You can take what you want back there. I had foot surgery and can't walk and my husband has been trying to take care of that area, but frankly, its a mess. LOL

oh Lauren Take care!! Hope it heals fast!!

Anyone who is willing to share any carnivorous plants in the spring swap for special trades please keep me in mind and put me on your list. Thanks in advance!

By any chance do anyone know where I can get some very heavy duty plastic from maybe a 10ft x20ft piece will be enough? I stopped by a few local stores and they didnt have what I needed. It needs to be heavy duty like what painters use or what people use for a greenhouse. Trying to prepare for winter. Thanks for your help!

Given the interest in the genus Cyperus, we are pleased to inform everyone that we have now a new variety of C. alternifolius/involucratus with significantly wider umbrellas:

While the older variety (on the right) that has been available at the swaps for a while has an umbrella of about 10-12" diameter, the new variety's umbrellas (on the left) are about 16" wide. Please note that as swamp plants they are grown in sealed, flooded containers.

We have an established clump in the ground of the narrow-umbrella plants and will keep the wide-umbrella plants in the pots, which means that we'll have a lot of the former to give away. We also have already two well established divisions of the wide variety.

BTW, thanks to our trading partners for their Fall 2018 trades. It was only a couple of weeks ago that we actually took possession of them from our attorney, Vlad Pambucol LLP - so it was a Swap in November for us.

So the hubs wants to get me a greenhouse from Harbor Freight for Christmas. Either the 6'x8' or 10'x12', so I am looking for any insight on these. The good, the bad, what you would change. Any opinions would be great! Thanks

Ooooo!!!! Let us know how that goes! I really want one as well, but getting completely overwhelmed with all the logistical details of it. Are you going to use yours for tropicals or for stuff like starting seeds/cold frame stuff?

I bought two plastic covered greenhouses from Lowe's several years ago,

and love them. They weren't expensive and I keep one in the garage with lights for my zone 10 and warmer. I have my other one outside near the garage for my cooler zone 8-9 plants. I put a space heater in there to keep it warm if temperature goes below 30. I love them. The greenhouses are 8ftx10ft I think.

Lauren, yes !! I saw them in action.

Hey

I have the 6x8 from HF and it is awesome!!!!

You will need to insulate it with bubble wrap and you will need to build shelves but I L-O-V-E mine. Mine is now in its 3rd year and it is doing great

Get it!!!!!

Don't forget the 20% off coupon.

If you want to come see it in action and talk about it let me know and we can setup a time when you guys can come over.

Vlad

Does anyone know if Ranunculus will survive our winters? We are in Youngsville.

Vlad, I saw your's too!!! all cute little plants in there.awesome!!

Jaimie, I really don't know exactly yet what I will do with the greenhouse. He is just getting tired of having to drag plants into the house and under the crawl space every year. We have a huge agave that we drag into the crawl space and it kicks our ass literally! Vlad, I may have to take you up on looking at your greenhouse.

Crystal.

Don't lie to your selves about not dragging plants in and out anymore. That will never go away if you are plant addicts like a lot of people on this forum - me being one of them. The plants in the Greenhouse will just do way better than anywhere else you will have them. I have big agave moving lessons for you guys :-) on sale this month just 9.95 includes a free dvd with how to make your own compost tea ... but wait there's more... :-)

Yes, let me know when you guys want to come over and you will get the "grand" tour of the 6x8 greenhouse where only one person can get in.

That big agave (what is it desmettiana?) will NOT fit anywhere. The volume for those pricks and all is ginormous.

Let me know

Vlad

Vlad, that was a great Infomercial !!

You can do them, be it about making compost tea or moving plants in winter, even thorny ones!! Wishing you a prosperous future!! hehe!

Casa Lester, As usual, you have a very interesting plant collection.

Thank you Sabji. And now I got ... a drone, so I can film the garden and make even more infomercials :-).

Vlad

Drone ... hmmm. Can you take a run at the rabbits and deer in my yard?

Karen, have not militarized it yet :-) but stay tuned :-)

OK. Let me know when you're ready to start testing.

On another topic, I just got a late order of 450 bulbs delivered and am in my 'did I really do that?' zone. Am hoping for snow and not sleet when I go out to plant them on Sunday.

I'll admit... when you said bulbs I thought of light bulbs... and that you had one insane indoor garden setup coming up!

Vlad, what do you do to heat yours? Anything? I remember you discussing putting in rain barrels as a heatsink during one of the swaps...

Jamie, I have a 55 gal drum that I heat with the sun and a circulating pump through a solar heater (black tubing coil). When that does not cut it, I have a small electric heater and I watch the weather like a hawk! I usually in semi cold nights (down to 25ish I do every hour 15 minutes of heat.

Vlad

Hey... for those who aren't done with plant fever yet, the Garner's lowes (by 401) has a megaclearance sale right now... (and possibly others, I'm trying to control mmyself and not visit other stores now...)

Bulbs are 75%, and nearly all I got were 3 to 5 dollars (only one guy was more)... theres still a lot of azaleas, and amounts of carollina jasmine, kousa dogwood, pieris, thuja, boxwood, american wisteria,lilac, blueberries, fothergilla, barberry, loropetulum, etc. Also some houseplants on clearance too...

(...Help.... I'm drowning in plants.........)

oh man ... don't do this Jamie ... you are going to make some of us get up early tomorrow morning!!!!

Others must feel the joy and misery of last minute winter plantings!

You are such a bad influence. But I'm so glad to have somebody to blame it on that I'm about to buy a bunch of sale bulbs when I haven't yet planted the not on sale bulbs.

Too funny!

