just to clarify bboys comment ... you properly dampen.. moisten .. NOT saturate it.. some new media ... and then repot it ... NEVER use dry media ... now.. as to what kind of media .... trees do not like houseplant soil ... it holds too much water because it has too much peat ... and rarely dries in between waterings ... as trees prefer .... since you have a tendency to over water... i might suggest a cactus mix ... which sheds water more efficiently.. as trees tend to like ... it might be a bit tricky.. pre-wetting a cactus mix ... i would take a day or two to do it .... sometimes its near impossible to properly wet .. a potting media.. once the plant is in it ... you might also post this in the houseplant forum.. for a slew of other ideas.. especially in regard to potting media ... many tend top prefer something called Al's gritty mix ... which frankly could become quite expensive becasue most of the recipes end up with a truck load.. lol ..... since you will need so little ... hence my cactus suggestion ... but reading some of the thousand discussions in regard to such.. will really bring you up to speed on potting media ... see link all this said.. dont forget bboy stated more light... trees are full sun creatures.. so they struggle quickly indoors... without extra light .... good luck ken Here is a link that might be useful: you wont need to read too many.. before you get the drift ....

You've got the right idea with simulating wet/dry seasons. It appears they can withstand a fair bit of cold, although make sure they stay dry then. They have a large tap root which enables them to withstand drought. Several years back they transplanted a full sized one from Warmun to Perth by roadtrain. The tree was estimated to be about 750 years old. Don't know where it ended up, haven't heard anything about it since. Maybe it's in Kings Park. If you ring them they'll probably be able to tell you. I don't think they would have spent so much effort and money if they didn't think it would survive. Boabs can grow fairly quickly so you might find before long there's not a pot large enough to hold it. You may end up having to put it in the ground. Unless you want to try and bonsai it. I wouldn't be surprised if it took well to being bonsaied.

Sensational post, Len - just the sort of thing I'm looking for :) To answer your questions/observations: Q0. first up where in qld is alabama? if i might ask. A. Its a little known suburb of Rocky :) OK, I tried to change my preferences, and was rewarded with an error from the web server. C'est la Vie. Q1. plant data base, i reckon a good data base is going to take a lot of room on a web site that is if you are going to list the many plants that we can grow here in the sunshine state. so adding plants growths in stages will make that so much larger. for the main i think viewers will be looking for identifiacation and planting and care help. A. I agree that the majority of users will want the text relating to plant culture, but I also envisage providing *links* from the main database entry to allow them to view photos of the plant at different stages of its life. Personally, I find it frustrating trying to envisage the 'true' size of many plants from the label, and the '12-month' estimate is something I think many people would value (granted, conditions and growth rates vary enormously, but I think you know where I'm going with this). Q2.. sounds like a lot of work to manage A2. I absolutely agree, and its part of my reluctance to make this available to the outside world. There are a broad range of issues relating to security that I havent even touched on, but that goes with the territory. Removing the need to maintain all but the most basic membership data (name, username, location and email address) will minimise my concerns in this area, but I dont want to spend my days weeding out SPAM etc - hopefully, we are dealing with a better class of people :) Q3.. for me gardeners are well serviced with forums not long ago an aussie garden forum dissapeared due to lack of interest if i can put it that way. you are in a native plants forum here and it isn't over patronised a good crowd here though. A3. My broader aim is to help gardeners in their attempt to fuse natives with exotics - correct plant choice, companion planting and so on. This wont amuse the local provenance diehards, but it may just lessen the resistance to something with the word 'Native' in the masthead, and we might see more lillipillies and Austormyrtus alongside Gardenias and Camellias throughout Oz. I cant predict whether the site will have a longterm future - I can only put it out there and hope that people like yourself are prepared to give it a go. Q4.. faq's yes they are always handy for all gardeners but they need to be relevent to the point answers and the search engine for the faq's need to lead people to the answer they may be looking for many search engines like this for me just don't hit the mark unless you type in exactly the topic line as the author of the faq's has put it. A4. The whole search engine thing is a big topic - you can customise Google to have it restrict its search to your site, and I'm confident that...

Thanks for elaborating. I really did think of zone 9b as tropical. 23F is quite a bit below freezing, when you consider tropical plants, they are usually damaged by much below 57F or 60F. You likely can grow lots of stuff that would grow in middle Florida (hardy tropicals) with your mentioned what we here call "grey water", basically all used water besides the human waste, to put it kindly. The continental US only hits the "tropical" conditions in the Florida Keys. My Bff stayed there for about 9 months on Big pine key, I got to visit for a week. It was beautiful, but, I missed my areas trees, even though they were bare at the time. The trees you mentioned above, I only recognize the Eucalyptus and Acacias by name. My area is too cold in winter for them, but, I think in California they had grown Eucalyptus trees, and Acacias makes me think of the African sahvana on Tv nature shows. But, California has lots of wildfires now, so I guess many of their trees are goners, like they didn't have enough problems, some nut was starting more fires where there weren't any. I just got your reference that in the north you have the tropical Boab, I nearly forgot your north is warmer, and it's OUR south that is warmer. If it's the same one I had seen, they store lots of water in their trunks from the Monsoon season (where they have a monsoon) not sure if you have a monsoon. And then people tap the trees for water when it's dry, and I think they remove the bark in thin strips and make ropes out of them and other stuff. In Africa that is... I do know Shax there are many "common names" for trees/plants and from continent, country etc. that common name is a completely different plant depending on where you go. I do think that the Acacias and Boab are the same trees, but not sure if the Boabs get so swollen with water in Australia as in Africas Monsoon season, etc. Later