HI Mike; Thanks. Are you talking about Turface MVP or one of the finer Turface products? I've starting using turface with a lot container trees that I am growing outside and it has seemed to work very well, in hot weather, most pots are pretty dried out in a day. I just watered a bonsai outside that was watered yesterday that is in turface, and it was pretty dry. It was a pretty small pot though. I can't remember what day I had watered the jade last, I will watch it with your week guideline in mind, but I am pretty confident that it will be fairly dried out a week after being watered. The folks over on the bonsai form were the ones that suggested I put in about 10% compost with the turface for the Jade -- Not saying that I'm sure that is correct, that's just where I came up with the mix. I have some mixed that I used turface, perlite, compost & or vermiculite. With any amount of compost (more then 10-20%) or with any amount of fine vermiculite, my mixed got too heavy. Also got too heavy with sand in them, though I think the sand may be too fine. I have tons of grit & perlite here, so I can add it in if necessary, I'm hoping not to have to re-pot it again, but will modify it if necessary of course. What would have been your idea growing medium mix for a large Jade? Do you have a preferred soil mix that you use for house plants in general? I have most major soil / and soil-less mix ingredients here, with the exception of bark mulch - I've not found a good source for bark mulch that is ground to a proper size. Thanks Jamie

I would try to make a gradual stair type planting area. on each level place pots to grow plants in. In a small space I have made gradual plant steps. This allows for more space vertically.Putting tall plants on top then gradually putting smaller ones on bottom levels.

I don't agree with blanket statements that more sun is always better. While this might be true in places with high humidity and lower elevations, here in the hot arid SW at 5000 feet, there is such a thing as too much sun, and plants which receive a few hours of shade/partial shade always produce better and are less stressed. Plants here that receive 12 hours of direct sunlight will develop a blasted look in the summer where the color is more grayish-green than lush green. The lower leaves get leathery faster than shaded plants, and the leaves rarely provide a flattened surface to the sun, no matter how carefully you maintain moisture levels. At a certain point here, sun ceases to be a critical component and becomes a stress factor. Plants grown in buckets in these conditions do even worse. They dry out very quickly, and the buckets can get extremely hot when placed on surfaces like concrete, brick, or stone. To help, you can put a layer of mulch in the bucket to help retain moisture, and if your ground temperatures are high, you can place the bucket higher up on some type of stand. Regarding your plants, yellow pear does have thinner, more sharply jagged leaves. It's typical of that variety. Under the right conditions, they can become obscenely large. Since you only have one plant to compare, it might not actually be the conditions that are unfavorable, but it could be the individual plant itself. When you transplanted the yellow pear, was it still in any type of peat container?

We did well with BM Monroe Bisque in a few rooms with jack squat for natural light. If you're interested in going toward off-white, SW Navajo White is my favorite off-white. It has some peach, some yellow, some green and some brown in it, so IME it played nicely with a wide range of furnishings, window treatments, and light levels. We used it housewide in the house we rented (our landlord mandated that only one color be used and that it be some variety of off-white), which had a couple of bright rooms and more very dark ones; it looked different in varying lights so people thought we had used more than one paint color. BM's Navajo White is a bit cooler with more gray in it to my eye, and I think it has a tendency to look a little dingy in some lights (or lack thereof), although other people like it. Everything depends on your local market and if you're in a bad buyer's market that is heavily weighted to people who don't want to do a thing besides move in and unpack their stuff (which is what we had here - after all, they were spoiled for choice with high inventories, and I think too many buyers are watching shows like "Designed to Sell" and expecting that sort of "updating" in the houses they look at), that's who you're stuck with trying to attract. We were 7+ months on the market by the time we closed, despite being told over and over and OVER again how beeeyoooteeeful our house was with an olivey-goldish master, light lemon-yellow guest room, steel-blue bath and light plum living room. We had "neutralized" most of the house but kept those rooms as they were because they looked the nicest when we were still living there. Both DH and I totally suck at painting (well, I can't - by the time I get half a wall done I'm ready to fall down - and DH freely admits he sucks at it) and we just couldn't afford to pay a painter when we moved out. Talk to several RE professionals in your town, ask them what's actually selling there.