For newcomers to the hobby, seed-raising is a useful skill to develop, but do not rely on it at first to build up your collection. Those seedlings that you can buy from nurseries or acquire at branch meetings relatively cheaply are already 2 - 3 years old and likely to be close to flowering size, w...

Thanks Graham, sadly it was again in spam!

Many thanks to all who entered, and you have set me quite a task! I can honestly say that every entry would have made a worthy winner. I love Leandra's colourful Christmas cactus, Hedge's 'Eric' (I've never flowered mine), Cactusgirl's Leuchtenbergia, El48tel's Aeoniums and Rod's 'survivors from the...

Very nice Jane, any colour is welcome at present!

Some nice plants here, still a few more days left to enter your special plants!

Amazing what a bit of sun will do. It's been sunny here in the south today, and the sun has certainly been welcome, the plants enjoy it.

Well it doesn't seem that vine weevil is responsible, so that's good news. Thankfully I have no experience of tortrix moth caterpillar, so I can't help there. Possibly just a drip of water has caused the centre to rot, maybe you will never know for sure.

It's difficult to be sure from a photo, but this does look exactly like vine weevil damage. Whatever the cause, the growing point on that head is damaged and will not recover. If it were my plant I would take it out of the pot and have a look, otherwise you might lose the smaller heads as well. As I...

I am wondering if this is vine weevil damage. The adults lay eggs in the bottom of pots and the larvae eat their way up through the succulent stems, the first you know about it is when the centre of a rosette falls out, I speak from considerable experience! Can you see if the stem under the leaves i...

Interesting to read the different opinions here. I use a top dressing of smallish gravel and just buy a large bag from my local Garden Centre, I had to hunt around a bit before I found one that I liked, it needs washing through before use. I don't use a thick layer as the weight of the pots is also ...