I use a Butterwort called Ping but he is three years old and leaves are paper thin. I think he has alsheimer's since he is not catching the few fungus gnats I see flying around. Time to replace, I'm sure. Some people are saying thrips and gnats are attracted more to blue flowers and to blue cards over yellow. Helen Van Pelt Wilson wrote her books in the 50s and possibly new studies need to be made, but she says gnats and thrips can be seen more easily on blue flowers over other colors--not that they are more attracted to blue. I guess a study is necessary to prove whether or not blue is favored over other colors. Nancy

Hi..I'm writing this on behalf of sumala..I wanted to let everyone know that he passed away this past Wednesday April 25 at the Veteran's Hospital in WPB. He thought he had the flu but just couldn't seem to shake it. We went to the VA on Monday thinking we'd get some meds and he'd be coming back home but that wasn't the case. I suppose our Creator in Heaven needed an avid gardener up there because he passed away Wednesday from heart failure. None of us, including him, had any idea that he might not be coming home..He rode his bike daily and was super active especially in his garden! I know he really enjoyed 'chatting' and sharing gardening tips with you all! My thanks to Minderella who helped me to get onto the site so that I could let everyone know-as you can guess, he's already been truly missed. When we would come home he was either on the computer chatting with different ones about his garden or out in it-so it's still hard walking into the house & he's not here..I will probably be signing on using his name so that I can read some of his posts-I was just reading all of his posts here along with everyone else's and the info will help the family to keep his garden going. He was also really getting into 'putting up' the different things he was growing so this will also help to preserve waht is grown. Thank YOU ALL for being such wonderful friends of his-I know he respected & enjoyed all of you. I'm not sure where all he would gon in GardenWeb but I would appreciate if you spread the word..Anyone may also email me at tirtle1@aol.com if you'd like. Thanks again,keep your green thumbs up (and hopefully ours will turn green as well) Take care & God bless

Do I need this amount of light This is the key question and must be answered before you can make progress. How many plants are you raising? How much area needs lighting? How many fluorescents are you planning to replace? A 1000W metal halide would cover something in the region of 50 square feet, perhaps a little less if used on large mature plants. Of course if you only want to light half that space, there are 400W metal halides ;) Area of less than about 20 square feet are best lit by fluorescents of some kind or other. Metal halides are well suited to providing intense light to large plants over a fair area, but can be a nuisance for evenly lighting large areas of smaller plants. Obviously metal halides are also not well suited to lighting trays of plants on several shelves, they would need to be laid out more or less in a single area with the light hanging a few feet above them. You might also want to examine why your fluorescents are not getting the job done. The two main reasons why fluorescents don't do the job on taller plants is that you have old lights or that you have poor reflectors (or no reflectors at all). Modern fluorescents are anything up to 100% brighter than what you would have bought at Home Depot 10 years ago, and of course fluorescents of that era lose a considerable amount of light after the first thousand or two hours. Your statement that "you can't raise the lights very high" tells me that you have poor reflectors or no reflectors at all, so the light spills out everywhere except the plants. Your solution is to have the tubes almost touching the leaves but of course that doesn't work for tall plants.

I'll look a little later. We had a chicken from across the street, who made herself at home here. We called her "miss pretty" and she took to hopping up a 40 foot ladder with scaffolding to get to roof to get to the maple tree where she would roost at night outside our window. When the roof job was finished, she began to roost on the rose arbor out back. We went on vacation, and she got killed and eaten by some critter. WE were all so sad. I never wanted to eat her, but I sure have dreamed about keeping chickens ever since then. I apolgize for the hijack, but needed to reminise a bit.