Hi Lena! These tropical hibiscus (hibisci?) don't grow as large as the hardy varieties, especially in my climate. but mine are off to a good start i must admit, this one is the smallest of the bunch, there are a few that were sown on the same day and they're twice it's size. i do have one i bought at the store which is getting huge, in spite of being told it wouldn't grow much because the dutch growers who sell them treat them with a growth retardant hormone... i think they missed mine for the dose lol i'd like the seedlings to get big, and the store one not to get any bigger, if that makes sense :) about the amount of substrate for adeniums, yes it does give them more stability and consistency of moisture, that is exactly what i was aiming for. low amount of nutrients and moisture but in a greater volume, it stimulates strong root systems for them, though it may not be the most ideal situation for root training. but i don't even think of root training in the first year so... I've found that measuring adeniums in age is less precise than measuring the growth spurts or phases they succesfully went through. for instance my seedlings sown in autumn didn't have a single true growth spurt with the cold winter as their first 6 months. it reduces their "adjusted" age as i like to call it by about a half. a seedling sown in early spring that goes through two or even three growth spurts in the warm season usually looks twice the age of a similar seedling that had a months of cold weather. if that makes any sense (second time :)) ). anyhow, here are a couple more pics with interesting developments from my herd :) this is a pair of twin seedlings (two embryos from the same seed). They are highly unique in leaf form and branch development in my collection. One is a slower grower than the other but otherwise they seem identical. They have poor caudex deveopment, but the overall plant form is very interesting to me and i'm willing to forgive the lack of chubiness :) this is what the larger one looks like now, notice there are bud clusters on every single branch tip. i can't wait to see the blooms,and later hope the smaller one will bloom to compare. two arabicum seedlings. i have a whole tray full of similar plants, loving how their form is developing. all of them are going into hibernation, thank god, so i can put them away and free more space on the windows. grafts. first one was incredibly hard to set up,the scion is a few mm in width and the rootstock is very young. seedling grafted onto rootstock notice how it is pushing out root nodes. i have no idea what to do with it. maybe try and airlayering setup and see if it will really send out roots to then detach it from the stock. two seedlings on one rootstock. i removed the stock bud you can see on the side, to keep all nutrients going to the scions. this plant looks pretty ugly now. i let it grow out because it will be trained in a cascade style in spring. pretty young plant, around a year old now.

I think my favorite is KARELIA X PALACE GARDEN BEAUTY. Too bad it doesn't like to open. I remember your clump shot of BLACK PLUSH X STARMAN'S QUEST. It was very striking, and I like this individual bloom too. It looks nice in any shade of red I guess. I don't like this version of TUXEDO JUNCTION X DUST BE DIAMONDS as much as I did the sibling. I had to go back and look at the other one to figure out why. In the other one, I loved the simplicity of it. This one has that cute tiny edging, the little bit of quilling, and seems to be a shade further from pure white. That gives it more interest and might make it more popular and/or more useful as a bridge plant, but for my tastes, it lost the simplicity that attracted me to the other one. Oh, and I nearly forgot to comment on "Long Tall Pinky" since it wasn't in the main post. I guess I see what you mean by looking like it comes from 1979 because it doesn't have a fancy edge or a big dark contrasting eye or other newer stuff, but it is still very nice. I like the bright green throat that changes to a bright yellow before changing to the eye color. Casey

Thanks for sharing the news Mike. I had already drooled over them when Loïc (on iris photos) shared the photos and descriptions in his flickr page, but it sure was nice to download the '09 catalog and not pay $6 for it. It's good to see you back Shadow, I hope that arm's healed well. I have to tell you about my new order process. I've recently discovered the iris friendly attributes of an old program named Excel and I'm using it for so many different kinds of garden organization. Now, when I make out an order, I type the variety name in column A and the price in column B. I then enter all the varieties I want, calculate the shipping, and add that in column B below the iris prices. Then I format the cell at the bottom of column B to calculate the sum of the column. With all that set up I then go back over the list (as many times as it takes) deleting varieties. The total will always update with each deletion and I recalculate the shipping often to make sure the grand total's as accurate as possible. (I bet someone that knows how to use the program much better than this self-taught, by trial and error, Excel user could even tell you how to make it automatically update the shipping too) This way I don't have to write out sheet after sheet by hand and I know right away once I've reached the total I can afford. That's an awfully long explanation for something that you may already know about, but it sure is helpful for me (now that I know how to do it). What I would have done with my spare time, over several days (when you consider all the sources and catalogs), is now finished in one sitting. I hope that's news to someone. :) Brock

Wow! Must be exciting to have first blooms. So how many years did it take from seed to bloom? You have a longer, hotter growing season, so I'm sure your can do it in less time than ours up here.