I bought these trees Today

Here is my much sought after Cogshall Mango. It is a condo mango, and quite prolific, or so I hear. $30 for 3 gal

Here is my Alano Sapodilla. It is a midget  compared to my other sapodilla. It's about 3 feet including the pot. I am about to repot it in this pic. When I slid it out of it's pot, the roots barely filled in the soil. I accidentally dropped it and a huge chunk of rootless soil fell off. I may have damaged the roots a little. It is ok, since I am placing this indoors as a houseplant, no water stress.  The soil is a mix of fine pine bark (topsoil), expanded shale ($6.99 on sale for 40lb @Cornelius), and perlite. There is no peat in this mix to bog it down (pun intended). 

And here it is in its final spot. It'll have west and northern window light.... if my H will stop closing the blinds all the time. I cleaned each water-spotted leaf with a paper towel dipped in olive oil. This is a trick I use to clean all houseplant leaves, they like it better than commercial leaf shiners.  Olive oil is good for cleaning water spots or salt crust on the pots too....makes them look shiny and new.

I also potted up a mango seed a few days ago:

Beginning of a longan forest!

I planted about 25 longan seeds. About 22 of them sprouted within a week. The temperature was around 95 F, and the area where i planted them was under the water hose, so the soil was more moist than other areas.

I don't know if Longans will grow true from seed, but even if they didn't, they will still be good. And with 25 trees, one of them is bound to be a great one. You can always graft a known variety, such as Kohala, on your other 24 trees if you don't like them. Or maybe I'll start a bonsai forest of Longan trees. So many ideas! Most likely though, I will end up giving these away.

I dug the seeds up after a week, and this is what they looked like:

I planted them in 3 inch pots on top of a self watering tray. (that's what I had, I wish I had bigger pots, notice the long taproot). I also used regular bagged topsoil from Lowe's. It's made mostly of pine bark and sand, I hope they do well. If they do, that would be all I use from now on. I had a bag of Pro-Mix, but I'll save that for smaller seedlings. Here is a tiny longan shoot, isn't it cute?:

I installed a bright 6400K T-5 lightbulb under my kitchen cabinet last year. All my plants thrive under these lights. I have more installed in my office on a book shelf. One pot holds a tumbling tom tomato cutting, and another is an avocado pit, which has started putting out a root, purely for decorative purposes, since I already recently bought two named Avocado trees. Cost for one T-5 bulb and fixture: $35 from saviolighting.com. Watering tray at gardeners.com $15. Pots @ Veseys.com $13. 1 quart watering can, plastic $2 at Walmart.

Bouquet of bay leaves, for cooking AND for keeping the kitchen bug free. I discovered by accident when I picked these branches and placed them in my kitchen for culinary as well as decorative purposes,  that the gnats virtually disappeared overnight. It's been a year and they still have not come back. Fresh or dried bay leaves work very well.

Also on my counter is a pot that I stick small garlic cloves into, the ones too small to even bother chopping. Notice the small shoot coming from one of the bulbs! Garlic shoots can be eaten raw in salads.

Indoor Lights

This is a room in my old house. I thought I could squeeze in an growing light setup AND paint.

These were mostly plants I bought at the Maui airport and brought home. 

Frangipani cuttings

Bird of Paradise from seed. It took awhile to get to this point.

Macadamian nut seedling

Planted Aquarium

initial setup

the plants didn't last long as the goldfish got bigger...and bigger. They uprooted everything.