hello all!! have been spending time in Garden Junk and never realized till now that there was a clay/ceramics spot...YAHOOO!!! This is my first post...hope to participate frequently....tried to link my website but then read that businesses cannot do that. I am a clay handbuilder from Wilkes-Barre, PA. I work in both earthenware and stoneware and am fortunate to have my studio in an arts community housed in an old mansion....hope to share ideas with everyone!

Well, how about a mid-month update? :) It has been crazy with building and gettina all the kids back to school. We have a roof, hvac, and rough plumbing is complete. We got our fireplace installed and now they are working on the wiring. Our windows and doors will start to go in tomorrow. Hopefully we can get the housewrap and siding on soon as we are in Oregon and the sunny days we are having could come to an end any time! We have been living on site since mid July and it has been great for keeping things on track, but hard to have a life apart from the house. It's a good thing we are enjoying the process. Congrats to Jaymie and Laney! How exciting for you guys to be in! Your homes are beautiful. Jaymie, you have done a fabulous job with your home. The attention to detail and how you carried the style all the way through on all of your design decisions is apparent and the result is wonderful. You should send some pics to the Mascord people, they might add you to their site!

I probably don't have to remind you to hang onto your pots. I have a slack tendency to simply oversow in the 'fail' pots...and have been surprised to see the previous seeds appearing alongside newly germinated seedlings (always when all labeling is lost and memory fail leaves me utterly clueless what I am looking at). Another thing I do is to re-use the soil from previous 'failed' germinations...leading to surprises popping up in odd places. This year, I see tulipa batalini flowering in the corners of several pots while having no idea how they got there...unless from recycled potting soil ( since tulips seeds are generally easy and reliable from seed). Infuriatingly, I am having the same non-germinating issues with sisirynchium...out of 8 pots, only a sparse few are gern=minating in one pot only. Still early days though - I hang it out till the end of May before conceding defeat for the summer. Callirhoe has been another mystifying fail - never managed to get this one to germinate.

In my opinion I would take the plants out from under any strong lighting at the very least until they recover and even then Haworthia do not require strong lighting. It is stressful on them and they are already stressed. Some bright, indirect light will be more beneficial to them. Also, although you mentioned your soil was for cactus / succulents and had lots of perlite, it does still appear to be quite peaty and I think you would benefit from adding quite a bit more perlite. Like, a LOT. I would mix until it was more like 70% perlite. Since you have lights and a fan it's possible the soil on top could appear dry but be wet below - to tell for sure it's easy to carefully insert a wooden skewer or chopstick in the pot to see if the soil is truly dry down below. I'm sure others will have more advice for you as well.