If you think the roots are badly congested, pot up slightly now, without disturbing roots other than to make a few vertical slits in the root mass and cutting an 'X' on the bottom of the root mass. If roots aren't badly congested, just wait. Get the plant outdoors and acclimated to full sun asap in May - as early as you can, as long as you're conscientious about moving the plant indoors when temps under 50-55* are predicted. The plant will respond extremely well to outdoor conditions. I would repot just after Father's Day. Let the plant recover until after the 4th of July, then cut it back as hard as you want to. The plant will back-bud vigorously, and you'll have up to around mid-Oct outdoors for the plant to recover .... again, if you watch temps. It's best not to cut back hard AND repot at the same time. If a plant needs both, I prefer to repot first, which leaves all the photosynthesizing machinery intact. After roots have recovered and have a good amount of stored energy, THEN you can pretty much cut back at will. Attempting stressful operations like a full repot or hard pruning are best avoided in winter and early spring for houseplants. Planning your repots so they take place between Father's Day and July 4th pretty much ensures a plant with good energy reserves that is better able to withstand stress than at any other period in the growth cycle. This, combined with maximum photo-period and photo-intensity, makes for the fastest recovery time and lowest vulnerability to insects, disease, or other complications related to low energy or slow recoveries. Al

agirlsgirl, Glad to see you so excited about growing bananas. I got hooked on them about 4 years ago and keep dividing my clumps. I now have 3 good sized clumps and they get close to 14 feet. I'm in a little warmer zone than yours, but the basjoo's that I grow are really cold hardy so you shouldn't worry much about them. I cut them down to about a foot tall and cover them with leaves. Come spring, they are poking up through the leaves. This year I grew one of the pups in a pot and have it in the garage now. It stands about 3 feet tall and all the leaves are cut off. I don't water it any more and plan to place it in the ground come summer. Thought I'd share a photo of my last standing clump that I'm sure will be mush tomorrow as lows tonight are predicted to be in the 20's. Happy growing. From Garden 2009

Hi Ross, We do have a few UK members on this site and if your visitor joins our forums and enters the names below into this site's search engine he/she can probably come up with some email addresses as a starting point. I just tried one name (flora_uk), and she can be contacted by email, so maybe the others can also. Since I became a member I have kept a log of other members user names and their countries, mainly just out of interest and in case I wanted to contact them for anything relating to their particular country in the future, and looking up the UK section I can only find the following: alibaba cactuschris (Chris)- Cheshire flora_uk marko7 martyp I don't know if this is of any help to you, but maybe someone who is more computer savy than I can advise a better way to do this. All the best, Nev.

I need to complete a hardwood floor that was partially installed several years ago. Looking at the layout, the existing floor is "U shaped". The kitchen is one leg of the "U". Part of a long hall would be the other leg of the "U". and the bottom of the "U" is a short foyer area. This is all continuous hardwood strips running parallel to the bottom of the "U". The layout of the floor needing to be completed will be a flipped over "U shape". One leg of the "flipped U" is the dining room. The other leg is a continuation of the hall. and the base of the "flipped U" is a landing at the top of 2 sets of steps; one set of stairs going down to the basement, one set on the other side going into a sunken living room. My problems are: If I begin at the existing flooring and work up both legs of the base of the "flipped U", how do I make sure the strips are lined up properly when they meet at the base of the "flipped U" AND how do I insure the top step nosings for both sets of steps are properly positioned for the top steps? If I start at the base of the "flipped U" to make be sure of the top stair nosings positioning, how do I join the new floor to the old since both tongues would meet? Do I cut off the tongue where new meets old, cut a groove and top nail? Thank you. john