OJ - May I ask if you reached your conclusion w/o considering that large portions of available nutrients, and especially N, can be/are lost to hydrolization and volatilization. Urea reacts with the water in the soil immediately after application through a bio process called hydrolysis. Hydrolysis produces ammonium carbonate which quickly transform into ammonia gas. If the ammonia is not captured and converted to ammonium (NH 4+ ) very soon after it is formed, ammonia will be lost to surrounding air instead of remaining in the soil as a source of N. Soil pH, temperature, moisture levels, chemical/biological properties, wind speed, timing, amount of rain/irrigation, and application methodology have some of the most significant effects on how N and other nutrients can be lost w/o the plant being able to realize anything positive from the application. When conditions are favorable (maybe UNfavorable is a better word), the percentage of even heavy N applications lost can approach 100% over a very short time span of only 2-3 days through volatilization. This is a very common and simple concept re soil chemistry. From this, you can see there is no direct relationship between nutrient loss from soils and plant uptake that can be said to be anywhere near definable enough to state that a 5:1:3 ratio fertilizer is appropriate for Citrus in containers or even when growing in the ground - especially when the statement is applied so broadly it includes every plant in the Citrus genus. An easy to understand parallel to what Silica would have us believe, is that it's appropriate to include the volume of fuel lost via fuel theft when computing a vehicle's fuel efficiency. It just ain't so! Al

The search is kinda working, but they moved servers earlier this year and broke some links. It is usually because the URL for the thread returned in the search is pointing to "http://forums2.gardenweb.com/...". If this happens, go up to the "Address" or "URL" field in your browser, put your cursor behind the '2' and remove it (backspace), then hit "Enter". The url should look like "http://forums.gardenweb.com/..." You should then be able to find the thread. In some cases the opposite is true, the thread returned in the search is pointing to "http://forums.gardenweb.com/...". If this happens, go up to the "Address" or "URL" field in your browser, put your cursor behind the 's' in "forums" and type in a 2, then hit "Enter". The url should look like "http://forums2.gardenweb.com/..." You can also try using Google.com. Type in "site:gardenweb.com text you are looking for" (without the ").

I copied the following, off the Carolina Forum, this morning: "* January 19: We are currently working to resolve search engine issues. When searching, you may experience missing files or inaccurate results. Thank you for your patience as we work to fix this problem." There used to be a similar message, in red type, at the top of several of the forum pages, but it seems to be gone from most of them now - maybe they think the problem is fixed? They did an "upgrade" of a number of the forums a week or so ago, and it seems to have left a few glitches in its wake. Have you noticed that something touted as "NEW! IMPROVED!" is rarely that? As I recall from glancing at earlier messages about the changes and subsequent problems, you can email them or send a message about the problem by using the options at the very bottom of the Forum page. Good luck!

It's been explained to me, by my personal Tech Geek, my husband, that GW uses a server for their forums that isn't advanced enough to handle the amount of members and the amount of traffic that passes through here. It's my belief that they'll forever have issues like these until they go with a better server. And the larger and more active it becomes here, the more problems that will surface and keep happening. Yes... there are lots of missing posts... which is too bad, because I spend a good amount of time and brain power forming intelligent responses, not to mention posting pictures. I guess it's just something we'll have to deal with until their techs patch the problems.