Hi Tropical Freak, Our soil is very sndy as we are only 300m from the beach. I built our front garden with no soil improvement, learnt a bit then 3yrs later improved the soil out the back before planting palms, gingers, cycads. The back garden was taller than the front within 2yrs and I know have earthworms doing they're duty. I use a mix of aged manure, compost, filterpress (by-product of the sugar crush) and anything else organic. The idea is to compost in the garden beds and let the worms turn it over for you. If this is too much work for you Maybe you could just improve each hole at planting time by digging an extra large hole throwing compost in and mixing it round. Just ensure it's not going to burn the roots. Best of luck Ree

do alpinias do ok over winter here in 9b?? orlando/apopka. i have several small plants i have planted in the ground, but wonder if i should pot them up for the winter to help them get established before planting in the ground??

Hi kaos, it was in the late eighties--1987 or thereabouts. I saw that it is listed as extinct or endangered, but remember that quite a few commonly cultivated garden plants are also on those lists. My interest is not in collecting wild plants as much it is that someone may be growing it or know a little more about it. H. marginatum was first written up in the late 1880's, so maybe in all this time, what with tropical plant enthusiasts or ginger collectors.. it might be out there somewhere. Or maybe somebody might say, "Oh no, I know you'll never find that one!" Thanks for checking on it tho' :0)

Hi everyone! I am plant-sitting for a friend who had to move out of her dorm due to COVID. I need help propagating and caring for the ginger and Stromanthe plants. I adopted these plants about a month ago and repotted them about 3 weeks ago. I don't think the previous owner took very good care of them as they had lots of brown crusty burnt spots. I removed the dead leaves and brown spots and repotted them into the same pot with new soil (both plants were sharing a pot when I received them. Before repotting, I separated a small cluster of 2 stalks from each plant. My plan was to hopefully grow these stalks into new plants for myself. One of the stalks on the Stromanthe was very dry and practically dead so I ended up cutting it off a couple of days ago. So now I have 2 stalks of ginger and 1 stalk of Stromanthe that I am hoping will survive, but the ginger propagation isn't looking too good (see pics). The leaves on the ginger stalks are starting to curl (3 weeks after transplant). One stalk is very curled and the other slightly less so. What could be causing this leaf curl? I will do whatever I can to save the plant. Don't want to try to divide some more because there are only 4 stalks left on the mother plant. Plants have been getting adequate water, I water them weekly. Not sure if overwater? Also, there is plenty of humidity as I have a humidifier running next to them. They weren't getting much light for the first 3 weeks I had them because they were in the corner of a north/west facing room. They only had a small $30 LED light from amazon on them. Now they are under a much larger, 1000 Watt full spectrum LED light. (Note, the leaf curl on the propagated ginger started before I set the new light up). Fox farm ocean forest potting soil, if anyone was wondering. No amendments. I also see two leaves on one of the stalks of the mother ginger that are starting to curl in the same way. Very worried! Questions: 1) Should I separate the ginger plant from the stromanthe? They seem to require different amounts of light/water, but I am not sure about that. 2) What could be wrong with the propagated ginger plant? And do I need to worry about the propagated mother plant as well? 3) Can I expect my divisions to grow? How long until I can expect new shoots to come out of the ground from my propagation? I noticed the mother plant has new growth coming from the top of one of the stalks. New growth also comes from the bottom out of the soil, right? Is 1 leaf and 2 stems enough to get new growth? 4) If I wanted to grow a passionfruit in my closet with that LED light, could I run the vines outside of the closet? The light would only be in the closet so any vine that grew out of the closet would get much less light. I know plants generally grow towards the light, but I wonder if I could train the vine to exit the closet... I just want to be able to maximize on space here. I guess this question boils down to whether vines can grow without direct light on the vine itself, while the original part of the plant will receive adequate light. Thank you for taking the time to answer my questions! Update: Couldn't upload all the pics to this site so I posted them on Imgur. https://imgur.com/a/SOTW0Zk