A wonderful and thorough job! Well done! I agree with Josh... to keep stress to a minimum, you'll want to avoid full sun and winds for a little while... find it a nice protected spot with dappled shade/sun, and keep a close eye on it. If outdoors, I usually look for a spot close to a building for wind protection, where my plants will receive only the earliest of morning sun, and are thereafter protected from the harsh sun of late morning to late afternoon... but I'm sure you're aware of what needs to be done. :-) Indoors, I look for a bright spot that doesn't receive direct sun from a window. After I see the plant recovering, I move it closer to its permanent spot. As time goes by, we find better, easier methods for putting together our medium mixes. It all eventually comes together... whether it's locating the various ingredients, setting up a screening process, mixing, and storing our final product(s). I actually find it kind of fun, not to mention rewarding, working with all the stuff... and when I see how happy my plants look and how they respond to the better drainage, aeration, and the controlled moisture and feeding, I know it was all worth the effort! Before getting to know Al, I can't tell you how frustrating it was to find bulb after bulb just rotting away in its pot, with dead and rotting roots... and no matter how careful I was with watering, it didn't seem to matter. There were no little air pockets for the roots to breathe, and there was no way to relieve the continually soggy rootball area... I tried everything... bottom watering, coco coir, mixing in more perlite... nothing helped. What helped was actually learning how all the factors of container growing related to each other... learning what was actually happening under the soil surface. And now that I know, it's so elementary I'm surprised it's not all common knowledge! To make a long story short, my plants are happy and my bulbs no longer rot! I can't wait until spring arrives so I can transfer my deciduous trees into better medium! They say a picture is worth a thousand words... and in the case of growing show-and-tell, they're worth so much more! The more photos we all share of our processes and our successes, the better the portrayal of how it all works! Anyway... well done! We look forward to more pictures! :-)

Hi Al, I’ve finally had the opportunity to reply with an update and wanted to thank you again for taking the time to share your knowledge and help explain the process and reasoning behind choosing a particular growing medium. I am always fascinated by the science of things and am looking forward to my ficus lyrata breathing easier. July 31 was repot day. I gathered all of my 1.1.1 gritty mix supplies, screened & rinsed the turface mvp & manna-pro poultry grit, & proceeded to make a huge mess trying to coax the zoo med repti-bark into smaller pieces using a 3-cup ninja food processor - - neither a quick nor easy endeavor. Some pieces did get smaller but not enough to justify the amount of dust that landed all over my kitchen, so the size of my bark is what it is. I want to stress that a dust mask is imperative for anyone attempting this, especially indoors, and also to note that I did not see any discernible difference in bark size between the larger (24 qt) & smaller (4 qt) bags (see picts below) Next I bare rooted what I thought was 1 plant and discovered that I have 2 separate plants - - and I did wind up doing some minimal root pruning after rinsing off all the existing soil. After drilling additional drainage holes all the way through the bottom of the attached saucer, I repotted both plants back into the same original glazed pot as I did not have the opportunity to get an all clay pot, nor did I have a 2nd pot available to repot separately so they will continue to be bosom buddies, at least until next year. In the hopes of lessening the weight of the pot and more importantly, the perched water table, I placed 4 small empty plastic water bottles at the bottom of the pot and added a cotton string wick through the main center drainage hole to help keep a check on moisture levels. One other thing to note is when I originally posted on July 25, there was no visible growth activity - the brown pod (for lack of a better word) felt dry, crispy & empty, but to my surprise, right after the repot, I noticed that there was in deed some growth activity taking place. I only hope I did not jeopardize the emergence of new baby leaves with this root running & repot! As luck would have it, I have to go out of town for 2 weeks and need to leave explicit instructions for my boyfriend who will be caring for my plants while I am away so I do have a few questions: ~ How long should I keep the plant in the shade or is it ok to keep it in bright light but with NO direct sun? Right now it is behind a UV solar blind and sheer linen curtain which creates a shady environment. ~ When can I introduce it back into some direct sunlight? ~ Should I water everyday until the roots acclimate & re-establish themselves in the gritty mix? What is the best watering schedule for now? ~ When would I start adding foliage pro 9-3-6 to the mix & should it be the production or maintenance amount? Many thanks to Al and all the other forum members for all the advice. I will update once I am back from my trip with any changes - - hopefully they are all positive ones. **having trouble positing picts so will try to add in separate post

Hmmmm, sounds like we need to invent some kind of biodegradable netting, you could lay the clump out on the netting, it would have large holes for some roots to dangle. Then you could lay the net on the soil and then fell the rest of the pit. WOuld we get rich.....nah.

I would suggest you keep watering it diligently. It sounds as though it was really locked into that old soil...that's just how mine was! I actually joined this forum and built my first batch of gritty mix for the sole purpose of saving a beautiful peace lily I had miss-managed nearly to the point of death. After bare-rooting and transplanting I saw immediate improvement (it could finally drink again in the well-aerated medium), but it took me a while to understand how much water it needed. When my plant drooped, it was simply asking for more water to heal its thirsty and damaged roots. After two weeks on life support in the mix, I just noticed a new leaf shoot. So happy! <3 I should add that it resides on my patio which gets up to 80-84 degrees during the day, and it wants as much as a gallon of water per day. Gritty drains very fast, though the Turface retains moisture quite well. That's my two cents. :)