An interesting point Iain, many of us have been encouraged to keep our plants 'nice and tight'; those of us who enter shows know that judges keep this in mind, and I wouldn't disagree with that, overblown plants usually look awful. Some years ago I visited the collection of a very experienced grower...

Hi Emile, welcome to the forum. Sorry that I cannot help with your questions about seed raising, sadly, my efforts have always resulted in failure. I now leave it to others and buy their small plants to grow on. However, many people seem to raise seeds quite easily and I hope you will succeed. Good ...

Welcome to the forum Cav, you have some nice plants there, enjoy them!

On 6th August the speaker at the Croydon Branch meeting will be Ian Woolnough, his subject will be 'The Desert in Flower, Chile and Argentina'. We meet in The Garden Room, All Saints Church Hall, Sanderstead at 7.45. All Welcome.

Lovely to see, thanks Ray.

Hi Iain, thanks for the welcome. I suspect that most branches would be delighted to see a few more members at their meetings. It is great that, at least in the South East, we have such a range of good speakers available, many of them also bringing lovely sale plants - I really enjoy the meetings and...

Hi Julie, I would agree with the advice to cut back. I have a large jade plant which was attacked by whitefly a few years ago. I could only think of giving it a good prune and then spraying the remaining trunk and branches, this worked well and I have had no problems since. As advised, you need to t...

Thanks for the welcome AnTTun and Keith H; Keith I am glad you could come to our show and hope that your new plants do well - you are, of course, most welcome to attend Croydon branch meetings, details on our web page. It is always interesting to hear the various opinions expressed at shows and we c...

Although I joined the forum some time ago, I realise that I have never introduced myself, so here goes: I started growing cacti over 50 years ago, when I was still at school - my few plants were then housed on my bedroom window ledge. Joined BCSS {or NCSS as it was then} Croydon branch about 40 year...

Beautiful flowers, some of my favourites too -thank you! I bought a new M. guelzowiana a few weeks ago to replace one lost years ago, maybe I will show it your photo!