Hello Everyone, Hi Newgen!!! Glad to see you here... I wanted to say that first of all you are so fortunate to have those ingredients available...since you live on the West Coast you have that great Big R available...i have talked to the gentleman who has that company after i read about this recipe on the Plumeria forum... I cannot get any of these products here on the East Coast...and the amount of $ it would take to ship would be extremly expensive....i would love to be able to find large bags of Pumice as well...so i had to adjust my own recipe to make it close to the items that you have available... Lava rock was the closest item that i could use...as well a finding hard wood bark... This is why i have been searching for other ways to make my mix more fast draining....the Plumeria love the mix that you are currently using...however...since i cant make this mix or even try and adjust to make it better for me...i started with the gritty mix...i have repotted some of my Plumeria but not all into the gritty mix. I have started using Foliage Pro as well... I hope this helps you...finding the right ingredients really is challenging sometimes..but if you know what you want and why you want it.. it is the greatest reward!! Your Plants and trees will really thank you... Remember my climate is different from yours..we here on the East Coast have a bigger challenge to keep these Beautiful Plumeria happy!!! Everyone loves to see the sweet rewards of finally seeing those gorgeous blooms... Waiting for two years for a single bloom is hard enough..lol..but to give your trees the best mix will make them produce and continue to grow the best way that they can... Mike has worked very hard and has had great success with his Plumeria living up in New England using the Gritty Mix. The best advice that i can give would be to try and see which works for you... You have the recipe from one of the best!!! This recipe is from Jack from Kimi's Plumeria... Here for the Gritty Mix you have the recipe from The best... Al !! Who is very knowledgable as well....read up on all you can here..this is why all of my C & S are in the Gritty Mix...i love how it works and the reasons why it works... I will continue to repot my Plumeria in the Gritty Mix...the ones that are repotted will be very happy campers!!! lol... but i have a few more to go...like 30 or so...LOl...i stopped counting at some point!!! Good luck with your choice of mix... I am very happy with the results that i have had already with my Jades and Night Blooming Cereus...they love this wonderful fast draining mix... Al has been so helpful to me when i first started looking for the ingredients for the gritty mix...even calling around to local dealers and directing me to people who could help me with what i was looking for... Thank you AL for always helping me and always being there to help us all out with all of our questions...you really have been wonderful to us...Thank you again for all of your help!!! The people here on this forum will also be a great help to you...very friendly and helpful... Nice to see you here Newgen!!! If i could post pics...i would...Im still having trouble with Photobucket... Anyone else having trouble with Photobucket? I may have to go to another source for my pictures...this has been going on for over a week now... Take care everyone!! Laura in VB

Nice list, thanks! I have a dog, so the indoor plants I have are nontoxic: an african violet, a nontoxic fern, culinary herbs in hubby's Aerogarden, and a goldfish plant (which I love!! It is so cool looking.) Used to have a Persian violet which was fabulous and fragrant-- smelled great for about 2 months, but it eventually finished flowering, sickened and died. It was replaced by the goldfish plant.

The mushrooms are normal in normal, healthy soil. You don't have to pick them, because there are hundreds of millions more fungi in every few cc's of soil. You don't want to get rid of the soil fungi. You want them to be healthy. Healthy means normal and normal means no disease. You can be sure your soil is normal and healthy by applying organic fertilizer 3x per year. And as for organic fertilizer, I have just the thing for you. Alfalfa pellets (rabbit chow). Apply at a rate of 20 pounds per 1,000 square feet. With that you should be able to let the tortoise to eat as much as he/she wants. You can fix the bumpy soil by filling the low spots with soil or sand. Also keep your mower at the highest setting. And if Mother Nature is providing at least an inch of rain every 2 weeks, you might not ever have to water the grass. You might need to worry about drainage, however. With hard soil, even when wet, my first thought would be to apply baby shampoo. But with a tortoise, I'm not sure. I don't think the shampoo will hurt the tortoise, especially since you'll be washing it down into the soil. The application rate for shampoo is 100 ml per 100 square meters. Use a shampoo like baby shampoo that you can see through. Don't use one that has conditioners in it. And don't use dish soap because that has anti=bacterial agents in it. Baby shampoo is just a simple formula that seems to work well for softening the soil. It allows the moisture to percolate down deeper into the soil which results in softening it. You might need to reapply in 2 weeks. If that doesn't do it, you can double or triple or quadruple the amount with no problems to the soil. Again, no idea what the tortoise might have to say about it.

I am not in your zone, but I do love redbuds and have several varieties. I love Forest Pansy, but should disclose that without a fair amount of sun it just turns into dark, not red, leaves, similar to many of the Japanese maples. Obviously if you plant it as an understory tree like most redbuds want, the window of opportunity for really red leaves is slim, as the tree will no longer be red when the trees above it are in full leaf. Best location seems to be almost full sun if you want to keep it red. Of course, it has an oversized leaf, so that also means that it will need to be monitored more often to make sure it does not wilt down, which many of the fancies will do. I do offer up the Hearts of Gold is another newer variety that is supposed to do well out in full or almost full sunlight, with oversized leaves and the color of a golden delicious apple. What a beauty. All of these newer varieties were accidental seedlings discovered by someone who caught that they were special, many at a young age. Yes, they are patented and propagated via graft, so you are supposed to have a permit to produce more of these trees. Also, a plus for some, these guys tend to set very little, if any, seed. Lavender Twist will set less than 30 pods on an adult tree, all 25% the size of a normal pod, all sterile. I have seen seed for Forest Pansy offered on Ebay with the disclaimer that it may not breed true, but I am very suspicious that the seed may have been harvested from any branches belonging to the root parent, making it plain old redbud from the forest, but not a Forest Pansy. Don't forget some of the older varieties - Oklahoma redbud, the Texas redbud, and the weeping redbud, Traveller. Traveller is the one I want, but couldn't find at anywhere a resonable price. My Lavender Twist is similar, but not the same. A problem that I do not see addressed is predation of young trees by deer. Of course, in NJ, deer prey on most plants. They will chomp off a 2 or 3 year old tree at the base, and strip the leaves off of the lower limbs of older trees. Imagine my surprise to walk out and see a whole you could drive a car through in my Lavender Twist. They had eaten leaves, branches, twigs, everything but the trunk. I know that many do not like to hear this, but they are as bad as any noxious pest we freely kill - rats, mice, or groundhogs, for a few. So destructive, populations soaring as they have found new buffets of food as the gardeners foolishly believe that there is anything you can grow that the deer will not learn to eat. OK, that was my pet peeve for the day. Plant those redbuds, make the world a more beautiful place, one tree at a time. Happy gardening!