Chris, Nice job on the pond. Matala is being used more and more for filtration and for growing bacteria it is fine. But for catching debri it is not very good. The very reasons why people like it is the reasons that it is not good at catching debri. It is easily cleaned and doesn't clog up as quick. The reason why it doesn't clog up as quick because it doesn't catch as fine a debri. It is easier to clean because it doesn't hold debri as well. The pond water flowing thru it takes some of the debri with it. When Matala first came out 12 years ago I tried the white material which was the finest or the same as grey today in my skimmers. I found that it didn't work as well as the polyester pads. I used it for about 3 months before I stopped and went back to the original pads. The second thing I would think about would be to go to using the pump to running the bottom drain. I would guess that if you are running 2" PVC from your pump to the stream you should be getting about 4500 gph at the filter. Here I am going to suggest something that is old school. If you split the flow and put in a properly constructed bog filter your water clarity and filtering will improve a lot. There is no such thing as an ideal filter. The closest thing that has ever been on the market was a Nexus with an Answer. They no longer make the Answer so this filter is no longer even close to what it was. But a properly built bog filter will work as well as any thing else and in most cases better. By the way the least dense Matala is black. It goes black, green, blue and grey from the least dense to the most dense. Mike

Hi Carla, here are links to the new products: http://www.espoma.com/p_consumer/pdf/products/tones/Esp_Rose.pdf http://www.scotts.com/smg/catalog/productTemplate.jsp?tabs=general&proId=prod70226&itemId=cat70042&id=cat70042 Basically, the phrases "for organic gardening" or "100% organic" should get you to the right stuff. Also, check the ingredients label, which is required by law, and see that there is no urea, ammonium sulfate, ammonium phosphate or superphosphate included.

Stan, hose-end feeders work in a variety of different ways and I'm not familiar with the Miracle Grow one - if there is just one. A stategy that works with any of them and with any water-soluble fertilizer would be to do some small number of roses at a time, say, 20 rose bushes. Read the fertilizer label to get the total amount of fertilizer you want to apply to the 20 roses, dissolve that amount, place it in the sprayer container and spray your roses, back and forth, again and again, to get even coverage, until the fertilizer is exhausted (in other words, don't try to do the roses one at a time, that can easily lead to uneven coverage). If the hose-end works on a simple siphon principle, that'll be when the container is empty. If the hose-end continuously dilutes the fertilizer in the container, that'll be when the fertilizer color is gone. If your fertilizer isn't colored, add a small amount of one that is, such as Miracle Grow, so you can tell when it's exhausted.

Thanks for your response, Patrick. I don't think it adds to the confusion, although I still am not sure what is what. :P Denise hasn't posted a clear picture of her leaves in this particular thread, and so I am going to post a couple on her behalf before people make too many assumptions about how similar/dissimilar it is to any of the other plants here. (Hope this is okay, Denise!) To me, Mike's plant does not look like a macrophylla or glabra or polystachya. What I have came to me as latifolia. And I don't know whether it is that or something else (polystachya, macrophylla, clandestina, etc), as this is the subject of old debate. I like the plant, so I'll just grow it and we'll see what I discover as it matures. It just so happens that the only Hoya my sister owns is the polystachya Joni sells (IML 1043) and it looks more similar to the macrophyllas than Mike's plant. I agree that it is weird that a polystachya would be sold as glabra - the differences between these two at least are easily distinguishable at a glance. I can only assume there's some academic disagreement behind this? Mike lol. Probably any of these plants (glabra, polystachya, macrophylla), full grown, would not be good to move around. :P