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Is my Benjamin wet enough?

taz — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 02:37:24 -0800

Do you have a happy Ficus tree? Can you help me water mine? I have four large (about five feet tall) indoor Benjamins that haven't stopped dropping leaves since I got them in September... which, yeah, was probably not the best time of year to acquire new, finicky plants. At any rate, they are at least dropping fewer leaves as time goes on (but I had no idea that they would still be dropping leaves after so long!) and do continue to put out new leaves, so I'm hoping for the best, but I'd love to have some level of confidence about how much to water them. I get contradictory advice when searching, and I'd like to hear from folks who have healthy specimens themselves.

Each one is near or at a window; the general climate here (in Greece) is dry; they each have a quite large pot (they were re-potted at the same time that we got them). They came from a nursery, but not an upscale one. They don't have any yellow leaves, but each one continues to drop perfectly healthy fully formed leaves.

If I at least could be certain that I'm not under-watering them, I would be glad. I'm watering 1.5 liters each, about once every two weeks, but that's me holding back, since I read that the worst thing was over-watering, and this amount was recommended at some web site somewhere.

The Flâneur exposed

0bvious — Wed, 25 Oct 2006 16:38:54 -0800

'The Flâneur': What fascinating titbits can you add to my knowledge about this concept? Art, history, philosophy and literary theory links all welcome. Walter Benjamin wrote on them; Edgar Allan Poe supposedly utilized the concept in his story 'The Man of the Crowd'; the 19th century Parisians relished them. Art, literary theory, have been altered irrevocably since.

Insights please!

Thanks

"Read no history: nothing but biography, for that is life without theory."

oxford blue — Wed, 05 Jul 2006 19:38:52 -0800

Apropos of the above, can anyone recommend an excellent Benjamin Disraeli biography? Inspired by this fpp.

How did Franklin cook?

eatdonuts — Fri, 05 May 2006 11:34:57 -0800

Does anyone know an online resource where I could get a layman drawing and parts of a Franklin stove? I'm interested in how it was built and how it works. All I can find on the web appears to be word descriptions of them replacing open fires, brief summaries, or 'franklin-type stoves' for sale. But none of them seem to fully illustrate where the fire goes, how cooking on it worked, how it was built etc. Just a normal person's curiosity.