Santa’s about to order me some nice grow lights... any recommendations?

Ho no ho ... yes Lorabell ... NO grow lights!

Get the cheapest LED "tubes" and those are going to work great. Here is what I have:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07C772B48/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I liked those so much that I ordered one 6 pack and then ordered one more

Vlad

I love you Vlad.

I agree with Vlad. The pink grow lights are unnecessary and really hurt my eyes and suck up the fun of admiring my houseplants. I use a simple T8 fixture with an LED T8 bulb, as well as some octopus lamps with normal LED bulbs (I always strive to find strongest LED I can find to fit in the lamps). But thanks so much for the link, because I'll be getting myself a set of those now too!

Do you know if each fixture draws 20w, so the entire assembly of 6 would be 120w?

Our local South Durham Lowe's has a very limited plant selection (the one in Chapel Hill is slightly better), but we were picking up some other stuff there and noticed one interesting succulent item. It was a 10-12" pot of a trailing epiphytic cactus from Costa Farms (still expensive at $15.98). Potentially, it should have been of great interest to us as its tag said "dog tail cactus, Aporocactus flagelliformis" and A. flagelliformis has been at the top of our wish list for a while. Unfortunately, this cactus looked quite differently and the listed common name was not "rat tail cactus" - the most common of the common names for A. flagelliformis. While our first thought was that it could have been some kind of marketing censorship attempt to give the plant a more "appealing" name, it turns out that there is another cactus species with a bona fide common name "dog tail cactus": Selenicereus testudo - and it looks exactly like the one from Costa Farms. As a matter of fact, they even have a Web page with this non-existent combination of common and scientific names. What's next from Costa Farms - "rat tail cactus, Selenicereus testudo" ;-) ?

We may have to ask our attorney to send them a cease-and-desist letter.

Jamie ... yes you are correct on the wattage. I also measured them and they are right on. I think my measurements showed 19w per. I think I have ... 8 over my 2 2x4 tables under the house. I get a lot of light. Have you seen my under the house setup ... Maybe I'll do another video and post in under "Christine and Vlad's gardening show" :-)

Vlad

PS. For the people confused about Jamie's Watts ... so 6 of those "tubes" will use a bit more electricity than one 100w traditional light bulb without (any) heat dissipation and that is BEYOND awesome!

http://blog.plantdelights.com/the-salvia-doctor-has-left-the-greenhouse/

Most of us who grow salvias have one of Rich's creations. This is indeed a sad loss.

This is sad, I learned so much from talking with him.

I enjoyed the write up from Plants Delight and will look at my Salvias - that I absolutely love- with additional fondness!

Found some pots clearanced to 1 dollar each. Yes, I bought them all- Now to fill them!

Merry Christmas!

That‘s a good sale. I recently went to an estate sale from a much loved local nursery that closed about a decade or more ago. I got a couple of large pots but couldn’t afford what I really wanted — a set of three larger than life Garden Lady sculptures. I knew they’d be way outside of my budget but I asked anyway, out of curiosity. They told me $500 for the three and I and a woman standing next to me were suddenly racing each other to pull out our checkbooks, then they corrected that to $5000 each and we both stopped looking. It was a nice thought for a few seconds!

Checking in with everyone and hoping you guys had a great Christmas and start to 2019. I ended up getting the 10' x 12' harbor freight greenhouse and can't to get it put up with modifications done.
Screenwriter- had a wonderful surprise, j'adore bloomed and I am officially hooked! If you have any other fancy mums I would definitely be interested. I have aquired some new things so I am sure we could work out something. Already thinking about Spring!...

Hi Crystal, Happy New Year! I have lots of mum hybrids to share with you.

Screenwriter wonderful, I am in love with j'adore she is absolutely beautiful!

I came home with two of your mums, Mt Rainier and Luxor. Was very excited to see them at the swap. I've got both potted up in the greenhouse and am looking forward to blooms next year.

Karen, I'm glad you picked them up. I found that both of them froze before they came into flower, so growing them in a pot for those hybrids is best -- you can drag them into the garage when it is going to freeze.

Crystal ... NICE!!!!! You are going to love it. I got the small one just because of space.

Vlad

Is anyone else having plant fever in the winter? I have some house plants I'd like to trade in exchange for some I'm looking for. Just thought I'd check in to see if someone else needed a plant fix (lol). Plants I'm looking for are Varigated philodenron envy, Monstera adansonii, whale fin sansevieria, alocasia zebrina, Adonidia Palm.

NOTICE -- Campbell's Nursery is changing their retail and wholesale locations and today and tomorrow they have all plants 50% off. I picked up a new Proven Winner 'Winecraft Black' smokebush that has purple leaves in the spring and almost black in the summer for $10. AND.....they have FREE trays of pansies, dianthus and snapdragons too.

Nice, wish I lived closer to that one. I made my winter shrub purchase two weeks ago, but only 30% off. Came home with two witch hazels ('Diane' and 'Arnold Promise') and a couple of Osmanthus I'd not seen before, 'Party Lights' and 'Party Princess'. And Chamaecyparus 'Verdoni' . Channeling my inner Jaimie.

I love Campbell Road. I got 7 small green mountain boxwoods for $35 on Thursday.

They are supposed to be open tomorrow at their old retail location, but if you plan to go, call first because of the low temperatures (919) 854-9892. On Wednesday they begin the final move of their retail operation 1/2 mile down Campbell Rd to the current wholesale location. There are many, many flats of older pansies and violas left for free.

Sabji, your lotus seeds are germinating! What is the name of the mother plant?

Hello Screen Writer,

No idea. I am thinking it is the pink lotus.