funnthsun, I'm puzzled over your comment about bulbs that won't overwinter and must be dug up, particularly tulips. I'm also in USDA Zone 7, coastal NJ, and all manner of bulbs do just fine here (excepting the tender ones like glads, amaryllis and canna, of course, though some people claim to have overwintered the latter two in protected locations with a good mulch). My tulips keep coming back year after year. My dad and I had a running joke about it because he kept throwing his away each year thinking they'd never bloom again. So I asked him to please throw the next bunch my way. He did. I planted. Next spring he asked about the beautiful tulips at the end of the drive ... my reply? "What tulips, you know those won't come back." He'd laugh and shrug his shoulders. It became a spring ritual. Galanthus, chionodoxa, squill, camassia, tulips, daffodils of all sorts, muscari, allium, lilies, fritillaria (checkered lily), lycoris ... all come back year after year without being lifted or given any other special attention. Sorry to hear the reviews on the lithodora 'Grace Ward', as I just fell in love with the evergreen foliage and awesome blue flowers and had to try one. Will place it in my sandy soil where it will get good morning sun, then dappled shade from around 11:00 on, and hope for the best; there's not much one can do about the humidity. I wish could tell you which pulmonaria I have: neat, compact habit and that same Grace Ward blue, but it only gets a few hours of morning sun, so may not be right for your needs. What a delightful selection of blues your post has brought forth! Hope you find one that works for your taste and situation.

LOL larsi, that's funny, but actually it's pretty true. Walmart is a store that values its shelf space. If it's not producing profit, the product mix is changed. Not all Walmarts will carry the same product mix either since some things sell well enough in one area to justify keeping it where others it won't. Few grocery stores here carry much powder at all. Many carry none. I was surprised to see Home Depot start carrying Ariel about 6 months ago. First I've seen it in this area. Mara, FYI Woolite and Cheer are both P&G products. Cheer Free has been used by a lot of people at least who used to hang around the forum and found it to be a very effective and low-sudsing product. They highly recommended it for FLs. A detergent does not have to have an HE symbol on it to be used in an HE machine. Actually, many detergents have been "HE compatible" and not true HE detergents, for example Charlie's Soap. I suspect that part of the issue of not updating the website is that they'll wait until it's rolled out. As I recall the liquid compaction conversion, the country was divided into something like 5 zones and introduced over the course of something like a year. It could be a similar situation here. I don't know how people keep saying powders are so much cheaper than liquids. The cheapest powder I've found that works acceptably is much more than the liquids I've bought. Let's see, I've bought Tide for 36â per 32 load bottle, ProWash paid me 75â to buy it, A&H was free, Xtra 32 load was $1.75, and I just bought 110 load Ajax for $5 and 150 oz Era for less than $7. A 40 load Great Value powder cost me something like $10 last time I bought it and it's not performing as well as the other detergents unless I use additives so I won't be bothering with it anymore. And yes, I probably have 2-3 years worth of detergent so I won't be buying any more. Just hope my washer keeps a chugging away!

To those of you who have been using these "home made" detergents, are you experiencing any odor, mold or mildew issues? The reason I ask is because castile soap builds up into a gooopy, gel-like gunk if not properly rinsed. This could potentially cause problems in washers. Every home-made product I've tried - from detergent to fabric softener - has proven unsatisfactory. Either the products don't clean well, they risk building up in my machine or on my clothes or they just don't work. Price is not the only consideration, which is what appears to be driving this homemade laundry movement.

Tide with bleach powder is about 25 cents per load. That's about what you are paying for Tide free products. But the tide with bleach comes with "free" oxyclean equivalent. I believe the Kmart price for 22 ounces of Zout is $3.29. The Zout spray bottle is wasteful due to overspray. But placing Zout in a bottle that can drip liquid can reduce the cost per load. Zout plus Tide with Bleach, in a long warm wash, will clean most things that are cleanable. While all modern detergents contain enzymes, a product like Zout puts these materials directly on the stains in a high concentration. My thinking is that anyone who is not satisfied with laundry performance should start solving the problem with the highest rated detergents. That is currently Tide with Bleach powder, Tide Ultra liquid, and now possibly Persil and "Tide Turbo". Adding boosters to lesser detergents like the Tide free products is guessing at improving the chemistry of the wash water. Actual chemists who design premium detergents should be able to produce superior results. Particularly if you have a conventional TL washer, a sodium percarbonate presoak may be the most cost effective way to clean your worst items. I believe sodium per. stays active for about five hours. People here can suggest the best place to buy this product at a discount. I know The Chemistry Store sells a version without filler, but I don't know if that product is the best value. The right product used correctly will be the most cost effective approach, even if some of these products seem to have initial higher cost.