I encoutered the same problem couple of seasons ago when the soil was too wet. Too much watering. Now I take a cutting and just stick it in a 1/2 gallon pot that contains %80 Pime Grow and %20 Cow manure compost and water a little to keep the soil moist but not wet. They grow very nice. Also I don't use any ziplock bags or doems to keep the humidity high, used them before and had lots of problem with molds. To see if you need to water them, go by the weight of your container. What I mean is, just lift your pot before watering and see how much does it weight (you don't need a scale), then add few ounces of water then lift it and see how much it weights. Whenever you lift your pot and it feels light, usually after a week or so, then water them. I water my cuttings (all are branching now) every 10 days or so, only about 5 ounces. Good luck and keep us informed. Navid.

This year I'm trying a new thing - no mulch around the beans. The voles love the mulch, and they avoid open areas. So far so good, but it's hard to know what the pressure is this year. It feels very wrong not to have mulch and makes watering and weeding frustrating, but at least the plants are living. I have also used small water bottles with the bottoms cut off and slit up the side to cover over the bottom of the vines (worked reasonably well, but sometimes they would just snip off the top above the water bottle). I string natural twine for the beans to climb up and use bicycle spokes as garden stakes for them, but it doesn't seem to matter to the voles to have the stakes in the ground. I think that was because they just travelled under the mulch, above the soil. When I use traps I always catch at least one unwanted creature - even with traps right in tunnels and covered. There's a brown wren around here that really likes to go into tunnels and it makes me so sad to trap one that I have stopped trapping. Sometimes if I get the timing right, during a winter thaw the tunnels are very visible and I can trap some voles then - they are more desperate for the bait in the traps in winter, as well. But I'm not sure how much good winter trapping does, since more probably just move in during springtime. One last thing I tried - pile up deer netting all around the base of the plants, like a huge tangle. It seemed to make the voles reconsider entering the area.

Bill, I use Gro Moore Maxi Cal by foliar once a week. In addition, I am feeding with Gro Moore's water soluble Cal Mag which is a calcium nitrate N=15/P=5/K=15 with my fertigation system on every watering. The change this spring and up to now has made the plumeria have more robust foliage with better color, more flowers and superior flower colors and on and on and it doesn't kill the mychorizae with the high phosphates. If you use a high P you will kill all bacteria (good or bad) in the containers and around your in ground plants. You are then throwing your money away using any kind of natural ferts such as bone meal, blood meal, hoof and horn, compost and manures as they are dependent on the natural bacterias for plant assimilation. A plant can only assimilate at max 10% percent of readily available applied phosphate. Also the phosphate ions move very slowly through the media about 1/4 inch per year which leads to a over saturation of P killing the bacteria and your root mass. High middle number ferts simply science wise are totally inappropriate for your plumeria and the environment. All phosphate ferts have been outlawed in several states due to the enormous environment damage that has taken place thanks to Miracle Grow and many others. I will be writing some new articles on the science of fert this winter when I have more time available. This info is just a small preview of what needs to be said in this business. I am now asking the question to the purpatraters of high P ferts, just how much P does a plumeria need to SET BUDS as that is a scientific fact of the only role of P in flowering. Where this BS got started I will never know. LOL.

Thanks everyone. Malcolm Manners: I just assumed it was Roundup, but I do NOT know this for certain. My son has seen them spraying all the edges of the park with something, but we do not know what kind of junk they use. They literally spray the stuff against that scalloped brick edge on the park side, about one foot from my roses. This morning ended with nothing but frustration and a laugh. (What else could I do?) It seems that I will have to address my concerns to the HOA itself, instead of the maintanance crew. I raced outside today when I heard the mower behind my backyard. ( The park is adjacent to 2 sides of my property, side and rear, in an L shape.) I approached the smiling man on the mower, and realized we were going to have a problem as soon as I asked him if he would mind me showing him something. Me no Spanish. He no English. With gestures, I was able to get him to come look at my roses, but that's about it. He did know a few English words, but I've got ZERO Spanish. He seemed to see and understand that my roses looked bad but my little game of "charades", including spraying actions from the park side, didn't get my point across. He did manage to say (in broken English), " No, YOU Rosas, No park Rosas." It was rather funny, and we both had a good-natured laugh about it. Nothing was really accomplished today. I already knew they were my roses and not part of the park. For some reason he skipped mowing the whole park entrance today, after our little "talk". I don't know if he thought that's what I wanted or maybe he didn't want to risk playing any more charades with me:) So that's as far as things have gone today. More upsetting is realizing that the 2 full-grown roses that died there last summer, were most likely spray victims as well. I was away for 7 weeks and left my sons in charge of watering. I returned to find 2 of my 4 full-grown roses in that same bed, totally dead. I mean totally. The boys said they watered, but I figured they missed those 2 bushes. I was not there to see them decline so I figured the heat and lack of water did it. Now I wonder if the park spraying did it, or at least contributed to their sudden demise. Thanks all, I will keep at it! Lisa