I had a BEAP offer recently and as usual I stated that whoever responded had to post on my offer and send me an email and not to use GW's email. I received a GW email from her and noticed that she had nothing on her member page and had just registerd. Since she had her email address on her member page, I sent her my address, received her stamps and sent her the seed I was offering. I don't really mind. I hope she does plant them and I hope they do well. From now on my requirements will be even more strict. I feel that everyone should take time to fill out their member page. Thanks again to Sue for all she does. She is truely GW's resident busy body! I mean that in a good way because you are always very "busy" helping every "body". jim_6b

Another Blast from the past: Mode/Shell/On the Team/Roses are red... lots o names to out wit Spike i forget them all... But Linda C is a Name I recall..back in the days when SHE was a new grammie LOL. We are back in MA,with an acre to play on. But not enough sun for roses. Learning about Shade gardening lol. The twins for those who do recall are now teen agers. The baby that was born on the days of the big split is 6, and he has a little sister who is 4.

Yeah, I understand that of course they don't know my email address when contacting me through gardenweb. So, I don't really know the solution. And really, I don't mind getting emails asking me about my kitchen -- it's flattering of course. And I always do try to respond right away. It's basically this "identify yourself" process that momj47 mentioned. I'm just not going to go through that. What's the answer? I guess my suggestion is for the emailer to make sure his/her email contact is available through gardenweb, then ask me to answer through that, and then make sure gardenweb is an acceptable sender for the spam filter. IOW, the sender should go to the effort to make sure it's easy for the person replying to get through, not the other way around.

Yes, people, it's another long post. It's a complex subject. Deal with it and if you have an opinion, I'll print it out and stick it in the pocket next to my heart. As for the rest of you, you know where you can stick it. :-) Unfortunately, they always seem to know it's winter. :-) But that should help! "Then I made up a cocktail of southern ag citrus nutritional spray, and bayer 3 in 1." I'm not sure about how edibles (if you eat the produce off that tree) have to be handled post-spraying and for how long, but I'd check on that. For mild outbreaks caught early in the future, I'll avoid recommending a bit of soap because, although it works perfectly, the screaming will start again and while I'm armored and don't care, I'm sure you would rather it didn't. But in the interest of not recommending 1/2 tsp of soap in 1 gallon of water, spray, let sit for 5 minutes, then rinse off in the shower, which you'll note I did not recommend, but will kill adult mites. Iron tone is another organic fertilizer. Again, I'm not going to take you to task for this. By the time any of the major issues above (and they do play a factor) are a problem, you're going to need to repot the durned trees anyway--which you should be doing. I find the arguments spurious at best. But even I don't recommend more than 20% of fertilizer as solid organics, and it does seem like you're going past it (too much absolutely will clog the soil's ability to naturally drain itself and it does need time to decay appropriately--this takes longer for potted plants). Most of the...uh, esteemed opponents...above ignore the 10-20% recommendation and seem to think I'm advocating pouring it on by the kiloton. I'm not. Save the rest for outside. In the future, I'd recommend ferrous sulfate heptahydrate, which will both acidify the soil a bit AND add iron. Miracid's fine, but don't overuse it. Citrus trees prefer a soil pH of 6.0 to 7.0 and Miracid will push your pH below that. I'd say get Miracle Gro or any of the recommended brands above...or really anything else with micros in it. Honestly? They're all about the same and they all completely dissolve in agitated water. These days, it's even easy to DIY your own if you want to! It's possible to correct pH...but easier just to repot the tree. Iron accessibility is just fine at a pH of 6 to 7. (Forget most pH home tests, they're awful, and the few that are "good" have variances of 0.2 to 0.3, which is...tolerable...and still tell you absolutely nothing about how to fix the problem if there is a problem. Do you add Ca, Mg, K, dispel Na? The test is silent on these points, but if you're using it to tell you if you need to repot, that would be acceptable). Yep, sorry for the information dump, but that pretty much covers it. I'm sure somebody will complain about it somewhere since they already did... :-)