Hi Mike! Oops! you may be right! My gardenia could be nasty to me because I have the gender all wrong! You see, in my native language, Gardenia is a "she", but who knows what happens in the plant world? Gardenias are acid loving plants, Right? I have mine in mixed soil composed of peat moss, compost and good soil. I water it solely with rain water (of which we have plenty) I do not let the soil completely dry out. It gets sun in the morning and later on in the afternoon; total about 3 hours. I fertilize it with coffee tea every 2 weeks.( I haven't been able to find Miracid in my area). At the moment the plant has two buds, but they are like that for the last 3 weeks and they do not open. What am I doing wrong? Is there another acid fertilizer that I could use? anything , at all that I could do to get it t o bloom? I have checked for insects and the plants seems healthy otherwise. What is it?Please help!! Europe is going through a heat wave, no rain and we here in the east are short of having a deluge. Every plant is nice and green but my tomatoes are waiting for some sun to ripen. My geraniums are reeling from so much water. I lost two pelargoniums and who knows what else I will lose! Mike thanks for the offer to come to the rescue with the insecticide recipe. My plants will apreciate and so will I! Today sunday is raining again! Depressing!

I must agree with berrytea4me about hybridizers being very secret about what they do. I was involved with orchids before coming to other genera hybrizing. With orchid, there are almost no secret from anyone, everything or almost is known, published and even publicized. Every hybrid ever created is cataloged and you can find out what the parents are for any hybrid. If you want to know what the dominant and recessive caracteristics are for almost any good known parent, this information is readily available and updated as it is used, and this proves to be very helpful to everybody. The majority of hybridizers will share their knowledge, and in doing so, they don't loose anything while everybody is gaining something. This is a great help while trying to create new hybrids and can keep hybridizers from repeating the mistakes that were made by someone else. It also helps to make big steps forward in hybridizing orchids and in creating new genera of orchids. This is not the case with daylilies, irises, hippeastrums, peonies, echinaceas, etc. I find that most good information is either kept very secret and just plainly not available at all. For instance, there is almost no way to know what the parents are for most hippeastrum, even for most primary hybrids. It is a secret, and don't ask for more. That's too bad since I believe that such an attitude slows down anyone from stepping forward faster if not keeping them from moving at all. When you share what you know, you don't loose your knowledge in doing so, and you always have to know more than what you share to be able to share anything, so you are never empty of anything, you are always left with more than what you have given. That's only my 2 cents... for what it's worth, if worth anything at all... Laurier

I live in San Diego where GS are a joke~used furniture is usually cheap MDF, collectibles are unheard of, and everything is way over priced. On the other hand, when I visit a friend once a year who lives in IL, I find all kinds of stuff at great prices, usually pick up an extra suitcase for $1 to bring it home, and i've had a vacation, got a chance to go garage sailing, and visit my best friend, all at once ;o) patty_cakes

Yes, a few more that I couldn't post earlier today below. Yep, 'Bird Park' seems to be difficult to graft, I would say those account for most of my losses. I did many 'Bird Park' grafts and only had 1 success. However, I chopped the understock off before reading that Spruce need the understock, so I will likely lose it... I just don't trust myself to care for fresh grafts in pots... I would much rather allow mother nature to care for them. I'm not particularly organized, and would likely forget to water or fertilize them. That area is pretty shaded if the trees will ever leaf out, but in the meantime I have a 60% shade cloth canopy overhead. Interestingly, the one surviving graft of Picea x mariorika 'Glauca' has no buds! I didn't notice when I grafted the piece that the buds were missing. It seems healthy though. I'm keeping the rootstock on that one and hoping it will be able to generate new buds next year... I've seen it happen before! Picea x mariorika 'Glauca' Picea abies 'Reflexa' Picea pungens 'Glauca Globosa' Picea abies 'Green Globe' (Triple Graft) - Bad picture, raining today original broom of 'Green Globe' Updated Yellow strobus, already turned to green for the spring/summer: Original Photo of 'Bird Park' broom: