i got one for xmas in fl and i decided to keep it to see if it'll rebloom for summer. i have another short-day length plant that i rebloomed successfully sev times: begonia reiger. so i figured why not try ? it has produced new colored bracts for me in march (2 clusters) - i kept some of the older ones (4 total) to keep it going like ronalawn advised in prior post in 2012. it is still developing new flower buds. am waiting to see if those will color up. i did not give it any 'dark treatment'. it self-branches quite nicely. i still have sev older branches with pink bracts doing well and growing new colored bracts. and the way it goes - i think i will get re-bloom in the fall: my xmas cactus and begonia reiger (both short-day bloomers) rebloom in the same position west window without special dark treatment, just natural nights. even though i do get some street light. Here is a link that might be useful: prior post with my pics in jan and march This post was edited by petrushka on Sun, May 4, 14 at 22:59

How often do you browse GW? I do it daily. But I sure wonder why I bother. Not all that much seems to be going on in the gardening world or at least in that part of it that I am interested in. Maybe I should take up growing roses??? But anyway I am posting a link to my journls on Mosses that you can explore. One problem. You may get a CANNOT DISPLAY THE PAGE error on clicking the link. I have absolutely no idea on why this is occurring. But believe me the journals are there. If you get this kind of error message CLICK ON YOUR REFRESH BUTTON and my journals should appear. CLICK HERE TO MY JOURNALS Don't forget to check out the journals with links on the left side of the webpage under the section titled ALBUMS. Hope you like.

Wow, wow, wow, Larry, I love your ideas! I do hope you keep us updated on them as you work through whatever issues pop up. I, too, want to keep a "permanent" mulch cover but still be able to grow cover crops. And I'm trying to go as no-till as possible. I don't want to have extra equipment to keep up and, eventually, I'll get older and not want to manhandle a tiller. We're only in our 40s but time sure flies so we're trying to look far, far down the road. Do the work now, enjoy the ease later on. Carol, those are cool! I'd not seen those before. This year, we're on a shoestring budget (like most of our lives LOL) so I didn't want to add anything to the purchase list that we didn't absolutely need. (We only had to buy Quikrete and the nylon cord. Everything else, we had on hand.) I was going to spend this winter clip shopping and seeing what was out there. In the back of my mind, I was debating between those little velcro ties and a different type I had seen -- both of which are more expensive, at least where I've seen them. But those clips you linked? Cheap! And, if you say they work good, I'm pretty sold. Diane

Been there, done that...lint is such a HUGE annoyance to my life. We're in a 2nd floor condo where the dryer vent ducting goes to the roof through the attic over 20 feet and several elbows. My husband bought the condo years before we met, and the ducting was clogged after several years. At the time, he decided to disconnect the vent from the duct. The resulting moisture did some damage to the cabinetry (swelling of the particle board, even under layers of oil-based paint). Soon after we married, he decided we needed to fix the problem correctly. He went up into the attic and disassembled the ducting, brought it outside, and blew it out with his air compressor. I pushed some cleaning tool through it as well. We can't be doing this regularly! I mean preferably, never again! So, I had him put a filter -- a gallon paint strainer -- over the dryer vent where it connects to the machine. This clogs every month or so, we pull the machine out, disconnect the vent, clean the strainer, and put it back. This is still an annoying chore, but not the nightmare of dealing with the whole duct run. My husband had a cool idea, that what we need to do is sew a new, longer strainer that tapers to a skinny point, so that even when it clogs at the point, there can still be air flowing past the clogged strainer, and we should be able to go longer between cleanings. We got a new dryer last summer, and pulled the ducting out of the attic to clean it -- but it was already clean as a whistle. So, our secondary filter system has kept the duct run clean for 9 years. I found you can buy secondary lint traps with a door that opens to clean them out, but we don't have room to install the box in our laundry room, and I don't think it would work any better or be easier to clean than our homemade filter. When I redo the floor, I plan to put magic slider thingies under the dryer feet to make it easier to move in and out, plus I won't want to gouge my new floor. I have researched other solutions. People claim that solid metal vent will maintain better airflow than pleated, but I think it will still clog because we need 2 90-degree elbows to get it connected to the duct in the wall. And if it clogs, how do we pull out the machine with a non-stretching vent? If we could move the duct in the wall to match the dryer vent outlet, that would eliminate 2 elbows and would probably help... I also found you can install a secondary fan in the ducting near the exit, increasing the airspeed in long ducts so the lint won't clog. They cost $150-200, but if I never had to clean out the duct run or pull out the dryer to clean my makeshift secondary lint trap ever again, it would be well worth it. I also think that our ducting is leaky somewhere, because rooms on the other side of the wall (our master bath) get crusted with lint all the time. Finding and sealing those leaks would probably improve airspeed some, plus save me tons of work cleaning the lint all the time. I think the additional fan is the way to go. In 2 other areas where we replaced an ineffective low-cfm cheap fan with a high-cfm good one, like the hood over our cooktop, it made an amazing difference, night and day. Here is a link that might be useful: example of dryer duct fan