First, it's a fallacy that succulents like to go dry before you water them. Succulents PREFER an evenly moist soil. The problem is they react poorly to saturated soil, so if your soil supports any significant amount of perched water, you have a problem. Succulents gone dry suffer drought stress just like other plants. Fortunately, they generally tolerate that stress a little better than other commonly grown houseplants, and are able to recover. That built in ability to TOLERATE, shouldn't be taken as a preference. Plants tolerate a lot they don't like. If you have foliage at the ends of branches, you need to determine what's causing it. The big 3 are low light, low N supply, and root congestion. If roots are congested, it won't matter how much light or N you supply, the growth will tend to concentrate near apices and your plant will have that 'poodle' look; so be thinking 'repot' if the plant needs it, and around Father's day is a good time to do it. You can use the Miracle-Gro. It's a fine fertilizer for containerized plants. For bonsai though, fertilizers that get their N from nitrate sources are better because they tend to keep growth compact by reducing internode length and keeping leaves smaller. If you DO use the MG, you'll need to be sure your plants are getting an adequate supply of Ca & Mg, because they are lacking in the MG. If you're making your own soil and didn't use lime (dolomite), you'll need to address this issue. I won't get to deeply into it until I find out what you're using for soil. Avoid watering in sips. The practice ensures that soluble salts will build up in the soil, causing a drought reaction that could cause shedding of foliage and branches, or poor looking foliage and poor growth. Use a soil that allows you to flush the soil when you water. For bonsai, nothing else is appropriate and will lead to problems. You can review pictures upthread. Soils like Josh, Parabellum, and I use will all please you and your plant. A picture would be nice ..... Al

Hi John, Whether or not you can root them depends on what you're calling a cutting! If you mean individual leaves, I don't believe there's any way at all to root those. If you mean you're cutting off the stems (with leaves attached), theoretically it should be possible to root those, but I've tried it two or three times and like I told Misty, have been totally unsuccessful so far--which REALLY surprised me! As I suggested to Misty, above, the quickest and easiest way to start new individual plants from an established lamb's ear is to remove some of the individual shoots that are already well rooted or obviously starting to root and stick them in small pots till they're rooted to the bottom of the pots, and then plant them outside--after hardening them off if it's still cold out! To get the rooted shoots, gently dig around the outside of the plant to loosen the soil and then kind of dig around a little bit with your hands, lifting up on some of the outside shoots, and you'll probably see right away some rooted stems that you can cut off--or just pull/break off. If you decide to try rooting some completely unrooted ones, when you cut them off, cut them almost the whole way down to the crown of the plant. That will force new growth to come up from the base of the plant, rather than getting multiple shoots coming out of the end of a stem that's already several inches long, which would just make the plant look all leggy and floppy! If you manage to root some unrooted pieces, please come back here and tell us about it! I'd love to find out if it really is possible! I looked thru my (many) pics in hopes of finding a couple lamb's ear ones that might explain what I mean by the "outside shoots," but I don't seem to have taken many lamb's ear pics over the years! Here are a couple--that may or may not help! The first is my plant the year after I put it in--a very small plant I had gotten at one of the swaps. You can't see the base of the stems, but you can see the tips of all the different individual shoots that make up the whole plant. The second one is a couple years later when it's just starting to grow in spring, after I've cleaned all the old ratty foliage off from the previous year. Because the leaves are still small, you can see all the way down to the bottom where the individual stems are going into the soil. Those individual stems are what you want to gently lift up far enough to see if they're adequately rooted to be able to remove them to successfully start them in a pot. [Click on the pic to open it in WebAlbums, and then you can click on the little magnifier on top, wait for it to load, and then click the + in the top left corner to get it as big as possible and then drag it to see the area you want to look at.] In this pic it's easiest to see where the individual shoots are going into the soil on the top left corner of the plant! Mine is considerably bigger now than in either of those pics, but I have the flowerless kind, so they don't spread as much as the blooming kind. If you have the kind that blooms you should have new shoots coming up all over the place, and you should very easily be able to remove rooted shoots to start more. Fluorescent lites, in my opinion, are the best things you can use for growing inside. They're inexpensive, and they don't burn plants even if the plants grow right up into the bulbs, and since keeping the source of the lite close to the plants is important, using something that doesn't burn them makes it a lot easier. I used to use cool white, but I don't think it makes any difference what type they are! Good luck! Let us know how it works out for you! Skybird This post was edited by skybird on Sun, Mar 2, 14 at 16:05

Bill, thanks so much for mentioning that floor installation may also include removal of old flooring - forgot about that - too many things to think of! Well, I think the deal is probably dead. The bank, or someone representing them, came back with a counter-offer for all parties of $115,900. I'm not budging. My first offer was $101,990 and was told to put in my best and highest offer, which I did at $105,900. I wrote a letter and wanted to include an attachment for pictures but was told the bank will only look at faxed papers, so had to forego the visual. I wrote the problems that I'm aware of, trying to keep it short and to the point and told "whoever" that with all the problems there was at least $40K worth of work that I know of, at a price of $115K I didn't feel that the price was warranted and asked that if they reconsider my offer to let me know. Hopefully, the listing agent will submit it. If it's meant to be, it's meant to be - maybe they'll come back to me if no one bids any higher or makes a better offer than I did - otherwise, it goes in foreclosure. Thanks all!

It is pretty impressive, CG; never gardened on that sort of scale myself. Merlin's Hollow covers 3/4 acre, is divided into four "rooms", contains over 1500 perennials and has only ever had two gardeners; namely the Tomlinsons, the owners). It's open to visitors five times in the year; twice in May, twice in June and once for Doors Open. Part of the scree garden (May 13, last year). Another (small) part of the herbaceous perennial garden (June 10, last year).