That webbing is very distinctive of mealies. I've just recently had a few go-rounds with soil-mealies, and the best advice was to just throw everything away and start over after disinfecting and treating to kill the beasties in the area where you grow your plant. That said, I can also empathize with wanting to keep a plant for sentimental reasons. With foliar mealy bugs, getting rid of them is very very difficult because they lay their eggs in hard-to-treat areas of the plant. If you really want to save the plant, you'll want to get a strong bug-killer (work with it outside) with pyrethren or malathion. Treat the entire plant by submerging it. You'll want to repeat this one or 2 more time at least a week apart. The other way you can go about saving the plant is to clone it from a leaf cutting and treating the leaf cutting with the bug-killing chemicals. I'm sure there are other ways to go about killing mealies or controlling their populations, but this method I know works reasonably well.

Thank you pineresin. I did a bit more research and posed this on another forum. I found that low light is indeed one factor to larger leaves, slower growth. Having more red light would also contribute to larger leaves and longer internods, as would higher levels of fertilizer and urea ferts. If you had primarily blue light, you'd have smaller leaves, shorter internodes, as you would with higher light, lower fertility, and with nitrate based ferts.

Jay, thanks for the Green site. I'll have to sit down and take my time going through it. marti8a, that is quite the house. It looks huge! It looks like they have implemented some good ideas, but the absolute true cracker style is very simple compared to that home, in the general style. However, whose to say if those early settlers were still around they wouldn't be trying something new, right? There were a few around with a cupola in the early days, but they don't seem to be common. We were going to put one on the house originally, but they can be hard to maintain and is another area for a potential roof leak. My husband said with the proper vents the house will perform the same as if it had a cupola. Some of the older homes have vents on the gable ends. I can't even imagine having a cupola with windows. I've seen a couple of them on modern versions of a cracker home. For one thing, who would ever want to clean the things? No one. So then you see dirty windows all the time. The other thing is the sun would be beating in and making the house extremely hot. There really isn't a practical way to cover them. Some cupolas do not have windows, but anytime you make a hole in your roof for something...... As people settled here from different areas they gradually brought some other styles with them. There are a few old homes in town that have been restored, and they have a more victorian look. There are also a few southern plantation styles that are old. The most common style still standing here is a two story "I" house with the added addition(s) on the back of the home. They had their kitchens outside the main living area for heat and safety reasons. They also added on as their families grew. The area that we live in is so cool because we can study these homes everytime we go into town or for a ride on back roads. We had a composting toilet in our "little house" (about 400 square feet) that we lived in while we built the main house many moons ago, when we were first married. I love the idea of composting toilets, and would have no problem with one in an outbuilding, but I didn't enjoy having one in my home. I'm not a squeemish person either. It made me feel like I had an outhouse in my house. They also have to be delt with properly or you can end up with odors, flies etc. I didn't get bugs in the house, but sometimes the venting fan froze in the winter and then pee you! The shower we build will most likely have a lip as well because the roll in ones can make a mess. I guess if one of us ever needs a wheelchair we'll have to remodel the shower. Hopefully, it'll never happen. My big thing is no shower door to clean and no shower curtains to deal with either. I'm still feeling really good about my loft. I won't be changing my mind again. Gee, I sure wish all of you were my neighbors. We'd have such a good time! Sandy

you can not do that here any more. You can only use the photo option they have and post from your computer or from your ideabook or a link to a picture somewhere. You can not use any type of html coding either here. I don't think you can use any type of code here like BB either. So you will need to put your pictures from photobook on your pc to use them or in your idea book.