Hi irina, not sure what this AV actually is but it is very pretty and yes, I did have help with transplanting my violets so it very easily could have been mislabeled. Now the question is what did I do with the meeks reddy I had...., lol So hard to tell but may end up getting baby on ebay. I love little trailers. Is there a Rob's website to compare pics of AV's and possibly come up with name? If so do you have the link? If not I can do some searching and see what I can come up with. Thanks for all your help :) Dixie

Luv, I've been using that kind of pot for several years and it works just fine for me. Like Ardy says, *definitely* check to see if there is a crack of any kind in the inner pot! If that isn't the problem, it is almost surely that the soil is too heavy. I had the same problem the first time I used one. The directions that came with it said to lighten the soil with perlite. However, lightening the commercial AV soil with *a little* perlite was not enough; I ended up mixing the commercial AV soil with about 1/2 perlite to get it light enough. Now that I know about the 1/3perlite-1/3vermiculite-1/3coir (or peat or AV soil)-see the FAQ 'Basic Care of African Violets'-, I take the 1/3-1/3-1/3 mix and add *extra* perlite to it for my self-watering containers. African Violets seem to need as much air around their roots as water. As an aside, the other thing I learned was that the pots I had were *way* too big for the violets I had in them. I lucked out and the plants I had bloomed anyway, but the top dimension of the inner pot should not be more than 1/3 (again with that pesky 1/3) the diameter of the plant's crown. If this is new information for you, check out the same FAQ as above for more explanation. If it is not new, sorry about the regurgitation!~smile~ Happy Growing, Feegle ~who had to put other kinds of plants in the 4.5inch self-watering pots.

I guess I was misinformed about pine needles. I tested the soil a few times when the lawn started dying and getting replaced by moss soon, after I moved in many years ago. I don't recall numbers, just that I was told it was too acid for a lawn. A month after I put down a large amount of lime, it was nearly the right pH for lawn. A month after that, it was back to the original. Repeated applications of lime after that, weren't controlling it. So I decided to just see what would grow without using lime. About 50% of the "lawn" is currently grass and about 20% moss, plus a mix of other things. We have lily of the valley in several places now and it seem to tolerate foot traffic well. It looks too tall and fragile for foot traffic, and we were initially careful of it in the garden section where we wanted it. But in the parts of the lawn where we don't want it and haven't yet had time to pull it out, we are certainly not careful and it doesn't care. So we have been walking on it in even the parts of the garden where we do want it. The transplants in that second photo are at least still growing. I don't know why those are doing worse than lily of the valley elsewhere on the property. But if it is just slower, not ultimately weaker than the rest, I guess it doesn't matter. (We don't need to walk on those yet. Only after other planned plantings are put near there next year.)

Hey John, Hong Kong is AMAZING!!! Unlike Singapore White it is compact not leggy, no black tip, flowers profusely and is everygreen with dark, dark green SHINY thick leaves like Singapore white and it blooms more profusely then Singapore but has a super strong Singapore scent. If your in coastal So Cal it will grow like a weed. Just like any of the everygreens it is sensitive to cold. Even a small HK plant will get huge in 3 to 5 yrs if you put in the ground. When I bought my HK it was literally the dimension of a wooden pencil, though it was a new seedling as the branches are thinner. It was about 7" fro the soil line and thin and single tip in a 2" pot. By the end of the season it was in a 1 gal pot and I personally have mine in a 40 gal pot and its a bushy tree with literally hundreds of tips now. I had to trim it this past season to increase circulation. A pic of my HK from after I had it for about 10 weeks and re potted it into a 1 gal, it was about 3ft tall single tip in this pic: Hope that answered any of your questions. Even after the So Cal Big Freeze of 2007 here is a pic of HK 3 weeks after the cold in February in a 20gal pot, no damage and leaves still in tact. Again this was 5 yrs ago. Pic from JLs farm in Hawaii of the the Hong Kong grove Hope this has been informative about HK Cheers