How cool, Aimeekitty! Up Whites Canyon from Soledad on the hill? Yes, Banksiae and Purezza are completely evergreen up there. And, yes, they both have been successfully grown in pots, much the same way you can bonsai a full sized tree in a pot. It requires excellent drainage, a pot of sufficient minimum size for the size plant you want, a pot of suitable material to prevent it from cooking in the sun/heat and religious watering. I've seen Banksiae grown in five gallon sizes for many, many years. Yes, they become root bound, but preventing the roots from getting to the soil, keeping it properly watered and fertilized occasionally, as well as keeping it sheared to maintain a proper balance between root and top growth sizes keep it alive. It will flower in those conditions, on any sufficiently mature wood and anywhere that wood receives enough sun. The potential for sunburn of the wood is much higher growing in pots because of the water stress from lack of spreading, foraging roots. I've seen it grown as a tiered "poodle" topiary, and as a standard where the trunk was incredibly thick with side buds removed as you would for a standard trunk. The top branches were permitted to grow and were continually kept sheared to maintain a rounded head. Those also flowered in spring, paving themselves over the surface with bloom. It CAN be done. It takes time and a LOT of effort and attention. I had a client in The Palisades who was a very long time gardener. He was widowed and did all manner of odd things for his own amusement. I teased him his garden was like visiting The Island of Dr. Moreau because of the unusual things he accomplished, but he spent every day in his garden. It was his life. You could also train a Banksiae like the braided trunk ficus you see everywhere, then either round the head or allow it to fountain out. They are amazingly versatile and enduring plants. They will suffer just about anything you can think to do TO them, as long as their basic requirements are met. Victorian and Edwardian florists raised many types of ramblers and other climbers in pots, training them into fantastic shapes and forcing them to flower for holiday decoration. Think bougainvillea or even what is done to potted florist azaleas in today's markets and you get the idea. Aimeekitty, you have plenty of room for the Banksiae as long as you aren't afraid to prune and shear it as you would a bougainvillea, pyracantha or other indeterminate shrub or climber. Don't be afraid to prune it. It honestly will thumb its nose at you and grow more vigorously, just in a different direction. If you train it along the top of your fence, you can shear it to form a dense topper which will then flower each spring. Banksiae will make free standing shrubs, totally capable of supporting themselves on the thick wood they will develop. You can see a few of them outside the gates of Scenic Hills along Rainbow Glen, just off Sierra Hwy. Kim

In Holland you hae ideal conditions for growing cool climate banksias - sandy soil, relatively dry climate, etc. You will not grow warm climate banksias, or banksias that require an exceptionally dry climate. It's all a matter of selection - banksias require free-draining soil with not too much humidity. Read it up, select your species. Don't by any account use plastic covers over your seedlings - certain death! Tony ( My son lives in D.H. - I know the conditions - raised beds or pots might help - they don't grow well below sea level!!!)

I have been growing Banksias in Vienne (near Lyon) France for 5 or 6 years now. I have some B coccinea seedlings myself, but this species has a reputation of being difficult. In WA, it grows in deep sand dunes near Albany, so use extremely well draining substrate. Secondly, my general experience with other banksia species (I have about 30 different, of which 5 have flowered) is that Banksias, do not like too much lime: I have very hard mains water here (equivalent of 280g of CaCO3 per cubic metre) and my early attempts at Banksia cultivation resulted in extreme chlorosis and death due to the pH rising. I have had much more success since I have taken steps to keep the pH down (I aim for pH 5). I even saved a chlorosed B blechnifolia by dunking it in a weak solution of Nitric Acid!! Even with these precautions some (not all) of my B coccinea seedlings are looking yellow, so I recently gave a dose of chelated iron. Thirdly all WA Banksias detest humidity, so do everything you can to reduce humidity in your greenhouse (fan, etc) and water sparingly especially in winter. Finally Banksias do not like phosphate, so do not use any fertilisers other than extremely low phosphate ones. Banksia canei grows in the Blue Mountains on the other side of Australia and is one of the toughest Banksias as far as cold and frost is concerned, so could be planted outside if you never get much lower than minus 5°C. I have also found that it is also more lime/pH tolerant than most banksias. More generally, as far as frost resistance goes, Australian climates are so different from Western European climates that only information gleaned from those who have tried growing Banksias in Europe is likely to be reliable. I have three 5 year old B canei and they are yet to flower. If you are seriously into growing Banksias and other Australian plants may I suggest you join the (UK) Australasian Plant Society? I would be please supply their address.

