Hi bedtime - I'm pretty much of a newbie around here myself, but welcome to you. Your plants look really great. I see several of them are still in grow pots...have you thought about double potting? That's where you get a pretty container, doesn't have to have a drainage hole - works better without, actually - make sure it's big enough to hold your plant in its grow pot, put a plastic liner inside, then set plant and grow pot right down into the decorative container. This is the way interior landscapers set up their plants. Got a short video on this if you want to look at it http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kG9PImILzh8. If you want to talk about anything, you can ask me here, or leave comments on the site. If you're looking to do some repotting, you'll find some great advice/experiences here on GW. Thought I'd toss in a couple of thoughts on your spath. I know, if you've done any reading, you've found there's lots of conflicting advice out there on practically everything to do with houseplants, and nothing worse than what you'll find on spaths, or peace lilies. Some people will swear that you have to let them dry out to wilt between waterings, others are adamant that they must be kept evenly (whatever that means) moist. You might wonder how this can be. I believe that it arises because spaths are among the most adaptable of plants; they adapt to a wide range of light, soil, and moisture, and still manage to look beautiful. Here's my experience. I've been an interior landscaper for 30 years, and I've had the opportunity to take care of probably thousands of spaths in all possible light conditions. I have found that while you don't want to allow them to actually dry between waterings, you don't want to keep them always moist, either. The soil moisture should reach the point where, if you spoon up some soil from well down into the pot and squeeze it between your fingers, it should feel cool and soft, stick together when you stop squeezing it, but fall apart easily if you touch the clump. I would call that "slightly damp." You can also test the soil by inserting a wooden dowel all the way to the bottom of the pot. There will be a little dirt sticking to the probe, and you will feel a trace of moisture if you run it between your fingers. When the soil reaches this level of aeration, it's time to water. At this point, you should water until you get a run off in your liner of 1/4 inch. I mention all this because if I saw a spath with the tip and margin yellowing/browning that yours has, I would advise the tech that the plant might be staying a bit too wet. You want the surface of the soil to dry out, and you don't want to inhibit the airflow in and out of the soil. If you're seeing green and white roots on the surface under the towels, that suggests to me that the bottom areas of the pot are too wet, so the plant is trying to find soil to colonize at the top of the pot. Also, humidity is really not the factor that many people think it is. I say this because, again, as an interior landscaper I have had the opportunity to deal with thousands of plants in interior, closed, very dry situations. Spaths do just beautifully without anyone ever worrying about humidity. One thing you might want to do is cut off the bottom, raggedy leaves. This will encourage the growth of new leaves, which will incidentally produce more flowers. (A thing I've noticed is that a spath leaf supports only one flower in its life time; if you want more flowers, you need more leaves.)

Pretty room and nice windows. Here's the thing........if you get the right shade of paint to suit your room and your taste, it won't be too much. That wall will always be too much in your room if you don't work with it to add interest. The paint will go a long way towards making it prettier. Then, you might play with furniture or art or a large mirror or something to fill it and lead into the kitchen. Your paint choices sound good. Do you have a favorite? Have you bought a sample quart? If you have, go ahead and roll it onto the wall. I would probably start where the long wall hits kitchen and paint a swath at least 6' high and 6' wide heading back into LR. That way, I could stand at the windows and visualize my color going on into the kitchen. Or........I might do the opposite. Take my sample quart (SW only charges $5 each so it's a deal!! But keep in mind that it won't have all the depth of color as the real paint!) and paint the area between the fireplace brick and the window trim. Any of your sages or blue greens will look good with both your flooring and your trim. It's just a matter of deciding how deep you want to go. I also love Benjamin Moore's Dry sage. It has a moody look that segues from muted green to almost a gray-blue at times, depending on lighting. Also very very pretty with wood. Stop worrying about that long wall! Get your painting done, post a new photo and we will help you fill your wall and make it pretty! Red

