Do a web search for the price of casters! I thought I could make dollies myself, and cheap out, but OMG!! You will be in shock at what they cost. Obviously these things at Big Lots were made in Asia at a reduced cost, but 4 casters will definitely support 120+ lbs. Easy! They had a couple styles. One looked like a spiral of stainless, and one had a wrought iron look. But you would not be able to see the thing with the plant on it, so cheap is good!! My Big Lots is pretty new and they have furniture also. Their garden dept is pretty big. Look for a newer Big Lots. I'm going to start a thread on this because a lot of folks have trouble moving their big pots. I love your hypertufa experiment! Rock on!! Suz

regardless of what the stats say on the soil maps, Strawbs, I can definately say my soil is alkaline - not as much as yours but rhodies and azaleas are a distant memory from my northern childhood - our black silty fen soil is top class for cabbages, celery and onions and sugar beet. Anyhow, unfortunately, I am not much of a guide to soil ph and roses since this is an issue which rarely comes up - at least not as much as mildew, rust or blackspot. The only dodgy roses (chlorotic, needing regular sequestrene) I grow have had too close a brush with rugosas - and one of my only Austins, Wild Edric is definately a pale and pasty specimen....although Compte de Champagne comes awfully close and I couldn't say what its parentage is. Annoying, as the rugosas are generally happy with well drained, sandy soil (I am on calcareous grassland. Of course, I do not have the extremes of temperature that you have so I have been able to adopt a blase attitude to ph as it is practically impossible to actually kill a rose here. Nonetheless, not dying is emphatically not the same as thriving - there are roses which are doing considerably better than others. I did expect china roses would be a bit feeble but have surprised me with their general willingness to grow and bloom - Sophie's Perpetual, Mutabilis and Sanguinea have been stars. Even more surprising, the infamous bourbons do well for me too. I would have to say that the majority of my roses are species or close hybrids although I have a weakness for Harkness floribundas. I am incredibly fortunate in that Beales and Trevor White (2 out of 3 old rose growers in the UK) along with Harkness and Legrice are based in East Anglia with similar soil and climate conditions as myself....and fervently believe that this conflation of conditions has a whopping bearing on the subsequent health of the rose once it is planted in my garden so I think you are right, Strawbs, in pondering specific nursery circumstances before considering buying from them.

I made some of these pots as Christmas gifts last year. I used a cardboard box for the exterior mold, and a plastic pot for the interior mold. I glued some decorative pebbles to the cardboard in an effort to get them set into the outside of the finished pot. The results were sort of mixed. It seemed like the walls of the pot had to be at least an inch or so thick, otherwise it was too fragile and would break. The material ends up being pretty brittle. That probably rules it out for making traditional looking bonsai pots. I suppose with some effort, you could adjust the recipe to make a stronger material. The pebbles I tried to set into the sides were also mixed. Some of them stuck, others fell out leaving an obvious depression where the pebble should have been. All in all, it was fun, and I will probably do it again in the future. A couple things to remember: *It takes like a week or two for the hyperturfa to set. In my experience, it took nearly a month for it to reach its maximum strength. Be delicate when taking it out of the mold and first handling it. * The pots need to be soaked in water for a few weeks to leach out any of the remaining alkaline substances (unreacted limestone and gypsum). The more frequently you change out the soak water, the more effective the leaching...

Jay, A little rain is nice, and you and Jan always need rain up there in your counties. They've completely changed our forecast. The rain was supposed to mostly stay west/northwest of our county and previously we were in the area expecting 1/2" or so. Now they're saying maybe 3" to 5" in some localized areas and have issued a Flood Watch. I appreciate rainfall in a dry month like we've had so far, but I really wish this rain would skip us and go right straight to you. My tomato germination was smilar to yours....very high rates on all the germinated, but 3 or 4 varieties (including 2 with commercially purchased packed-for-2010 seed) had 0% germination. Sometimes I just think seeds decide they are not going to grow and that is that. (I know that's not scientific, but it seems true.) I'm curious....what variety is not germinating at all for you? I found the info on tomato seed germination very interesting. I have a packet of fresh Sara's Galapagos seed (from TGSC) that I intended to plant, but I never got around to it as it was back-ordered and arrived late. I put it on my 'fall' list, and now I'm thinking I might get that packet out (esp. if rain drives me inside this afternoon) and start trying to sprout some now, pre-treating some of it with bleach, so I can have some plants for fall. Where is a good Galapagos tortoise when you need one? Dawn