Just last night I finished writing a piece about why you can't amend a water-retentive medium with coarse material. I wrote it specifically as a rejoinder to the very often repeated advice that adding 1 part of perlite to one or 2 parts of water-retentive medium will somehow yield a 'good' medium. I plan on posting it as a thread because it's important for growers to understand that a half measure won't necessarily improve your lot by half. Punked by Perlite? In any forum that is even marginally related to container growing, you'll find the oft repeated advice that you can make a silk purse from a sow's ear by adding together equal measures of an overly water-retentive potting media and perlite. Many growers erroneously believe that you can start with a medium comprised of fine particulates and miraculously make it better by adding perlite. You can't ..... and I'll explain why. Let our starting point be any soil you're so uncomfortable with you feel it needs 'amending' to increase aeration and drainage. Store shelves from coast to coast offer up hundreds of examples, and fora are full of threads that offer suggestions re how to fix them. If there's a standardize version of the advice, it would have to be, “Mix 1 or 2 parts of it [and it rarely seems to matter what 'it' is] with 1 part of perlite and all will be well; but …… will it? Let's look closer. The answer is – the suggested mixture will not perform any where near as well as you might intuit. Just how is perlite supposed increase aeration when it has no internal porosity? By what miracle does a nonporous particle added to a water-retentive container medium, or a bowl of oatmeal for that matter, increase air porosity? Let's say that you have a gallon of Miracle-Gro potting media - the stuff with the moisture control feature, and to it you add a gallon of perlite. Adding perlite is pretty much the same as adding BBs or marbles. If you screened the fines out of the perlite, you end up with 2 gallons of medium, twice the volume; however the double volume ONLY comes with the amount of aeration that was in the gallon of medium that so needed fixing. We sure didn't get any aeration from the perlite. There is no way to deny that with twice the volume of medium and no more than the volume of air already contained in the original gallon you've actually reduced the per volume total air porosity by 50%; AND, the more perlite you add, the worse it gets. Total porosity continues to diminish as you add perlite until you reach a threshold level of coarse material that occurs at the point where there is no longer enough of the original fine material in the newly created medium to fill all the spaces between the large particles of perlite. That will not occur in most practical applications until the fraction of large perlite particles is in the 75-90% range. If your medium consists of 75-90% perlite, it would be misleading to suggest that you're growing in medium X amended with perlite, when you're growing in perlite amended with medium X. We don't take coffee with our sugar or cream, we take sugar or cream with our coffee. In essence, when you begin with a poor medium based on fine particulates, and start adding coarse material like pine bark, perlite, pumice ....... it gets much worse (from the plant's POV) before it starts to get better. If you add an insufficient volume of coarse material – it stays worse. Perlite's primary benefit lies in the fact that it occupies space that might otherwise be filled with saturated medium. Simply put, media comprised of fine particles with perlite added will hold less water on a per volume basis than the same media without perlite, but the aeration level in the fraction of the medium available for root colonization will be roughly the same with or without perlite. Visualize adding a pint of perlite to a pint of sand, then ask yourself whether or not the perlite helped by adding aeration. The answer is a resounding NO. Did it help with drainage? Only to the degree it decreased the amount of water the medium can hold on a per volume basis, but this is something of a hollow victory. More on that in a subsequent paragraph. If we want to take advantage of what well-aerated media have to offer, we need to understand how to EFFECTIVELY use the materials at our disposal. If you have on hand pine bark in an appropriated size, perlite, and sphagnum peat, you can mix them in such a way that the end result is a highly productive medium for container culture; or, the same ingredients can be combined in ways that render them practically unusable. Growers would be much better served to use water-retentive media like as it is from the bag, in combination with the well-reasoned use of ballast in the bottom of the pot than to make a wreck of their medium by adding an insufficient amount of perlite or other coarse materials. The science applies to total porosity and air porosity at container capacity. When using perlite as an 'amendment' to water retentive media, it would also be better to determine the height of the PWT the soil supports (easy peasy), then mix 4 parts of perlite with 1 part of the medium, and fill the bottom of the pot with that mix to the ht of the PWT. Then top it off with the water-retentive mix - unamended. This would be much more effective than amending the entire volume of medium in the pot with perlite. Remember - perlite's job is to take up space, and the space it occupies cannot be colonized with roots. This is the 'hollow victory' I mentioned in a preceding paragraph. While perlite takes up space that might otherwise be full of saturated soil, and in that reduces the volume of water the soil can hold, it also reduces the volume of soil available for root colonization. Space available to roots to grow is still filled with fine particles, which still hold roughly the same amounts of water they did before the perlite was added. Many things can be used to significant benefit if used judiciously, most of those things can put us at a disadvantage if used capriciously. Understanding the role of perlite, and other ingredients that serve as potential additions to container media are steps toward getting to the point where we're far more likely to be limited by things like climate, light levels, and humidity …… than our own skills. Al

