Homeowner Forum / Lawn and Garden / April 2007

Can any kind person help me identify this palm tree growing in a
friend's garden on Islay?
http://www.indaal.demon.co.uk/palm/palm.jpg
I've been asked if I know what it is but I haven't been able to find it

Many of you poms have similar disgusting vile weather as we have in NZ (some
of you have even worse) so I thought your experiences would be valid.
I have 3 reasonable tomato plants (summertaste) growing in pots, they are at
various levels of fruiting. We have just had our first day ...

We are not particularly good at handling our orchids.  We (or I) have
successfully destroyed about 2/3 rds of the accumulation.  We now have
about 80 or so left.
My wife would like to procure about 20 or 30 healthy blooming size

After taking on my derelict allotment last September, I relied greatly
on this group for advice. Daft questions, repeated questions - all
have come to fruition as the plot has finally been cleared, greenhouse
fully functioning, fruit trees, flowers, cabbages, potatoes, garlic

I have never fed broad beans.
Ours are in flower but some leaves are a bit yellowish on the plants I
planted out last.
What should one use?   Tomato food, a mulch of garden compost, or what?

Does anyone know of a tree trimming service in the Triangle that allows
you to help yourself to their chipped wood?
Thanks

Who's been pulling this stump apart ?  Too much activity for woodpeckers.
What other animals (?) could be doing it ?

My backyard  has a roughly twenty foot long, roughly 3.5
feet high and two feet wide, ostensibly adobe and
brick-constructed "planter." It holds dirt so of course I
can plant flowers, tomatoes, whatever in it.

I just replanted a phal.  The planting medium that I got is some kind
of bark chips.  It appears to dry out very quickly and when I water
it, the water just runs out the bottom immediately.
The plant is doing fine.  It has a flower spike that is growing so the

I have been asked to prune a plum tree that is too high. The lady
could not reach much of the fruit last year. I have had advice that I
could reduce it's height and start trying to re-train it, but there is
a risk of silver leaf finishing it off. I suspect it is quite an old

This is both lovely and amazing!  Daffodils are still flowering in the lanes
here, though some of them are dying back and the white pheasant eye ones are
in full fig.  Violets, primroses and bluebells are all vying for attention
and the hedgerows look good enough to eat!

Two Marches ago, we planted a star magnolia in our south-facing front
yard in Portland, Oregon; it bloomed profusely.  Last year, it bloomed
some, but not as much as the first year.  This year, the other star
magnolias on our street bloomed beautifully in March, but ours didn't

I am told the best time to do this is just after its flowers have
fallen (a couple of weeks time?)
Is this correct, and how severe can I be? I'd really like to get it
back to a bush sized about 6 foot tall, but it has grown about 10-12

I finally got myself a compost bin to speed up the process rather than my
old method of "till it under and wait".
I've read that coffee grounds make good compost - something about earthworms
liking it.

I've sown tomato seeds in those little Jiffy Pellets but now there are loads
of jelly-type mushrooms growing out of the pellets.  The tomato plants
themselves are growing well.
I'm now at the potting on stage where I'm going to pop the pellets into