here's the key thing to remember, but since you cannot control the weather, there's still not a lot you can do. If your plants are larger in diameter than a No. 2 pencil (about 1/4") and they are exposed to temperatures below 45 degrees for about 10 to 14 days (the number of days seems to vary slightly by variety) once they are that large, they are likely to bolt. So, one prolonged cold spell can cause it, but so can the occasional cold night or two here and there. Once the cold temperatures warm up again following the cold-induced dormancy, the plants "think" it is their second year and start forming a seedstalk. In the future, you can try to avoid this by choosing only the smallest transplants--those that are pencil-sized in diameter or smaller. The small ones still will go into cold-induced dormancy but they won't bolt. Mulching them can help by keeping the below-ground portion of the plant a little warmer. You also can grow them in a greenhouse (if you can keep it from heating up too quickly) or by growing them under a low plastic tunnel or in a cold frame. Finally, I have had better success the last couple of years (with very erratic see-sawing temperatures) by planting later than the recommended planting dates for onions in our area. So, it is your choice as far as what to do with the bolting onions. You can remove them and use them in cooking as green onions. However, if you want and if you have the space, you can leave them in the ground and let them set seed and flower. The big balls of tiny onion flowers are very attractive to pollinators and to beneficial insects. Every year, I plant several dozen onions in my flower borders and let them bloom there to attact beneficials and pollinators. Mine are blooming now too. There is a very fine line between planting onions "too early" or "too late". I used to always plant my onions as early as I could, but the last three years it has paid off to plant them as late as possible.....but not so late that bulbing starts before they've reached a decent size. Dawn

Hey FOAS! I am on the tail end of my remodel stuff for this home - Two bathrooms, skylights, flooring, and etceteras. At my previous home I reno'ed the kitch, all baths and other stuff. I would start cutting costs now with this first bath if you still have a bath and kitchen to go - AND you want to sell the home. You can get a very sophisticated and expensive look without using expensive materials. So my vote is stick with the flat tile. The slate gray tile MAY go with the cherry - got any pictures? If you need a place to upload your pix, email me from GW - I hooked my email back up. Send me your phone number while you're at it and I'd be happy to call you too.

Dear Ben, Traffic in these forums is extremely slow, given I haven't seen your post before. Perhaps it is too late to provide any thoughts to you now - and I am neither a horticulturalist nor a native propagator, but there must be some experts available to consult. I would suggest you try an approach to the Department of Primary Industries, Qld, as they have people on staff who, if they cannot directly help you, should be able to point you in the right direction. Obviously joining an Australian plant society will give you access to lots of experience. The horticulture staff of such as University of Qld may be able to help - or provide access to more library material. Also landcare groups generally have skills through re-forestation programs. The Qld botanical gardens also may be able to help - and the Parklands one - very helpful gardeners. Just send an e-mail to get things rolling with any of them and you may open the right door. Good luck anyway, hope it works out for you.