DITTO for me too Jodik! I have two christmass cactus, and the one I did not find the time to pot in Al's mix looks like.... everyday! The other in Als' gritty 1 1 1 mix perked up right away. It stopped dropping soft wrinkly, almost sqashy sections of leaves,mixed with dehydrated ones, and the sections are always firm, unlike the other still potted in potting soil with collasped hard feeling peat in it. You know what potting soil feels like when you can't even push your finger through it to see if it is even wet. I wonder how the roots of that poor thing are suppose to even move through that pot. I will have to do emergency transplant as soon as I have time,and pot into Al's mix for this one too.. I just brought those home from work, and they had only been growing in regular potting soil for a little over a year! Everytime I am looking around, when I see a sickly plant, I realize that I forgot to change over to the better gritty mix.. I never realized how many plants I really have..WOW:-) Thanks Al! No stones here..:-)

Many of my complaints of plants not performing well is actually not the cause of fertilizers. It's the environment that matters the most to me. My mango and Lychee was just a small twig, as you can see, when I posted, it was just passed the winter. So everything was not looking good. The weather is just not there yet. As for the Azalea, the reason of smaller leaves is because of the high temperature. Right after I moved it into shade and constant cool temperature, it started growing perfect leaves. Gardenia was having root rot issue. So it doesn't really matter what kind of fert you use. What matters the most is actually the container mix and a healthy root system. Some nursery plants are extremely vigorous, but they just use some cheap fertilizer. I am still using Pure Blend Pro, but only very little. Only on some fruiting trees that I want to eat or some flowering trees that prefers low concentration organic fertilizer such as Osmanthus Fragrans. Gardenia doesn't seem to care of organic or not. Most of my trees are reacting really well to the Foliage Pro + Protek including Orchids. One good thing about some organic fert is that they contain the humic acid. Once in a while, I change the fertilizer brand, they love it.

Welcome, Rina! I'm no orchid expert, growing only a few, myself... I would like to become a lot more accomplished at growing some of the many types, though... they're so beautiful! Actually, I grow mostly Amaryllids, a couple of Hoyas, and an assortment of other plants. But I do so love orchids! I do know that Ludisia orchids are terrestrial and require different medium and culture than your Phals do. I would not recommend the 511 for your Phals, although a lot will depend upon the environment you have to grow in. I'm stuck with a very dry indoor environment, myself, and I grow most of my plants in an east facing window. Everything I read these days says that Phals are one of the easiest orchids to grow in the average home environment, but I have NOT found this to be true in my case! I've killed several, and I cannot figure out what I'm doing wrong. I've read and researched, tried different mediums and methods, and they simply do not like what I have to offer them, apparently. However, I find that Dendrobiums do much better for me, and seem to be doing very well in a slightly altered rendition of Al's Gritty Mix. In fact, I recently had a young plant develop nice buds... though they ended up shriveling up and dying before they had a chance to open. I am determined to learn enough, and perhaps sacrifice enough orchids, to become successful at growing and blooming them. It is often said that a person can't be called a true orchidist until he or she has killed at least a hundred plants in the learning process... or something to that effect... and though I hope this is not true, I've lost many different types within the past several years. I'm still determined, and I'm not ready to give up just yet! So far, two Dendrobiums, one Encyclia, and a Cymbidium backbulb are all surviving, and even thriving! They're all in a Gritty Mix with more bark than other ingredients, all minus the turface... and the Cymbidium has a tad bit of chopped up sphagnum moss pieces added, just to help retain a little more moisture around the newly grown roots. My question to you, Rina, is what type of environment do you grow in, and what are the average conditions like? As in light, humidity, average temperature, the mediums your plants are in currently, your watering and feeding habits, and anything else you can think of... perhaps we can help!

Great post. I tried this method this past weekend. Relative to the lawn mower method of chopping up large pine bark chunks, I found this method to be cleaner (it doesn't shoot pine chunks out the sides like a mower will), a bit slower than the mower, and produced a lot more fine particles. I have a high speed Toro leaf blower/mulcher with a metal impeller. A large percentage of the particles coming out felt like fine compost, and a large number of chunks went through looking unscathed, so I didn't get the mix of particle sizes that I was hoping for. I suppose if I had a 1/8" screen, I could have sifted out some of the fine stuff. As it was, I got about 3 gallons of material, and made a side batch of 5-1-1 to try with some peppers, but I didn't mix it in with the rest of my 5-1-1.