Babka;

Please post your request on www.jgarden.org. You should get an answer there.

Nachodaddy-

Thanks, will do!

-Babka

paint it with buttermilk

Hi,
Paint it with yoghurt or sour milk.
George.

Here is a link that might be useful: George's Japanese Garden

Sorry about your tree. You can encourage moss by finding moss growing in a similar light and moisture environment, breaking off a clump, letting it dry, and then crumbling it into the diluted buttermilk. Keep it moist and weed often. You can also buy moss spores.

The Brooklyn Botanical Garden Record booklet describes Funaria hydrometrica as "the happy-to-grow-just-about-anywhere cord moss." Personally, I've never grown moss from spores, but I have transplanted clumps of it with success.

Here is a link that might be useful: Froogle search for moss spores

Hi! Posting again because I came across this post by DonPylant with a way to "age" newly quarried items:

"I have a plastic wading pool in a shady corner of the woods behind my house. I have been able to purchase granite and other features 6 to 12 months early, then submerge them in the pool until they are growing algae. This seems to be a great conditioning for growing moss. Then I pour sprite over the stone and spray the buttermilk/moss shake over it. Depending on the garden conditions, they may grow moss or not - but they still look better than new quarried stone!

Stones with small crevases can be filled with fine gravel and loam and moss inserted into the remaining cavity. The trick is to provide a sub-surface source of moisture the moss can wick up as needed."

Here is a link that might be useful: Link to