Hey Toni, thanks for your complements on my plants. Beleive it or not, all of my plants with the exception of the Aussie FIngerlime have been grown from seed. As a matter of fact, the Grapefruits were personally selected and liberated by me :) . I was out in AZ at the end of 2001, I was out for a evening drive with my wife and sister in law, we went to the highest point in Phoenix, then on the way back I passed a former manson with a radio station billboard on it with some sort of event going on at the grounds. It had a semi circular driveway and the entire very large front lawn was fileld with quite old Grapefruit trees, all seemingly the same type. When I went 3/4 of the way around I stoped said what the hell, jumped out looked at a nice looking tree and picked 2 grapefruits off the tree, the biggest and best ones I could find, and tossed them into the car. I had to wait 1.5 months for the box for some reason to come back to NY that I shipped em in but they were intact and whole. I had the seeds of one of the grapefruits planted for me by a friend and co-worker, since he had better facilities and room for that. Once they gre we split up the bunch. I kept 3 seedling and the other 2 went with him. I think he has one tree left. The other 3 have been growing with me ever since. Grapefruits #1 & 2 were so close together that I decided no to seperate them, they seem sto be doing great otherwise so it has never been a worry. The Key Limes were a bit simpler. Basically I bought a bag of "Susie" Key Limes in 2004, made a key Lime pie, saved the seeds, 15 seedlings grew. I lost 10 of them when I went away for 5 days and the pot they were in was not watered while I was gone. I planted the remainnig 5. One died in a month, another died suddenly of mysterious leaf loss the next year. Now of course I had a Key Lime almost die of the same mystery. The Lemon was planted September of 2005. I palnted 6 seeds,only 1 came up. I thought I had a second plant but it turned out initally to look like a weed. I figured I would let the weed keep the lemon company for a while. I was almost ready to pull the weed and then it flowered, then about a month later I found a whole bunch of small thai peppers growing on it...lol. It was a seedling for when I planted some in the same pot 2 years previous. As you can tell I just stuck the seed in existing dirt. The Kumquat I bought at the local Stop and Shop in December of 2005 and got 2 seedlings from that. I will be transplanting them soon. The Aussie FIngerlime I bought from a place in South Carolina. I will be looking up the name of the place when I get to work tomorrow. Anyway that is my story, so no grafts except on the Aussie, all is from seed. VTY -Mark

Oh my, serious scale on the stem. Begin by scraping it off; may be as easy a using a rag or paper towel and wipe vigorously. Then you can deal more easily with the scale that remain. Uncertain that the brown leaves are due to the same thing. Even so, take a close look at the undersides of the leaves.

Sometimes it is hard to tell from photos; I carry a 10X loupe with me when I am in the field. In my garden I don't carry it; but if I see something mysterious, I go and get my glass. Mites are especially difficult to see without a glass; you can see the symptoms of what is likely mites; but before I spray, I check with the glass to be sure it is mites. BTW, if you have aphids, it is important to control the ants; if you have ants, you WILL have aphids.

Tomato plants produce anthocyanin to protect against cold stress. I'm pretty sure those specks are the result of that. I see the same specks on my tomato plants sometimes--it has never progressed to disease. The reason I'm fairly sure it's tied to anthocyanin production is because I grew a high-anthocyanin variety (black beauty) last year, and that plant had those little specks on the stems all season and much more densely.