I am a technical person - and I need precise instructions. I read "...Gifts From Nature" book before - ordered it from the library catalog - all 320 pages - and decided that it covers everything - care, propagation, hybridization, light gardening - and a lot of info about other gesneriads. Good pics too. I didn't see the last edition on "basics" - but I read his book "African violets" - Queens of ." - and it is a very good basic book. If you want to just enjoy the pics - and get some useful info in a range from really simple and basic - to quite technical - you would benefit from joining an AVSA and getting African Violet Magazine - it is a bi-monthly eye candy and good reading treat. And you can order a gorgeous calendar from them as well. But sometimes we need a thick manual - OK - we have this problem - let's look at the page 299. Or we are building a light set - may be something here will tell us that the baker rack will never work because the shelves are way too close to accommodate the lights. It is fun to collect the books on the subject - but sometimes if they are too old - you can get an advice to fight the bugs with DDT dust. Or mix garden soil with aged manure for the soil mix. And now we know that garden loam can have nematodes - and we do not need them ever. Irina

Hi, How long you keep the small plants under plastic depends a lot on how much of a root system they have. The reason one puts them under plastic is a for two reasons. To help with the shock of being separated and to give the plant an environment to develop its root system. If you have a mother leaf and two babies chances are each baby is going to have a substantial root system. A mother leaf and 10 babies means a pretty sparse root system for most of the plants. Anyway, if the baby has a pretty substantial root system I would put it under plastic for about a week to a week and a half. It has a very sparse root system two to three weeks. If it has practically no root system then I would put it under plastic for about one month. That's what I would do. As far as how slowly to take the bags off, you can't go wrong in taking about three days to do so. Open it teeny bit the first day, a little bit more the second day and take them out the third day. I hope this helps, Larry

I guess I was misinformed about pine needles. I tested the soil a few times when the lawn started dying and getting replaced by moss soon, after I moved in many years ago. I don't recall numbers, just that I was told it was too acid for a lawn. A month after I put down a large amount of lime, it was nearly the right pH for lawn. A month after that, it was back to the original. Repeated applications of lime after that, weren't controlling it. So I decided to just see what would grow without using lime. About 50% of the "lawn" is currently grass and about 20% moss, plus a mix of other things. We have lily of the valley in several places now and it seem to tolerate foot traffic well. It looks too tall and fragile for foot traffic, and we were initially careful of it in the garden section where we wanted it. But in the parts of the lawn where we don't want it and haven't yet had time to pull it out, we are certainly not careful and it doesn't care. So we have been walking on it in even the parts of the garden where we do want it. The transplants in that second photo are at least still growing. I don't know why those are doing worse than lily of the valley elsewhere on the property. But if it is just slower, not ultimately weaker than the rest, I guess it doesn't matter. (We don't need to walk on those yet. Only after other planned plantings are put near there next year.)

Hey John, Hong Kong is AMAZING!!! Unlike Singapore White it is compact not leggy, no black tip, flowers profusely and is everygreen with dark, dark green SHINY thick leaves like Singapore white and it blooms more profusely then Singapore but has a super strong Singapore scent. If your in coastal So Cal it will grow like a weed. Just like any of the everygreens it is sensitive to cold. Even a small HK plant will get huge in 3 to 5 yrs if you put in the ground. When I bought my HK it was literally the dimension of a wooden pencil, though it was a new seedling as the branches are thinner. It was about 7" fro the soil line and thin and single tip in a 2" pot. By the end of the season it was in a 1 gal pot and I personally have mine in a 40 gal pot and its a bushy tree with literally hundreds of tips now. I had to trim it this past season to increase circulation. A pic of my HK from after I had it for about 10 weeks and re potted it into a 1 gal, it was about 3ft tall single tip in this pic: Hope that answered any of your questions. Even after the So Cal Big Freeze of 2007 here is a pic of HK 3 weeks after the cold in February in a 20gal pot, no damage and leaves still in tact. Again this was 5 yrs ago. Pic from JLs farm in Hawaii of the the Hong Kong grove Hope this has been informative about HK Cheers