Point taken. Hopefully she'll hear about this place and join up.

Darius is on Cubits too... but she mostly posts on her own blogsite.

Well I vote for both new topics. You all sound not only informative, but also seem to have a great sense of humor.

How does one start a new forum? I particularly note that there is nothing on this site about the huge plant family: Bromeliaceae (bromeliads)

I would be willing to moderate such a forum.
Fred

Hi Fred!

Here's the process:

Start a new thread in this forum asking if there is any interest in a bromeliads forum.

If members show an interest, Dave or I will create the forum.

We look forward to it!

I want to make sure that everyone saw this:

The thread "Announcement: About requests for new forums" in Site Talk forum

Fred: I'd love to see articles and information about Bromeliads and learn more about them. How about having on-going threads for Brom's in the Tropical Plant Forum? http://garden.org/forums/view/... I'm not sure who the moderator is for Tropical Plants but Bromeliads sure fit in that group.

Lin

OK Lin, It's just that bromeliads are such a vast plant group and like putting palms & orchids under Tropicals. We have a FB group of around 500 members just on Broms. I'm certainly no expert on bromeliads but it seems that almost everybody has some.
Fred

I like the idea of separate forums for different plants because it makes it easier to find, for sharing info and chatting about that particular plant. I guess for now the Tropical Plants Forum would be a good place for All Things Tropical. I guess I was thinking of something like Sub-Forums withTropicals Plants being the main one and then a section under tropicals for each type of plant.

... I think I'm confusing myself by thinking.

I will use Darius' personal Email and send this link to her....Jo

Carl Sagan said, "If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch ... you must first invent the universe."

I have been studying (and I DO mean studying) soil for several years, and the subject becomes more complex all the time. As PuddlePirate said, it's not an easy subject... and it's one I find exceeds the PhD level to even begin to make a dent.

Personally I believe soil is alive, although we have been trying (and often succeeding) to kill it for ages out of misguided beliefs and ignorance.

Soil is as complicated as the human body, and in fact has many similarities in terms of what each needs to be healthy. For example, it's easy to say the human body needs the fat-soluble Vitamins A, D, E and K but if you overlook the fact that none of them work without the others in specific ratios (remember limiting factors?), AND none of them work without enough of the right kind of fat, you completely miss understanding those vitamins and all the positive effects they can have.

Additionally there are so many 'specialists' with differing thoughts from their own narrow field of expertise, whether human health or soil health, that they often work against each other simply because the field of knowledge is so vast and those 'getting' the Big Picture are so few.

I wish you luck with a soil forum.

Its my belief that there is more than one way, to best build soil, and I will point out compost, in particular.I have been composting for over 30 Yrs., and have tried many ways to make vegitation break down, and have found that I can't tell witch way is best.
I have turned the pile, from one side to another, I have vented the pile, watered the pile.I have introduced earth worms, witch meant that you try not to heat the pile, and actually I believe it best that the worms do the composting, and you keep where animals scattered the mulch, by putting it back on the pile, and in my opinion, that works best.When I mulch the yard scraps, I leave them next to the pit, and when the worms start on the bottom of the fresh chippings, I add them to the pile.Now that I'm aquiring "high milledge", I prefer the simple, let the worms do the work method. Mike

I hear that, Mike. I'm in a manual wheelchair so I try to pawn off as much of the work onto the worms as I can.

I'm confident that someday we'll have a soil and compost forum here. No garden site can be complete without it, IMO. Dave wants to take a breather now on starting new forums, but I doubt that will last too long.

Karen

Hope you are right, Karen. The people on DG's Accessible Gardening forum are great, but I am not liking the site changes over there. Hopefully, I can entice some of them over here when Dave gets around to making a forum for us, too.

I tried the Accessible Gardening forum on DG - but found it was a lot of chat, little info about actually gardening if you have physical challenges. I went to the forum looking for ways to work around the fact that I can't use a shovel etc. I have learned some unique ways to get around my physical problems. PuddlePirate - if your ever in a forum like that - I would love to hear some of your modifications. I'm not in a chair - yet - but I do a lot of my gardening from a rolling garden seat. When it is not blazing hot out - my service dog has been a big help. She can't pull weeds, but it she is great for picking up tools and other things I drop!

There is also a Cubit for Accessible Gardening. It also is more of a support group than actual tips and advise.

I agree that we'll need a soil and composting forum! I further agree that Dave will probably bend sooner rather than later ;) Meanwhile, ya'll might as well take over the "All Things Gardening" forum, and I can pull out the posts and move them when the new forum is created

Juli, I like the chat with most of the DG contributors and also agree that, except maybe in the Practical Matters thread (well, no, even there ), there can be a lot of chatter to wade through to get to the practical. But maybe over here a clean forum can keep it on track? For example, there are some things I can do to fend off MS heat fatigue and have worked out a heavy-labor arrangement with some of the college kids working for me at the office. But there is still so much I want to modify in my yard and haven't yet figured out ways to work around the slowly worsening physical restrictions. I'm always looking to read what others use for their various workarounds and maybe adapt some to work for me. It seems very few people will volunteer that kind of information in a "regular" forum. Which means I'm still looking...and looking...and looking.
Debra

daylily said:I tried the Accessible Gardening forum on DG - but found it was a lot of chat, little info about actually gardening if you have physical challenges. I went to the forum looking for ways to work around the fact that I can't use a shovel etc. I have learned some unique ways to get around my physical problems. PuddlePirate - if your ever in a forum like that - I would love to hear some of your modifications. I'm not in a chair - yet - but I do a lot of my gardening from a rolling garden seat. When it is not blazing hot out - my service dog has been a big help. She can't pull weeds, but it she is great for picking up tools and other things I drop!

Here goes: The thread "Gardening from a wheelchair" in All Things Gardening forum

Everso glad you joined us Daruis