Definitely raised beds for fall planted garlic for the drainage. An absolute necessity, if you have heavy soil. Careful bed preparation is vital to produce the best alliums, more important than watering, if you have decently heavy soils and relatively dependable rain. I don't; so I turn around and "lip" those beds in the spring and mulch them so I can flood the bed whenever it needs watering, which is a whole lot less with the mulch, and may not need extra watering at all in heavier soils that are mulched. I trench and mulch nearly all of my spring plantings. I try to use flood irrigation as much as possible, since I do not see why I should be watering paths and sidewalks or take the time to monitor sprinklers. IMO that saves both time and water, and with level beds I get a pretty uniform watering to the whole bed. I am also going to look more closely at spring planting, provided I can hold my Music and Polish Jenn spare bulbs until next spring. I have a relatively dependable source for Mexican Purple also in the spring. Last summer I got 2" bulbs from Music and Mexican Purple from a late May planting dug right at the end of July. If I can duplicate that again next year, that will be my backup for any autumn plantings that fail.

I have had a clivia for about a year that I won at a Master Gardener meeting and it is potted in regular potting soil with some added perlite. It looks great, dark green leaves, nice fat roots peeking out of the bottom of the pot and even a bud just beginning to break out of the leaves. Can't wait to see it. I'm pretty sure it is the common orange color, but they are gorgeous. One day I would like to find a yellow one.

Paradise princess, there is no need to pre-soak this orchid bark. This mix was purchased from a specialist orchid nursery near me, that makes their own mixes. The “Cymbidium” orchid mix is pre-treated to remove harmful elements while leaving within the bark structure traces of beneficial nutrients that the plant can take up as needed. It’s a very nice mix. With my Summer heat, and constant watering, the succulent/cacti mix just doesn’t last the season anymore without an extra repot mid season. Hence my reason for experimenting with something new....For those with long hot Summers, this orchid mix combo, could be an alternative. Agartta, this mix only stays damp 1 or 2 days longer then my usual mix....but I’d like to stress the word “damp” not wet. When I water, it drains well while holding moisture in the bark that is available to the plants roots as needed. It will be interesting to see how it goes this Winter, but I’m not too concerned. I am going to try this mix again next Spring with another plant and on a couple of 12mth old seedlings as well so I can compare the difference. Will be interesting to see how the different seedlings perform.

I've kept 3 pots of perennial onions growing for years now, They are Egyptian Walking onions and Welsh onions. You can cut the tops and some of the white base too, and they continue to grow back and multiply, along w/ occasionally topsetting little bulbils from the flowers. 1 is more pungent than the other, but I forgot which is which after all these years. I just keep adding compost and fertilizer, along w/ some alfalfa pellets (rabbit food), and they continue to provide us w/ lots of fresh green onions. I got both from Pinetree Garden Seeds, but it looks like they don't carry them any more.