If you grow out plants from saved Sungold F-1 fruits, you will get the F-2 generation, which has high variability as the genes recombine randomly. With SunGold F-2s, people who've grown them have reported a wide range of results with fruit ranging from red to orange to gold or golden yellow, and some fruit that is bi-color. The sizes and shapes have had quite a bit of variability as well, ranging from large round cherries about an inch in diameter to grape shaped tomatoes. The important question, of course, is the flavor. Almost everyone who's grown out F-2 SunGolds and written about them has found the flavor highly variable as well, and not necessarily in a good way. Some people have gotten sweet fruit, some have gotten sour. Most feel the flavor is not nearly as good as SunGold, but a few thought it was good enough---or at least their friends and family liked it even though it wasn't the well-known SunGold flavor. Many tomato afficianadoes, and some well-known private breeders, have tried to dehybridize SunGold to get a stable O-P version of it. None have gotten an exact replica of SunGold, though Reinhard Kraft of Germany probably has come closest with SunGold Select II, seeds of which likely are available commercially from some seed company. Some people find SunGold Select II a reasonable substitute for SunGold (though not exactly the same as the F-1 SunGold) and others don't. Most people who have tried to dehybridize SunGold have taken their attempts out to 4 or 5 generations, represented as F-4 and F-5 and I've seen some reports of F-8, and then finally have dropped the effort, realizing they'd rather grow and eat SunGold F-1 than an inferior O-P descendant. You should know that the variability is not just in the fruit either. Some folks have gotten very short dwarf plants in the F-2 generation, some have gotten plants that have poor disease tolerance. So, since you are growing for market, assuming you want to grow as many fruit to sell as possible, growing out your F-2 SunGold plants is a risk because you could end up with largely dwarf plants that have poor disease resistance and produce red cherry fruit with flavor that might be great (rare in the info I have found online), mediocre or poor. To me, that makes growing out SunGold F-2 very risky and possibly a waste of resources (especially space). Dehybridizing SunGold into a stable open-pollinated variety is sort of the Holy Grail among tomato afficianadoes, and I've never seen one report of someone saying that their F-2 plants have given them an exact replica of SunGold. If you have the time and space to experiment and are willing to dedicate several years of effort to growing out SunGold generations, you are likely to find that the F-2 generation was the most unstable, and you may get less variability as you go forward with each new generation of plants. From that point forward, you save seed each plant generation only from the plants that gave you the closest version of what you're seeking, and which each generation, you may come closer to getting a reasonable facsimile of SunGold. Or, you may not. However, since Reinhard Kraft already has done all that to produce SunGold Select II, you'd just be duplicating his efforts with no guarantee you'd get his same results. It seems easier to me to track down and buy SunGold Select II seeds, and as far as I can remember though I don't know if I saw them in this year's catalog, Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds has SunGold Select II. Finally, be very careful not to call the tomatoes you are selling from saved seed "SunGold" because they are not, legally speaking, SunGold. You'll have to call them something else to avoid getting into legal trouble with the seed company that holds the legal rights to SunGold. By the way, with Porter the reason you have had good results from saved seed is because it is a long-stable (for decades now) open-pollinated tomato from the old and now-defunct Gene Porter & Sons Seed Company once based in Stephenville, TX, so saved seed (assuming it wasn't cross-pollinated by an insect and that you don't get a sport or mutation) will give you stable Porter tomato plants. That's the difference between open-pollinated varieties and hybrids, and it is a very huge difference. To get the original SunGold F-1, you'd have to cross the original parents used to breed it (a closely held, trade secret, so no one knows what they are), which is how the wholesale producer who has the rights to SunGold produces new seed for it. I've tried some open-pollinated versions of several different hybrid tomato varieties, and for the most part found them inferior (sometimes very inferior) and went back to growing the hybrid version.