Hi Graeme, There's no secrets in there, just a lot of overcrowding. The places in which I grow my seedlings are basically in five different locations. 1. "The Maternity Ward" which s a North-East facing closed in porch, where the seeds are first put into take-away containers, and left to start to grow. 2. "The Pre-School" is another porch on the South side of the house where the containers are opened up, plants hardened off a bit and then the strongest are selected and planted into other containers (about 15 per container). 3. "The Kindergarten" This is an area in the middle of my shade house where they stay once most are in individual small pots or tubes and stay here until they are large enough to be potted on. 4. "The Primary School" (the area you mentioned in the pic) This is where they are put into 3" size pots and grown on until ready for the final repotting into 4"-5" pots. This was once a finch aviary I built for the kids when they were young. When they grew up, married and left home, it became a shade house (with a very low roof on which I am constantly bumping my head) 5. Finaly the "High School" This is where they are hung from every available position. They stay there until they flower and are good enough to be "keepers", are given away, sold or binned. Some of the "keepers" I have grown: And that's about it! I'm just a back yard hobbiest who gets immense enjoyement from growing bromeliads from seed. I sell a few plants to pay for pots and potting mix, but pretty well everything else (except what I find a place in the yard for) are given away to friends or binned. Out of necessity, pretty well everything in my yard is made from "left-overs" and re-cycled material where possible except the shade cloth. A lot of my benches are made from old security doors and the points from which I hang plants are old off-cuts of steel strip or wire mesh. That's about it folks All the best, Nev.

Can't help with the repellant, but an interesting anecdote: We had rats in an old house that we used to live in. The rats used to escape traps and eat the baits to no effect! One day my husband came into the kitchen looking rather shaken. He said a rat had just walked boldly into the loungeroom, stood under one of the chairs and just stared at him. Later that day we were sitting in the lounge room when we saw a currawong land on the fence outside the window. It sat there a moment, then made a dive for the ground, and reappeared on the fence with a rat dangling from its beak. It then proceeded to tear it apart. Perhaps we all need more currawongs.

TG, A kookaburra is a type of knigfisher. The blue kingfishers look like kookas but are much smaller, 15-20cms and a beautiful electric blue (best way to describe it) colour. You would know it if you saw it. There are other varieties but they are the most common. The blue winged kookas have a pale blue where MMs is white on the wing. Blue winged are generally found on the eastern coast, usually in the northern parts. When I was a child in Brisbane, we raised a blue wing when it fell out of a nest. We never locked it up so used to come and go for many years.

Thanks everyone. As I don't have an electric hedge trimmer and our chainsaw is too heavy for me to lift, I attacked them with the secateurs and lond handled loppers. I was ruthless, but then they hadn't been pruned last year as I was put off by all the green growth. Now they've got plenty off chance to grow again, and the snow ball tree that is probably growing too close to them has a chance to breathe. Who knows what I'll do next year!