On rhododendrons, peeling bark is normally a highly prized attribute. For example the R. barbatum on the left and the R. maddenii on the right are well known for their peeling bark. However, it can also be a sign of problems such as with Botryosphaeria dieback below on left and bark split on right. Dieback is often caused by drought and only affects several branches. Bark split is caused by a warm spell in winter which causes the sap to rise, followed by a heavy frost the freezes the sap and splits the bark near the soil line.

Blue, not until you said no. I'd like to visit it and really look around the arboretum but the last two times I spent too long in their plant center (incidentally where I bought the GS). I'm ridiculously confused by the pines I see roadside as I drive my lorry up and down the country. I seem to see varieties of possible p.sylvestris in colours from aqua blue to dark green and forms from very regular 'fingered' (generally the bluishish/greeny greyish) to the classic bare trunked with upward clusters - also massive fully branched specimens. Does p.s come in such variety or am I seeing entirely different trees?

Hard to tell with these without being there and knowing the species, but when I grew them I used terra cotta pots for the gas exchange and so the soil wouldn't get too wet. To me, with info provided, my first guess would be too much water. Since you don't say where you consumed this product and in a plastic pot, no guarantee that the plant isn't asking for something different. And hopefully you aren't consuming fossil fuels to maintain that temperature in the entire envelope. Dan

joy: I hardened off my tomato plants in a covered porch. If they stayed in a covered porch the whole time, they weren't really hardened off. Hardening off requires a gradual exposure to full sunlight, wind, etc., starting with a day in full shade outdoors (covered porch works well for this) but then progressing to exposure to direct sun, from an hour or so of morning light increasing over the course of about a week to spending all day out in the sun. At any rate, the marks on your leaves are classic for sunscald. Since the damage is not too extensive, they should recover OK. joy: I fed my tomato plants with worm castings, bone meal and epsom salts. None of these things are fertilizers, really. Bone meal is, sort of, if your soil lacks P, but if it doesn't, excessive P can cause problems. Epsom salts are a source of Mg, but, once again, if you don't have a deficiency in your soil, it can do more harm than good. It's easy to create an imbalance by using these nutrient-specific products without getting proper soil testing done and if you don't have a lot of experience with soil and plant nutrition. N, P, and K to a plant are like protein, fat, and carbohydrates for us--the basic building blocks of our nutritional requirements. What you're doing now is like feeding a kid only fat and vitamins and not providing any protein or carbohydrates. Obviously, that's not a recipe for thriving. Worm castings are terrific and contribute to good tilth, add good microorganisms, etc., so keep using it, but it's not really food. It's a common myth that using fertilizer is somehow "bad" and true organic gardening relies only on compost. That's probably why we see so many people who use compost and various home remedies then show up on here wondering why their plants look so poorly. To not use fertilizer at all, you have to put time and effort into a long-term and constant soil-building program that has been going on for many years. In the quantities that most people use compost, i.e., a few handfuls in the planting hole and then top- or side-dressed a few times over a season, certain greens and herbs may be happy, but it's not going to cut it for fruiting plants. Right now, your plants need N, so I would feed them a general plant fertilizer that will be relatively higher in N. Once they start flowering and fruiting, switch to a tomato-specific fertilizer, which will be lower in N than in P or K. I hope you didn't add large amounts of bone meal, as that would mean you'd have to customize your fertilizer application more instead of being able to rely on commonly available pre-mixed products.