Fruitnut, You make it sounds like these are 100' maple trees. These are blueberries in pots, take them out of the pots, looosen the soil, thoroughly rinse the roots as best you can and put them into good soil......no big deal. Several years ago I obtained some three year old plants from a friend that had been over-fertilized and had too much sulfur added to them. I took the plants out of the container, cut off the bottom half the rootballs which was mostly dead, trimmed off the dead branches above, and put them in new containers with pure peat. A year later the plants were thriving. Yes you can flood the pot and keep tweaking the soil until you get it right and hope the plants don't die in the process or just give them a new home. To me, replacing the soil in a pot is by far the easiest and most certain way of gettting the correct soil environment. RM

There is no doubt that all this stuff about the water PH and fertilizer concentrations can be beneficial, but i question the benefit to a new grower who unless they have some scientific training and experience could get confused. To my mind it is the icing on the cake, the fine tuning after you have mastered the essentials. Now, in this City of 4 to 5 million people there are countless orchid growers. They grow reed stem Epidendrums and Cymbidiums as garden plants. If the plants need watering they get out the hose and water them ( on designated watering days). They do not worry about the Chlorine or the PH of the water or how much Calcium there is in the water and i would never mention such things to them. (Them being the public at an orchid show who want to buy something easy to grow like a Cymbidium) At the other end of the scale are the specialist Cymbidium growers who do worry about the PH of their fertilizer, what micro elements are present in the fertilizer, whether their potting mixture is producing optimum results and so on. In other words the icing on the cake. Note these guys dream about winning Champion Cymbidium at a major show. An impossible dream for most. For some 35 years i happily watered my orchids with the hose from the tap.Then i got a 3000 Litre rain-water tank so i could water on the days i wanted to rather than designated days. Have to laugh.... the tank came with the sign "Unfit for drinking". Are my orchids growing any better? Not that i can discern and i have to use a complete fertilizer with micro-elements (including Calcium) to make up for the lack of trace elements in the tank water. If you have doubts about the quality of your tap water, obtain an analysis of your tap water from the water utility.... and ask the question here....is it OK? Of course, there are orchids that are very sensitive to water quality. Disa is one for sure and there are others that are probably cloud forest orchids.....i would like someone to produce a list of these sensitive types.

I don't put any sulfur in the holes of the roses pictured. The other holes with sulfur didn't bloom well. My heavy clay is very retentive, there is no leaching here. Here's a quote from Nutrient Stewardship site: "Phosphorus is the nutrient most affected by pH. ..Nitrogen, Potassium, and sulfur are less affected. At alkaline pH values, greater than pH 7.5, phosphate ions tend to react quickly with calcium (Ca) and magnesium (Mg) to form less soluble compounds. At acidic pH values, phosphate ions react with aluminum (Al) and iron (Fe) to again form less soluble compounds." It's good to test if one's tap water is alkaline, some cities add lime to water so pipes won't corrode. Calcium in lime will bind with phosphorus, and less is available. In my 12 years of growing flowers in pots, the year that I got continuous MOST blooms despite my pH 8 water was when I used high phosphorus SOLUBLE fertilizer, and low nitrogen. Granular phosphorus like bone meal and 46% superphosphate are useless in the planting hole here in alkaline clay. My results confirmed what University of Colorado stated "bone meal and rock phosphate can only be utilized at or below pH 7". My pH 7.7 soil was tested most deficient in phosphorus. Here's a quote from David Neal, CEO of Dyna-Grow Plant Nutrition in CA: "There is some evidence to believe that low N helps to convince a plant to stop its vegetative growth and move into its reproductive phase (flowering), but environmental factors are probably more important. P is typically 5th or 6th in order of importance of the six macronutrients. There is little scientific justification for higher P formulas, but marketing does come into play ...." He's right, just a tiny bit of SOLUBLE phosphorus made more blooms and more roots - but beyond that is wasteful. The site, Robert Morris NOBLE plant foundation, rated the mobility of NPK: "Let's compare the mobility of NPK on a scale of 1 to 10. Nitrogen is a 10 ... extremely mobile and can be lost to leaching. Potassium is a 3. It has limited movement in the soil. Phosphorus has a rating of 1. It is immobile in the soil and is likely to stay wherever it is placed." Here is a link that might be useful: Soil pH and availability of plant nutrients

I'm a grad school trained Biochemist w Botany (physiology) minor. Mostly worked with mycology lignocellose biodegraders and bioremediation R&D, including some work with biodegradable plastics. Worked quite a bit with shiitake mushroom cultivation and enzymes and biological pulping of wood too. My passion since 12 yr old was growing plants. Mostly indoor orchids. Over last 16 yrs worked to get outdoor gardens at home lush enough to make them feel lush and maybe a little tropical. We live on a circle, which limits the front yard size. These are a couple photos of the front yard design going in last summer. With so many deciduous bushes there I have a lot of spring bulbs. Crocus, Hyacinth (50!), small yellow and large Mt Hood daffodil, Poet's Narcissis, Muscaria. Along the other side of the walkway are highly fragrant Sarcococca coning into bloom now. In summer the hydrangea will fill on and just touch eack other. The tree rose at 5' now is a nearly thornless 'Zephirine Drouhin'. An heirloom of that's still popular, it's a quintessential 'Old Bourbon' fragrance class rose. It runs 20 - 30'. So, I'm going to run it up the front house corner and also over the front porch. Late fall 2016 plant design staging in the back yard. Much installed just before first freeze. Japanese Iris Bog is behind the canna on right. Yes, this is the same area above with Canna 'Tropicanna'. On left of walkway are rainbow of German Bearded Iris (not in bog) and modern warm colored Echinacea and Red Hot Poker varieties. Japanee Iris, Peruvian Daffodil and Colocasia 'Diamond Head' stage for planting. Now much is planted. This is the Japanese Iris Bog (connected to Giant Gunnera bog water pit, but not the fidh pond). Late season with cold nights just before frost makes it look rundown. Some of the varieties installed here are below. They are sorted in the yard by increasing height but are random by color. The goal is a mind boggling changing landscape of color. There a other places in the yard with banks of color, such as a fragrant moongarden, where my wife likes to hammock bask in the summer evenings. There's some nocturnal fragrance magicians there such as Brugmansia 'Little Angel, Nicotiana 'Fragrant Cloud, Night Phox 'Midnight Candy', 4 O'clocks and Evening Stock. As you walk there or the wind changes direction, one detects new scents. During the day the Echinacea and Oriental Lilies are quite fragrant too across the yard. Then we have Hydrangea with cool blue, white, purple, pink and red colors all around the yard and gazebo edges. Lacking warm yellows and oranges, they contrast with the perennials.