you dont use soil.. mother earth ... in pots .... too hard to control .... peat based potting media is usually high in peat .. which holds too much water for trees ... so a lot of tree peeps cut it half and half with mini chunks .... little bark pieces the size of your thumbnail ... that way.. when you water the top .... it seems like it all runs out the bottom.. but the peat catches just enough water ... for a tree ... and you tend to let the pots NEARLY dry in between watering .. that is a VERY superficial explanation ... but you start with pot size.. and you are probably going to need at least a 10 to 20 gallon pot ... smaller might work.. but it might not hold up the tree in wind .... i actually had a 6 ft tri color in a half barrel ... to give you some perspective .... and the movers agreed to move it ... i did exactly what you are talking about .... my native soil was nice sandy peat [old house] .... and i just put the potted trees .. pot and all .... into the ground.. since mother earth had high drainage ... and i was not worried about standing water down in the pot ... all that said .... if you do everything perfect.. the trees will overcome the potting in about 2 years.. then you will move them.. and then.. set them back with a new transplant... not to mention figuring out how to move the giant pots and trees ... its totally up to you.. but you might be better off.. just waiting ... for your future forest also.. make sure black pots are NEVER in the sun.. you can cook the roots ... both trees ought to do good in bright shade .... this is another reason i buried the pots ... trees like cool roots .... and rather dry soil .... damp.. but not sodden is what i mean ... they are not like annuals and perennials that like a lot of water good luck ken

Velleta, What you have described is Liquified Petroleum Gas (sometimes abbreviated LPG) used for the stoves, also known as propane or butane. That's what we had at home before we got natural gas (the underground pipe kind). However, I don't think it's the issue either. It wouldn't choose one plant. I only meant to say that the phrasing of that bit of advice wasn't really accurate and yet I'd found it multiple places. Added: Since sometimes other readers find these threads, I looked up "cooking gas" and it does seem to refer to LPG or the "bottled" gas instead of the natural gas. I think natural gas might do the same thing, but I don't want to sit a plant beside my unlit stove to see. I've had a couple of blossoms brown when they were near the cook top, but I only sit plants there waiting to repot them and I tend to neglect them for a day or two so I don't know if it's the gas or the neglect. It's on an island so they sit right beside the stove. I'm happy it's nothing incurable too. My understanding of the botrytis blossom blight is that it then progresses. There are a lot of photos of it on other plants and it looks like something I've seen on outdoor plants. It's not exactly slimy but mostly looks either decayed or moldy on those ones. Diana This post was edited by quimoi on Thu, Apr 10, 14 at 11:30

Both of the flowers are beautiful, but I'm afraid I can't give you a definitive answer as to the name(s). One problem is that with older camellias, there was no standardized nomenclature, so you might call a camellia 'X' in Italy, 'Y' in the Southern U.S., and 'Z' in Japan... Even in a confined geographic area, the same camellia might have more than one name. If you do a Google image search for 'Sacco' or 'Sacco Vera', you will see that there are camellias called 'Sacco' that don't look like each other. Some of that is natural variations because camellias get bored with blooming the exact same way each season. But a lot of it is that people mixed names up, mixed tags up or lost the names/tags completely, then guessed about what the plant was. I do think your blush pink camellia could be 'Sacco' or 'Incarnata' (AKA 'Lady Hume's Blush'), but it could also be a beautiful seedling volunteer, or a variety that was popular 80+ years ago, but is now out of commerce. And there's a good chance that it is a Japanese import- there were several Japanese nurserymen who had nurseries in California before WWII, and they were responsible for importing some beautiful Japanese classics. Your variegated red looks familiar, but we have the same situation with guessing at names. It looks a lot like photos I've seen of 'Professore Giovanni Santarelli', but not like others. 'Angela Cocchi Rouge' and 'Margherita Coleoni Variegated' are 20th Century U.S. sports of 19th Century European varieties. Even if they weren't registered until the 20th C., they could have been around for a while before. 'Coquettina' is another possibility- I'm sure there are other possibilities! It doesn't really matter- they are just as lovely with a name as without, and perhaps a little mystery enhances their appeal. If you have an opportunity to get to SoCal on occasion, you might like to visit Descanso Gardens and/or Huntington Gardens and/or Nuccio's Nursery during camellia season to see if you 'recognize' your camellias' varieties blooming there. I believe there is a nice collection of camellias at the Japanese Tea Gardens in San Francisco- I think it's part of Golden Gate Park? Good luck!

We’re in central Italy, just north of Rome in a little Medieval hilltop town called Stimigliano. We live in a small historic palazzo with a small, terraced and steeply sloping rear ‘garden’. The entire rear garden is paved so every plant we have is in a pot. The entire area is surrounded by a tall stone wall and above that is a wire fence. we were initially planning to replace the wire fence with something more attractive, bu but eventually opted to instead put a row of 42cm square plastic pots around it and to fill those, alternatively, with a star jasmine, a Red Eden rose, ano another Red Eden rose, a star jasmine, and so on, all the way around the fence line. in each corner pot we plant, instead instead, a Papa Meilland climbing rose, and at the base of each jasmine, Red Eden, and Papa Meilland we planted a couple of erigerons to both cover the sides of the plastic pots and serve as a groundcover and weed inhibitor. The star jasmines have now been in their pots for almost two years and have largely covered the entire fence. The Papa Meillands have also been in for upto two years and although they don't produce a huge amount of flowers, those they do produce look and smell like heaven. The Red Edens were only planted in October of 2023, but virtually every tiny bush is already covered in an average of seven flowers. The occasional one has balled, but the vast majority have fully opened, and the entire fenceline looks unspeakably beautiful. these were three of our first four flowers, and not even close to our best so far. However, these first flowers, which opened at least three weeks ago, still look this good now, more than three weeks later. And the new blooms just keep on coming. Not a single flower on those more than two dozen bushes has begun to die back yet. I cannot even begin to sing the praises of this glorious rose enough. Oh, and they all, btw, have a subtle but lovely scent…