The first prayer plant I had I killed by over watering. There is a fine line between too much and not enough for these plants, and they are not recommended for beginners. Toni is right, you have over potted and now the plant could have problems from too much water. Think about it this way - the plant has a small root system, even though it was growing out of a 4 inch pot - if you put it in a pot three times that size, you have a plant with a 4 inch pot size root system now sitting in a big pot, it's roots surrounded by alot of wet soil. THe plant can only use so much of the water in that soil at a time, so it sits there staying too wet, the wetness keeps oxygen from getting thru the soil and down to the roots, it takes way too long to dry out because the water is not getting utilized by the plant....the whole soggy mess is a recipe for root rot. When repotting a plant, you should only go up to the next size pot, in your case you should repot into a 5 or 6 inch. This is the first thing you should do. Expect the plant to take some time to recover from the trauma of being repotted twice in such a short time. Once you repot, water lightly, use your misting tray and put the plant either outside in the shade or inside in indirect light and just let it alone for a while. Check it every few days to see if it needs water by sticking your fingers at least an inch or two down into the soil and feeling for wetness. When it starts to feel on the dry side down that deep, try watering lightly again. Don't water if the soil feels at all wet, more plants are killed from over than underwatering, best to water when it feels more dry - being a bit dry for a day or so will not kill it like root rot from overwatering will. Don't stress too much if it does not make it, it could have had issues when you got it, and this variety IS a tricky one.

Reviving this threa, what a great discussion! 1) Easy plant that you found really difficult - bird of paradise. my absolute favorite flower, gorgeous plant, but I can't seem to grow it in my area. rotted the roots of my largest, and I have 4 seedlings hanging in suspended animation... don't know, I just can't get them right. 2) Difficult plant that you found really easy - Persian carpet flower, Edithcolea grandis. I've heard they rot very, very easily (almost overnight) even at room temperature... I've had mine for a few months now and it's doing just fine. Hopefully I'm not speaking too soon, as it has not flowered yet. 3) A difficult plant that was such a disaster you will never try it again - Desert Roses. I was gifted a dozen seeds, and bought 3 six month old seedlings. Every seed germinated, but they all shriveled out of nowhere and dropped their leaves. The larger plants leaves yellowed and now they're a little shriveled and kind of doing nothing... very disappointing, won't be buying any more :( 4) An easy plant that you find so rewarding that you collect them/push them/get too excited about them - cacti, specifically Gymnocalyciums. Love love love their flowers, and most are just interesting to look at. Easy to care for f given the right conditions and very rewarding in the springtime!

Morning all, A chilly 32 degrees out here this AM. Lots of clouds and I guess it is supposed to snow later. News on another front, Doug is going to have to have surgery on that toe of his. The arthritis is preventing it from bending and flexing properly and as a result he is getting very thick callus and those blisters that dont heal. Hes pretty bummed out but philosophical about it as it could be worse. They did a full range of blood tests and everything there is normal. Im working on another magazine article so will try to check in when I can in the next few days. Da! Hey there, great to hear from you. Those fabrics and patterns are really lovely. Didnt that show make you want to take dancing lessons? LOL I do have to say that that foxtrot they were doing didnt look anything like the one Doug and I were learning. ~~ Thanks! Glad you liked the pic and frame. I found this new borders software that has hundreds of frames to choose from and it really is a lot of fun to play with. Norma, I cant believe you have crocus blooming already! I dont have any crocus foliage even showing up yet but do have some tulips and narcissus foliage breaking ground. Hi Eden, how great to hear from you. I love, love, love those plants. Are you going to use them in your outside containers this year? ~~ I still have brug cuttings in water and they are still doing OK. Mine did have some yellowing leaves but a month or so ago I started adding a bit of water soluble fertilizer to the water when topping them off and they are no longer getting yellow leaves. I dont know when Im going to pot mine up but want to wait as long as possible. The one cutting I did pot up Ive had to cut down twice. T but orchids are good for dieting! You wind up playing with your orchid collection instead of eating. LOL~~ I got that Charleys Greenhouse catalog also and already ordered from it but not plants. They have some great high intensity fluorescent bulbs that produce twice the light as normal bulbs. I want to try them out. They should be great to get my large fuchsias going again. V, so is that how you got me to buy those plants????? ~~ I could swoon to go to a flower marked where most of the flowers were orchids. How neat! So happy to hear they had a great time together in Paris. Barb, thanks for checking in. Hope you had a good birthday. Bug, your kitchen looks great. So clean and new! Makes me want to get out a bulldozer and rip mine out and do a remodel. Sue, ROTFLMAO! ~~ have a great day at the garden show. Looking forward to pics. Michelle, where do you have those coleus cuttings? Are they in a window where they get too much cold? Coleus dont like cold temps and just sulk if they arent warm enough. I have some under my lights in the basement and they dont do as well as the ones upstairs that get more heat. Eileen I just absolutely loved all your garden photographs! What a breath of spring. Im SO ready for spring right now I can just about taste it. LOL Grace, RE the login thing, check to see that you are checking the box to remember your password when you do log in. ~~ Glad to hear you got some rain. Have you not gotten enough rain this winter? It seems so strange that some areas get too much, much more than their average like up in the PNW and some areas are dry, dry, dry. Weve had a ton of precip here since September. Marian, very cool you had a Meadowlark in your yard. They are such cheerful looking birds. It is always fun to have something unusual for a yard bird. A friend of mine here has a flock of Turkeys that hang out from time to time. OK I really have to get off this computer and get my day started so Im off to the gym. Have a great day everyone, Deanne