thank you for that advice.the bottom round leaves are looking a little yellowish so i shall fertilise asap. I think i shall go for the more patient option... i have been patient for this long i might as well wait a little longer.

and here are the pics...

as you can see the leaves are tight together.

i appologise for the poor quality of the shots but they were taken using some oldschool digital camera which takes images and puts them on floppy disks.