Please don't take my post as me trying to be rude...that wasn't my intent at all. What I meant by wanting to figure out which Aloe I had on my own was... I'd like to try and learn characteristics and things like that so that in the future I can maybe pick things out for myself....I love researching things. Thank you on the advice for plant care....right now I have them all in a heated greenhouse, and they are all growing and loving life, They are getting a pretty good dose of sunlight each day.....several hours. Unless it's raining outside....but, our rainy season usually passes by pretty quickly. I should have thought about what I said when I said Aloe Vera....sorry about that. I am used to growing up calling everything by one name, it's a hard habit to break. Right now my only sources for plants have either been local retailers who have (by luck) had a few aloe other than the aloe vera.....and then everything else has been purchased online ( via ebay) you gotta do whatcha gotta do. lol Thank you for the links...I'm going to check them out...if I can't figure the id's out on my own...I will post here and get some help.

You don't need to buy a book. Check with your state's Extension Service. Each county should have it's own Cooperative Extension Office which provides free publications and information for the asking. They will have valuable vegetable/gardening tables available specifically for your area determined by universities and horticultural research scientists who have collected data from growing those crops in your state. Your tax dollars are already paying for this service so you may as well get some use out of it. Vegetable Planting and Planning Calendar for Missouri (download the pdf) complete with spring and fall planting dates (underneath the spring planting dates for appropriate crops), how much to plant per person, etc. They can also tell you the average last frost date for your area and ideal planting times for specific crops and varieties in your area. See how detailed this example is:

bizy Finding termites in your yard or flower beds is not unusual - especially if you put down a nice fresh batch of mulch that they will gladly munch on. If you turn over any large rock in your garden, you are likely to see mites muching away at the mulch around the rock. They key is to determine if they have penetrated into your house. Since your home is fairly new, and assuming they did spray the foundation before it was backfilled, I would be a bit surporsed if they made it into the house in a year. It's not impossible - but unlikely unless your builder buried a big pile of wood near the foundation (not unheard of either). The first thing to do is look for the key signs of the mites - the brown mud tunnels that you will see on the inside walls of your foundation or on wood studs. I don't know what kind of access you have from your basement - you want to check along the foundation walls and at the interface between the wood framing and the foundation. Look around the entire foundation interior perimeter - particularly in places where there would be lot's of moisture. If you can't see from the inside, take a shovel and dig on the outside until you get to the transition point of the foundation top to the first floor joists to see if you can locate the mud tunnels. Swarming of the mites inside the house is also a sign - but it does not sound like you are at that point. If they did make it into the house - then you need to call in professionals who will drill holes and pump pestisides into the infiltrated areas. They will drill through concrete slabs to makes ure they get every possible area around and below the foundation. This can run up in cost pretty quickly. If they did not make it in, then I would call a termite company who should offer perimeter pestiside pumping. It should only cost a few hundred dollars (not 1500) and they will pump the pestiside around the foundation perimeter with holes spaced every few feet. They are basically injecting your soil with pestiside that should leach all the way down the side to the footers to create a barrier. I would then go on line and look for termite traps - which are basically tubes that you stick into the ground with pieces of wood in them. The tubes have large covers with a removable cap that allows bait (dry wood) and poison sticks to be inserted. You check the bait every few weeks and if termites make it in, you replace the wood with a food that contains a delayed poison that the termites will eat and then bring back to the nest. They feed themselves by regurgitating - so when they pass the food around it will kill the termites in the nest, hopefullty getting the queen. We also found termites in our last house - in the flower beds (they had not penetrated). I had heard that a few of our neighbors has some termites that did get into their house - which is what prompted me to take some proactive measures. However - these houses were 6 or 7 years old when they started having termite issues inside the house. I puchased all of my termite kit supplies on line for a few hundfred dollars. It's very easy to drill holes and install the tubes and bait. The pro's wanted thousands to install the same thing I could by on line. best of luck.

Check with the folks on the trash to treasure forum. They usually have great ideas.