Jala - Ah, that makes *much* more sense for fertilizer amounts. :) Re vinegar vs. lemon juice, I don't use either of them, but lemon juice tends to be a bit more acidic than white vinegar, so I'd theorize you'd use a bit less... If you're really worried about odors, though, you might check a hydroponics store for what they call "pH Down". Depending on the brand, it's highly concentrated citric or phosphoric acid; you'd need to be a bit careful with it (don't get the concentrated stuff on your skin!) but the non-organic forms are completely odorless and keep indefinitely. It might look expensive at first (I paid around $15 for a quart), but you don't use much at a time (1/8 tsp per gallon drops me to around 5.5) so it'll last you a long time... Longer than an equivalent volume of vinegar or lemon juice, since both of those eventually go bad. You will need to invest in a pH testing kit to measure how much acid you need to add, though. (Which isn't too bad... You can get a small pack of full-range pH testing strips from Hong Kong for $2 or less on eBay, shipping included.) Note, if you don't fertilize at every watering, you should check pH with and without fertilizer -- you may need to add different amounts of acid depending on your fertilizer status. Joe - Thanks for the info! So you can get away with 1:1 for Sans? I'll have to experiment with this next time I see Sans on sale at Home Depot... Put one in "classic" gritty mix, one in 1:1 turface:grit, and one in hydroculture, just to see which one does better in my conditions.

Alabama, I agree it's best you separate. Each plant have different care requirements, sun, water and fertilizers. I find Ribbon, (dracaena) does best in water. Mine is kept in a small fish bowl, w/o soil, roots held down by pebbles, in bright light but no direct sun. I've seen Ribbon Plants grown in offices, potted in soil. I don't know their secret, but after killing a few, water was the answer. Your arrangement came with a really nice assortment of plants. When you repot, you'll probably need to start out using small containers. 3-4", depending on roots. All are healthy. BTW, I'm sorry about your gramma's husband. Toni

Hi Iam, Well I know what they are: the first has a partially correct tag, it's an Aralia all right, but not the Polyscias. It's a Balfour Aralia or Aralia Balforiana. This is one of my most favorite plants of all time & I currently have one too. If you do a search here, at this Forum, you may come up w/ a post I made several months ago which included my pix of this plant & perhaps a comment that this plant doesn't come up here much. Now that you know it's name you can look up it's care, but it want bright, indirect light & benefits from a pebble tray. The 2nd plant is (I believe) a Pilea or Aluminum Plant which I don't know much about (except that I believe it needs humidity). Nice finds, enjoy!

Man, Flora, how do you not freeze to death over there? Warm hugs!! They're a standard "annual," at least in OH and AL. Glad to hear they're common in the house over there, not that I haven't heard of them being kept as such. Don't really think they're that picky, may just be a traditional opinion thing...? "They" kept telling me it would almost surely survive in the ground here, but I brought some in just to be sure. It was basically in freeze-frame the whole time, doing little but did stay alive. Of course, the ground plants that didn't make it were shades of pink, the ones that came in and survived outside were all white. That's Murphy's Law, alive and well and in action. The only difference I can tell outside in the ground between the survivors and those still MIA is that the survivors had a bag of leaves dumped on them which I never bothered to spread out until about 6-7 weeks ago. ...but this may be a blessing I didn't know I needed... do I really need more pink? Hahaha!