I noticed yesterday my Haworthia is starting to brown at the stem. It is only soft at the very end of the stem. Is this pot to big? How about coloration of all Haworthia? I live in Northwest Arkansas and our weather has been cooler than normal. I keep them outside on our front porch. I dusted them with Diatomaceous Earth. Our front porch faces north. We get sun only in the morning, but they do not get direct sun. Please advise me on any thing I can do to comfort them more. I use only rainwater when I water. I have a moisture meter to check levels of moisture in the soil. I am using a Terra cotta pot with a drainage hole. I have put small rocks in the bottom before I used soil. Is the pot to big? I hope you can see these pictures good enough to advise me. The 4 show are the only plants that have gone soft on me. Should I repot all of them to make sure the soil is not contaminated? The soil I use has a lot of course sand in it. Below is a picture of the soil. Then a picture of the location of my plants at 8:38 am. Please help me. I will do anything I need to do.

Hi all. I take care of a university biology department's collection of plants here in Connecticut and have grown citrus at home for over forty years. My take on the above issues follows. First, my Meyer lemons that get a good dose of cold before I move them inside (this year around Halloween) often drop many of their leaves and then soon break out into the same kind of flowering cycle seen on the second plant. They are more prone to dropping most of their leaves in November than any of the other citrus I care for. Next, when the tip of a branch begins to die back as in the photo, you should use a sharp pair of secateurs (sterilized in bleach solution) and prune it back to green wood just above a leaf node ASAP. Leaving the dying tip is only causing more tissue to die. Next, I think both the plant that shed all its leaves in a week and the one that consists of just a single stem are in pots that are much too large for them, especially given that they are in regular potting soil and seem to be in cool home environments without a great deal of sunlight. The single-stemmed plant would probably be quite happy in a five inch diameter pot. Over-potting makes the cooler conditions the plants encounter in the fall and indoors more likely to cause root rot which can kill a citrus tree quite quickly (I've done it to a couple of my own trees: they drowned). The test I'd do is to get them out of their pots and see if there are a decent number of roots spreading through most of the soil. If a plant that has been in a container for several months is lifted from the pot and when this is done large gobs of soil simply fall away, that's a good reason to put the plant into a smaller container. There's no good rule for this, but I'll note that most of my older citrus (15 to 30 years old) are in containers that are about 1/3 as high and 1/3 as wide as the plants. A typical example: I have a Key lime in an 11 inch wide and 10 inch tall pot (with soil to within three inches of the top and an inch of bark chips on top of that). The Key Lime has a 1 inch diameter trunk at the base and is roughly 2.5 feet wide and 2.5 feet tall. Soil considerations. At home, I long used regular brands of potting soil picked up at Home Depot (non-moisture control) with success for decades but then had a bad experience when I used a more expensive brand from a garden center that had too much ability to hold water--the bottom of two pots turned to mud. In the aftermath of that experience, I researched my options. For what it is worth, I've adopted the following mix at the greenhouse: 1/2 Al's Gritty Mix plus 1/2 ProMix BX. Al's Gritty Mix consists of three ingredients 1/3 Turface (the stuff used on baseball infields), 1/3 Grani-grit (rough granite chips for chickens to grind their food in their gizzards), and 1/3 fine bark mulch. I do not sift or sieve any of these things but simply pull out any overly large bits of wood from the bark mulch or mix if I see them. I found that Al's mix alone drained and dried out far too quickly in the greenhouse. You can obviously vary the amounts or omit one of the Al's ingredients and still have a much better mix than what you'll buy at Home Depot. A cactus might get 1/3 ProMix BX and 2/3s Al's, etc. I use the 1/2 and 1/2 mix for most succulents and cacti, including Desert Roses. Oh, and I've found that covering the soil surface with larger bark chips is a great way to reduce the fungus gnat population, but that problem is also helped by shifting to a mix that has less peat in it or by NOT repotting your plants just prior to bringing them in for the winter (the fungus gnats are particularly attracted to new potting soil with its fresh peat).