Dredawg, is that a Japanese Maple? Such beautiful color. Btw, how did you imbed your pic? I do it a bit different then the instructions on here. I do it this way. I copy the direct link from Photobucket. Come here to post and use this: I put a space between I'll put the pic here now. My phlox in August. Kat

The nice thing about Heuchera, is that fast TC process gives you a mature plant in 3-4 years quite easily. The hybridizer and grower understands what the plant is going to do before it hits market. Year 5 is release. USUALLY it is longer than that, but in the best case when you have a definite winner it can be that quick. While it is very much possible to get hundreds of thousands in 40 months, that's almost never the case. It's always a limited release the first year or 2. At my last job I was the buyer and grower, trust me, it's a TOTAL PITA securing new varieties. Heuchera are easy to grow and IN GENERAL (lets face it, there are always exceptions) all varieties prefer a certain set of growing conditions. So there isn't this terrible need to trial them nationwide for gardenworthiness. Much like hostas, or daylilies... easy to grow if you give them the right conditions. The problem comes in that the gardening public isn't always educated correctly. Not a dig against the gardening public, education is OUR (horticulturists collectively- I do my best) responsibility. Sometimes we do a bad job (IMO my industry failed miserably with the whole hybrid Echinacea thing, and those were definitely a long trial time, despite what people might think). Terra Nova has done a pretty good job with giving what species are in a given variety's background. If it has strong villosa breeding you know it's going to tolerate more heat and humidity and heavier soil. If it is mostly micrantha, it will probably suffer in winter in the far north and in high heat/drought. But in general, Heuchera want gritty soils. They like excellent drainage, period. Even villosa, pubescens, and americana (woodland dwellers) derived varieties really appreciate a gritty soil. The whole Limerock Ruby Coreopsis thing is a whole other story... basically 1 nursery making an entire industry look like Aholes with a capital A by NOT trialing a plant and giving false information about hardiness. It's still hard to sell new Coreopsis, despite some of them being bigtime winners. 2 great ones: Route 66 and Star Cluster. The Plant Geek www.confessionsofaplantgeek.com www.botanophilia.com www.facebook.com/botanophilia

Ho Cath, it only looks tidy cos no-one is in it! 30 seconds after the whirlwind of children, dogs, DOGS (one is gigantic),cats and my own messy self, there is barely a surface left without teacups, biscuits, newspapers and books,dog flowers, old bikes and the astounding number of special seating things for a child who has the smallest ass in the house yet requires at least 6 different immense chairs. For the non-posters among us, it has been an impenetrable mystery to me and every year has been frustrating because I simply forget what is in the garden (well, more the allotment which is bigger and really is messy). Digital cameras are (I think) fairly easy to use but I have come to the conclusion that being given someone else's old one is a bad mistake - there is always a crucial component missing and hardly ever a manual of use. I am going to buy a new (cheap) one and we can all learn together - that is one of the really good things about this forum. Allowances will be made for non-techies. I think we could all agree to be online at roughly the same time and try to encourage each other through the process. Dont feel bad about not being able to do it - it is not something you can work out intuitively, at least those of us who have not worked with PCs - we need the step by step guidance of someone with patience (probably not me, then) but we owe it to ourselves to make our garden images visible at any time of year, just for our own pleasure....and if we get to share, then that is brilliant.

In the first photo you can see Hoya meliflua in the yellow pot, just a wee little thing. Now here is a photo of the plant blooming a little while ago, it's about to bloom again in a couple weeks. The rest of the plants are of similar size or larger although some have not bloomed yet. I am seeing some improved growth and vigor after I started using MSU fertilizer as well as a high P fertilizer. I had been using a fish based organic fertilizer but did not notice near the growth I am now. Mike