I have them growing in both and it makes no difference for THIS hoya. With others it may make a difference. When I bought this plant it was less than half the size and was in a 14" basket so I have actualy potted it down some. I live in Oregon where it is cool and overcast a lot of the year. Carnosa plants are just growers and the beer fert. is amazing. I also use the MSU fert. and am conducting my own experiments on which works (for me) better/longer etc. One thing I have learned from spending years on these websites is that NOTHING works for everyone. What works for me may or may not work for anyone else. I have to repot all the hoya I get from AH in Hawaii or they die within a few months. Most people love her soil but it does not work for me or another gal who lives close to me. Our enviroment is just too different from Hawaii. BTW, I potted up the cuttings you sent me and they are all doing well :) I prefer to be anonymous on this site. I don't contribute often and only about what I feel confident in saying, so please don't use my name. THanks, HN

First, let me correct my mistake: "my friend & fellow ARTIST Sage Reynolds" Hey Mike, You grow these? Aren't they fascinating & other worldly? I didn't mention Ceropegia linearis, nor do I know of that one, tho' I DO know Hoya linearis. I also grow C. sandersonii, which I've never yet gotten to bloom. I've passed some of this onto Denise (in Omaha), but last I knew she hadn't yet bloomed hers either (tho' she had the added bonus of a greenhouse). Amazing plants, & Sage grew his in inverted tomato cages to contain their climbing, sprawling selves. His Ceropegias bloomed in summer as I recall & he has a house which had a front porch w/ hanging pots of plants including Ceropegias Ampliata (the particularly phallic looking one), Sandersonii, Woodii. He even had & shared a Ceropegia dichotoma (if memory serves...) one of the 'stick like' Ceropegias, which looks like stick, w/ a single leaf at the occassional joint on the segmented stems. (I dont' think he collects these anymore, his plant tastes evolved into other things, including some hybridizing of Abutilons which he's shared w/ a known nursery.) Last month I saw a single bloom of C sandersonii at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. Unfortunately, w/ its green bloom on green stems I doubt anybody saw it but me. My camera died right then & a stranger nicely took a shot for me. I'll try to find it to share by post.

ok sent out mellens and earthys questionares to everyone. Mailed them in two different ways - forwarded and in the big word document. Only received an error message for veeje on 2 so far. Now everyone should have everyone's questionares. All books should be mailed out by now. Moving on to March - Feel free to pick your partner baised on things you have that you think they would want baised on the questionares. PLEASE POST who you want as there have been so many problems with emails. I will be making a new thread soon as this one is filling up. I will name it MARCH collectors Corner please post there and I will go and add each person who listed on this thread to that thread when I get the extra time (not today though)... Melinda as for your quest5ion. And by collections do you go by the question of things they collect on the questionnaire or the type of flowers they collect or what? MY REPLY: I don't know how you can send flowers with it being so cold, but if you want you can send an IOU or something like that for the spring. Otherwise - try to go off what they have on their questioinares or even on their gardenweb pages. Just do the best you can. However I know that some people don't have much listed on their questionares so I don't know what to do about that. Glad everyone is enjoying your books!

I have two girls: 2 and 4-1/2. My 4yo has been helping me in the garden since she was 1 year or so...I planted a cherry tomato bush for her and she loved loved to pick them and eat them one after another. She always liked to hold the hose. By the time she was two she had learned to dig for worms, and we talked a lot about being gentle with them, holding them only for a minute, and then putting them back into the ground and covering them with dirt. She likes to help dig, sprinkle seeds, use the hose, and this year we started two worm bins. Both kids really enjoyed shredding/dipping/wringing/fluffing the newspaper and gathering leaves to make a home for the worms. The double-watering-can idea is a great one - we have lots of scuffles over the hose, and the older one likes to water the younger one with it, which rarely ends well. Tomorrow we're getting watering cans! Last year I planted a sunflower house with all greystripe sunflowers. It produced over a hundred awesome flowers, but I wish I had planted them closer together (more than 1 per foot) because the leaves never got close enough to make thick walls. So this year I went crazy with seed catalogs and bought 10+ varieties of sunflowers in all colors, sizes, heights, etc. There's one called "American Giant" which is supposed to be 16+ feet tall. I'm going to try to make a better house, and they can help me dig and sprinkle. My 2yo now demands that we dig for worms whenever we set food in the back yard, and if she finds one, the other one comes running. If she finds a slug, she picks it up and says, "Nasty slug get me!" (trans. "Nasty slug tried to get me." Today she found a small rock and thought it was a slug. When I told her it was a rock, she said, "Dirty rock get me!" Two years ago we planted strawberries given to us by a friend with a surplus of plants, so we've talked about how flowers turn to fruit, and how the bees and such do their part. In the summer the girls beg to go and check for strawberries and raspberries every day. These have never made it back to the house. :-) The thing I struggle with the most is when they spill something valuable - like when the two year old poured the bucket of organic fertilizer I had mixed into the grass. And last year when I had my back turned for a few minutes turning soil over, they opened every package of beans (probably about 2+ cups total) and mixed them into their tiny bucket with dirt. 0_o So we just sprinkled them all over and had a mixed bean jungle later that year. I constantly remind them to please not step onto the dirt that I have just planted things in (esp. the potato bed!!) and of course they do so I just try to remind myself that kids who love being outdoors and learn that gardening is fun are more important that a reduced potato yield. (Duh!) They love looking at seed racks, and so I usually let my 4yo pick out a package of flower seeds. There's an old cement double-basin sink in our backyard that we filled with dirt and last year she put in anemones and nasturtiums. This year she picked out sweet peas. We got a flower-seed catalog, so just for kicks and giggles I gave them a packet of sticky notes and they used up the whole package marking what they would like to plant in the garden. Most days they end up completely soaked and/or muddy, and I've learned to send them out barefoot. As of right now there are no fewer than 7 pairs of shoes drying on the back porch. We're still working on helping me weed, since they can't (yet) tell the difference between a weed and a plant that we want to keep. They do have their own buckets and shovels, but even today they eschewed those for the "real" tools. My 2yo grabbed the 6-ft shovel and my 4yo grabbed the rake and they went to town on the newly planted bed of kale and chard. I've discovered that unless the sprinkler is on, they usually just want to do what I'm doing, and the hardest part is keeping up with them (i.e. digging a hole fast enough for the seeds they're dropping). Gardening with kids is an adventure for me and them!