Ok everyone! I had a quick sec to stop by and post a couple of pictures and what I think I found out for myself with my growing conditions and your guidance. I will be back with more pics. I was at an Orchid store yesterday and was talking to a girl who just so happens to grow the same 'Siam Jade" I have and told me she never has trouble with hers. In fact she has been able to get it to bloom twice. I went back and showed her the roots to one of mine and she told me to do emergency treatment now@!lol She said she uses just fine and medium Coco husk chips, something I have always been against,lol. Ok I thought I would give it a try since I had nothing to loose anyhow. It just so happens I had a block of it from previous years. I soaked it good and rinsed several time even though it was the original 'Sri Lanka' one and did an emergency pot on just one. Look at the difference today on it. This is what they both looked like before I started. I did rinse them off before this pic was taken so they look wet, but anyone who knows the roots of orchids real well can only imagine what they looked like dry! Notice the roots barely alive and very dehydrated. This is what they both looked like. This is what my orchid looks like after just one day of a better mix! Notice how the roots filled out and look hydrated. I have not seen this plant look this good since I have owned it. Now I need to repot the other before I loose it. Here is an extra seemingly doing better than it was in just one day:-) Ok, gotta go, but I will be back Thanks all Mike This one's roots plumped right up after one day and the leaves feel fantastic after days of trying to get them to look good!

mama goose, thank you--I'll look into that pullout corner unit! Unfortunately, the fridge I used in the NKBA tool was 30", as there were only 30" and 36" choices. I'm pretty sure they need at least a 33" fridge. We looked at smaller units at the 2 big box stores and the smaller units are mainly being marketed at an entry level and are apartment size. But this was not an complete search, and we did not look for specialty brands (Liebherr, etc.) which cost more. (It is amazing how goods are being "super-sized" now. There are actually not very many fridges in stock under ~34"!) DS and FDIL actually do cook a lot and have had trouble for the past few years living in an apartment. I think that they would pick the larger fridge vs. continuous counter space in that particular location. This post is a way of defining the choices that should be made, using knowledge gained from GardenWeb. Thank you and others who give your time to think about this. My son is amazed by the responses!

Not idiotic. No question is if you don't know the answer, but you weren't supposed to know the answer to this one. When you make a recipe like that you feed it up first. Details below. First off, the measurements aren't important for keeping your yeast alive. They become important for using it because you want to know how much flour and water you're putting in. If you don't need a recipe, you don't even need to know that, and can just do it by feel. I.e., until it's wet or dry enough. You can work your way back to knowing your proportions just by feeding for a few more days. If you've been feeding half water and half flour by weight each time, which on second reading, I think is what you were saying, the only issue is how hungry the yeast is, and no biggie. It's still all "100% hydration", i.e., the same weight of water as of flour, so no matter how much you have total, you know how much of each. Re the whole wheat, as I said previously, you don't want to shock the starter. Especially since it's not rising strongly yet. I'd feed for another week with AP just to make it easier, but if you feel like playing it's not wrong. Start by giving it only a bit of whole wheat and the rest white, and work up to all whole wheat, or it may go into a coma. Give it some time even if it's dormant and it might recover, but this early it could give up. Probably won't, but could. If you start with 10g, and work up to the full 50g over a week, it's less likely to protest. Whole wheat doesn't form as strong a gluten because of the bran, and the bran can actually cut the gluten threads as it works and rises. Eventually, it will double, but it make take it awhile to develop "legs". If you can, use whole wheat bread flour, or hard wheat berries rated at 14+% protein (this is a different number from the one in the nutrition info on the bag, which due to rounding isn't precise enough to be meaningful for baking comparisons). I don't think red or white hard wheat matters much. White might be a little easier to work with, but not enough to fret over. Feeding up your starter means increasing the size. So you have 200g in your jar, and your recipe calls for 400g. Put your starter in a bigger jar and give it its own weight in food, but don't discard, so use 100g of water and 100g of flour. Wait your standard 8-12 hours for it to double, pull off your 100g feed and set aside/store, discard 100g and feed the remaining 200g by 100g flour and 100g water. If your starter is old and strong, you can probably just feed without discarding, but while it's young, you need more food. So, when you have a recipe that calls for "1 cup of starter", it's usually talking about a wetter starter, that's more of a thin batter or slurry consistency. For your sanity, if the recipe doesn't say the hydration ratio, or give a starter recipe where you can see the proportions, skip it until you're comfortable baking with your starter. If it is a 300% hydration recipe, for instance--the weight of the flour is always 100% and the proportional weight of the water is measured off that, so 300% means three times as much water by weight as the weight of the flour--so once you've separated out your keeper starter, you can increase the water in your feeding, or you can feed first and add the water right before you use it. If you're baking daily, you can just keep a very wet starter going on the counter. If not, it's harder to maintain healthily. Other recipes often call for just your kind of starter, half water half flour. For one of them, just feed up the starter to the correct volume. There are different ideas about the best time to use the starter. No matter what, the whole point is that the yeast will feed on the carbs and burp making the bread rise. Unless directed otherwise, I use it after it has doubled, but well before the next feeding time. Have fun!

I have been following this thread off and on. Frankly controversies often lead to interesting bits of information and insight and I definitely like how Al handles them. And at the same time he takes the time to explain his reasoning behind them. Over the years I have started partially/fully defoliating some plants while transitioning from indoors to outdoors. Over the years I noticed Al encourage that for ficus and I tried that on several of my ficus and the results are quite spectacular. The reasoning behind it makes a lot of sense to me. here is a pure conjecture for what it is worth: Besides Al's reasoning I also suspect that dramatic change in UV exposure has something to do with it too. My hypothesis is that indoor leaves loose the 'natural sunscreen' that leaves have outdoors and cannot regain it back easily. UV is very high energy photons (UVA is 16x more energetic than red) and quite destructive. When a plant is slowly acclimatized, I suspect photosynthesis levels are increased but so does the energy wasted to deal with the destructive powers of UV. I have tried it (partially defoliating) on several other plants like guava, hibiscus, bougainvillea and few others with great results. Early this season I did the same on a small lemon plant. I am quite pleased with the results. It has all new leaves, two quite good sized lemons and it looks stronger and healthier than it used to be. Compared to that another plant (same lemon and same beginning size) went through a stasis, grew some and dropped some, produced flowers but never set fruit. It is not conclusive experiment but interesting nevertheless. Vlad you said about Al: In the past when I asked for scientific references for some of the things that you have said you avoided providing them and instead told me that I should trust you because of your many years of experience. I think you have beaten that dead horse many times, inserting that pet peeve of yours in many threads. It is time to move on. But you managed to embed an accusation that I have never seen Al do. You are referring to this comment: https://www.houzz.com/discussions/miracle-gro-garden-soil-experiment-dsvw-vd~5348646 The reply by Al, in my opinion, was spot on and had no reference to years of experience that you seem to accuse him of. A scientist does what Sherlock Holmes explained best: "Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth" Next you said: Tell me how my criticisms of Al are not accurate. Just because you cannot get through 300 words without losing the plot is really not a criticism of Al. I wonder how you will get through 10000 words in the scientific reference you are seeking. Out of your five posts in this thread four of them are dedicated to trying to get even with Al. Please try to move on.