million bells: can take some good sun, or will also do well with morning sun, then dappled shade in afternoon. lobelia & the N.G. impatien: morning sun, then dappled shade. sounds to me like too much watering is going on. unless your temps are over 100 degrees or something like that, watering twice weekly seems more realistic. this guideline also depends on the size of your plants. if it is a small plant in a small pot, it may dry out more quickly. million bells will wilt when they want water. once they get water they should perk back up. I'd water one day, then keep a sharp eye on these plants for the next few days. If they look good, don't water until several days have passed. lobelia reseeds and grows around for me in all kinds of places. I don't think it really needs a lot of water, but will tolerate it to some degree. For example, it has reseeded in a tub where I have elephant ears, which do like a lot of water. But I still only drench that tub once a week, unless it is really really hot. the N.G. impatiens are too much trouble for me to grow. one thing i like to do with my container plants on the deck is to mist them daily. get you a spray nozzle that has a mist setting and hit them each morning. then do your regular watering twice a week and see how it goes.

I've never tried potatoes in trenches before, just in a "hill". I've always been told to cut off the shoots if they were too long, but I think potatoes would grow either way anyway. So Brenda and Gillian, have you always just used your old potatoes for seed the following year? My mother swears on getting new seed every few years, because she says the harvest seems to diminish after awhile using the same potatoes year after year. My grandmother said that years back neighbors would trade potatoes for seed, and the thought was that the potatoes would get "used to" the soil in your garden and not produce as well. So I was just wondering what everyone's practices here was......buy new seed or use old?

Patience my UK Adenium friend, patience. ;-) Where would the fun be, If everyone could grow a nice specimen in a few months? Rome wasn't built in a day - neither are the spectacular Thai Adenium specimen! ;-) IMHO, the fun thing about being an amateur plant collector is to raise and grow the plants from seeds yourself. I used to buy a lot of mature succulents and caudiciforms but somehow I got tired of it. You don't "bond with" those plants like you do with your own "offspring", simply because you haven't watched them grow during the years. Who said "nerd"? ;-)

Why is it bad news that a grocer was selling navel oranges? Most do, don't they? Problem is, a lot of grocery store navels around here are just terrible. They are picked too soon, the shipping takes too long, and then they are stored too long and dry out. Blechhh. BTW, 'navel' because the dimple on the end looks like a human navel and not because it was developed in the Navy (Naval). LOL!