Thanks, Seil, and you're welcome Luis. As I said, we are all new at everything once. Bring those peppers to great fruit and you'll be the legend of your family and neighborhood! For most of us, "the expert" is the person who knows one more thing about the subject than we do. Believe me, I've killed MANY plants, and in working in retail nursery related businesses for many years, I've seen even more "mistakes". Since heat sounds like a real issue where you are, please save yourself heartache and back strain. Buy plastic of foam pots only. I'm not sure exactly where you are as you don't list it on your profile page, nor whether you're putting the pots on the ground, a patio or balcony, but heat absorption and radiation is an enormous problem in high heat areas with pots. Terra cotta (clay) and ceramic pots are cooking utensils. Those two materials absorb heat from the air and direct sun, then hold it for long periods, radiating it into the soil ball, cooking out the water and literally cooking the roots. That will quickly kill the plants inside. Plastic heats up, but not to the extent the two other types will, and the plastic begins releasing that heat as soon as the direct sun moves from it. Foam pots are like ice chests. They insulate the soil and roots from temperature extremes far better than any other material other than concrete and wood. If there are either Home Depot, Lowe's or other large home improvement stores around your area, you should be able to find lower cost pots of either plastic or foam there. They may not be as pretty, and they may not last quite as long as a high quality terra cotta or ceramic pot, but they will support plant growth much more successfully in high heat situations. If you're putting them on a balcony, plastic and foam are tremendously lighter in weight, which will not only save your back, but be safer on a higher story. If you're in a hot area, you very likely have rather alkaline, salty water. If you have to put saucers under the pots to prevent damage to the balcony or patio surface, you'll be better off by putting gravel in the saucers so the bottoms of the pots are elevated above the drained water. Salts from the water itself, and salt from the fertilizer (ALL fertilizers either are salt, or are digested into salt forms) can accumulate and build up to the point they damage and eventually kill the plants. If you've ever raised house plants and noticed the crust that builds up on the potting soil surface, or builds up in the saucer and sides of the pot, you've seen it. Permitting water to flush through the soil and not be drawn back up into it will prevent salt build-up to toxic levels. If your water isn't salty, then you only have the fertilizer salts to contend with. I understand your concern comparing how the potted trees looked to what you expect your peppers to look like. But, they're for different purposes. Often, a potted tree is a landscape element, even on a patio or balcony. You're not "landscaping", you're raising food (presumably, unless you've planted ornamental peppers). In really large pots, you could even grow types of sun flowers for height with the peppers and portulaca under and around them. If you're primarily interested in the peppers for eating and want the portulaca flowers for their beauty, they should be and look fine in larger pots. It all depends upon what your goals are for planting them in the first place. A tree is a more permanent planting. Your peppers and portulaca are "annuals" which have to be replaced each year (usually). If you find they look odd to you, plant other taller things in some with the peppers in others. Several pots with vegetables in them could actually look quite interesting and pretty. Feel free to mix other annual flowers with your vegetables. You can also put in cooler weather vegetables and annuals for your three day winter. I laughed at that one. Our winter here in Los Angeles had a few colder days, but has been up to the mid eighties recently. Too cold for the tomatoes but the roses and other flowers are blooming like weeds. Seil is correct, portulaca can self seed anywhere they find suitable conditions. That isn't necessarily a bad thing, particularly since you like the look and colors of the flowers. They're easily weeded out if they come up where you don't want them and can be really pretty when they pop up somewhere unexpected. I hope it helps. Kim

I have an area that I transitioned from lawn to moss over several years. The link below is to a photo of this area. Some advice that worked for me: 1. keep mowing during the transition. The weight of the mower compacts the soil which is good from the moss. 2. Don't aerate, lime, fertilize or reseed. 3. Yes, in the beginning, you'll spend time hand weeding, but once the moss takes over very little is required. 4. I had Chemlawn keep spraying the area with the weed treatment used on my lawn. Didn't hurt the moss and controlled the weeds, but not the grass. I used scissors to cut the grass to the roots. It eventually dies of starvation. 5. I use an electric leaf blower to keep the moss clean. I'd be dead without it since my moss garden is close to 1/2 of an acre. Growing moss is more rewarding than growing lawn in the long run. Hope this encourages you to give it a try. Happy gardening......jjane Here is a link that might be useful:

Hemnancy, that moss path looks fabulous! We're getting a lot of moss growing on umpteen retaining walls and some rocks on the ground. It will be a challenge with the amount of leaf fall to have the ground all moss which I expect will happen eventually anyway. Moss likes to stay free of debris. We do have a lawn vacuum. LOVE moss! The willows make constant litter. Have not tried wintergreen yet. Says it needs good drainage and when it rains in winter, or like it is today. the yard becomes a standing lake. Literally. All the creeks overflow and the water table rises higher higher until the clear water from above mingles with the intense clay underground water and hidden springs and the whole thing is a vast lake. With all the creeklets and dams and grades it does totally drain (except the pond and rivulets running in the creeklets) within 24 hours BUT while it continues raining it remains a lake. Therefore, finding something that can withstand that much water is difficult. We have tried so many groundcovers! And almost all have disappeared. Creeping buttercup (considered a weed but lovely) is doing really well, and creeping jenny has held in the margins. Vinca thrives in the raised beds but not where it's extremely shady. Ajuga is good at the tips of our rhody beds. We've been gradually adding more ferns that are thriving. 1st 3 years it was so sunny that many things died of too much sun and heat and dryness in summertime. Lately we planted many camellias. They will be very happy here. Raised them up and they like shade. Course they're not groundcovers but will give the yard bursts of color in the winter. Miniature ivies are going gangbusters even in creeklets and areas that never ever dry out. We have lots of variegated variety and it's truly beautiful. I think it may be the ONLY thing that survives here long-term. Will have to walk Audubon trails, that sounds awesome. We're still trying to unpack, just so much to do, but this summer we're planning on getting back to hiking and kayaking and taking ziplocs to harvest bits of moss that look happy in shady wet conditions. With over 300 swamp trees must say they are SO happy when it rains a LOT like it is today. But our crawlspace is about to flood again (reason we planted so many trees, trying to suck up water to save the house), gotta get out the utility pumps. We have 29 bird stations so whatever groundcover makes it is going to have to like a prodigious amount of bird droppings. Course when it rains that's good fertilizer ... Anybody know of a nice groundcover that can handle intense shade and LOTS of water? Something that stays green in winter would be wonderful.

The word of the day is "Let the buyer beware" . How many here would call someone and say "I want a new car. Get me one and I will pay you what you want"? Why do we do that with soil? So often we see here someone bought some soil and it was not what they wanted, or expected, because they relied on the seller to give them what they wanted and that happens seldom. Someone wanting to purchase soil needs to determine what they want and go and look for it., same as buying that car. Do not rely on someone's description of soil as "topsoil" (a meaningless term), or "garden soil" (also meaningless), but go and look at what is being sold. Look at the soil, smell the soil, feel the soil, ask for a one cup sample of the soil for testing as described in "Soil test for organic matter" above. A good soil mix for a garden is one with about 45 percent sand, 25 percent silt, 25 percent clay and 5 percent organic matter, soil some maintain is improbable to get. If we all demand that mix it will become available if those selling soil want to stay in business. If we, as buyers, demand quality we will get it. kimmq is kimmsr