Jay! Your tree looks great too! I save alot of Al's post and print them. :) The 2 tree's I have in the 5-1-1 were almost dead too. They just took off and came right back! Now the roots have filled the pots and will need to be moved to a bigger container soon. I'm like you and many other's and wont go back to store bought mixes again for anything. :) Hi Mike, You did all the work. :) I just hung around offering support to my good friend. ;) If anything, I owe you for comming to my rescue almost a year ago, and pointing out these mixes and the container forum.. ;) Yes, we do owe most of the credit to Al~ :) His support and patience with our endless questions, we'll always be greatful for. :) My plants are happy too.. So that means I am. :) For the first time in yrs! I get to enjoy them instead of fight with them all summer. I have a pear tree, and appricot in containers. A plum in ground. Just got my fig last week. And orange and lemon in containers.. but with soil from yard still, and not happy! LOL! This weekend i'm going to look at the citrus at a new place I went to. 20 acers to browse! Plants, tree's and cactus and succulents! Heaven..LOL!!! Oh, I never said Michael was "involved" :). He doesn't go near the garden unless it's to see what's ready to eat. LOL! But he see's how well everything is doing, and doesn't mind me spending the money now, because plants actually live now. Were getting 14" terra cotta's for them too. I make him look at your posts and Al's and Josh. ;) When he saw how well you guys were doing with your plants, he was all for me trying these mixes. It's been awhile since i've heard "oh, something new to kill" ROFL! It was so bad, my mail man would write R.I.P on a box if he knew it was a plant from ebay. lol... My mom and friend are asking me to get them set up with the mixes too. :) I wish you could take me shopping too! ROFL! I hate driving around. lol! If I get a chance i'll try and get some pics of the tree's strugling in the soil from the yard... then after being in the gritty for a few weeks and post them later.

Engadye, Sorry to see your coconut tree struggling. For the past few years, I've been stringing Christmas lights around mine. I also used a vinyl table cloth with flannel back to wrap around it whenever the temperature dropped further down. Your idea of wrapping it around with a comforter might have worked for you in the past. Don't give up on it too quickly yet. Mine is also looking not too good now ... Hope the weather will warm up for us soon and our coconut trees will all survive.

Which Parajubaea do you have, and how long have you had it? When those were being popularized 15 years ago (ish) by Martin Gibbons et al, thinking at the the time was they would need cool summer climates to survive. And certainly, no where in TX fits that description except maybe the peaks of the Guadalupe mountains. Mind you it's proving that not every high-elevation plant requires high-elevation conditions, but it would be interesting to know this one is also an exception. The exceptions are probably more common with monocots. For example my Thamnocalamus tesselatus only experiences relatively comfortable summers in its native environment but it has no trouble growing for me in the humid Chesapeake Bay country. (even the lowlands of Kwa-Zulu Natal are not as hot in summer as you might expect...it can essentially be considered a maritime-subtropical hybrid climate)

I've had several coconuts over the years. I treat them like a short-lived novelty of a good trip to the tropics. After several futile attempts at sprouting my own cocunuts that I collected in Hawaii or South Florida, I realized there was a better way to get a coconut from my travels. While digging through a pile of coconuts that had dropped from a canopy of mature palms, I noticed several that were growing small trees. I finally discovered one that would be perfect to take home with me--a small coconut that was not on the sand, rather it was perched on a pile of shells. It had a small (1") nub of its first sprout and a tiny root sprout on the bottom. At home I put it in a pot with potting soil and there it thrived for years. I was lucky to have a VERY sunny south facing plate glass window/sliding doors that flooded my DC-area apartment with all-day sunlight in the winter. In the spring, summer and fall the palm went out on the balcony where I turned it regularly so the all the fronds would get direct sunlight over time. Spider mites were a problem. I would have to take a wet paper towel and wipe the fronds every week or so. Fortunately there were never more than 4 or 5, so it wasn't too labor intensive. They key to my success was the big, warm, sunny window and an easy move out to the balcony in the summer. After a year or two, their new swords would open to reveal more and more splits so they'd look like a real palm, much like the photos "US MARINE" posted above. Eventually the palm would get too big or would just fail to thrive. I was lucky enough in my travels that I could pick up a new sprouted nut off of some tropical beach and start all over again. My last one didn't survive my move down to the Delaware Beaches. The house isn't as warm and sunny as my condo was and I moved during the winter months. I had to cut back some of the biggest fronds and it never took to the cooler, dimmer location. When growing a coconut indoors. Just treat it like a treasured, temporary visitor.