Al and Nathan, I hope that you don't mind my sharing a humorous story about Turface, that really highlights your points and underscores how respected a product Turface is in the industry. My son is a Turf Grass Agronomy major at a large Southern university, and did an internship last spring/summer at one of the major league baseball spring training facilities in Florida. Turface is used for excess water on the fields that occurs during rainstorms, especially those "popcorn" showers (downpours) that occur frequently in Florida. It has helped prevent many a game "rainout" due to its effectiveness. It takes many bags of Turface to do this (for one game), which can become a bit pricey---so it's a protected commodity in the baseball industry. During one sudden torrential downpour, the Grounds Crew quickly pulled the tarp over the infield, and then took cover in the visiting team's dugout to wait out the storm. The Turface bags were kept to the side in the visiting dugout, near where the Grounds workers were standing. The visiting team's pitcher had a bad inning just prior to the rainstorm, and came into the dugout kicking and throwing things, as they sometimes do. As he looked for things to use to vent his frustration, he eyed the bags of Turface to the side, and the Grounds workers caught his glance, and could tell that he was tempted to kick them, also. They immediately, in *unison*, said "don't even think about it!". Throw your glove, knock over some bats, kick the bubblegum containers over, but don't mess with the Turface...unless you want to take on the Grounds Crew... :)

Hello Al - thanks again for all of your posts and the fruits of your research. I am growing four heirloom tomato plants in containers using your 5-1-1 mix. Here in Raleigh the closest thing I could find to pine bark fines was a product by Timberline called "Soil Conditioner" which seems to be close to the ideal size. But I wanted to ask you two questions, which I hope you have the time to answer (and patience, if you've already answered them - I looked and could not find your thoughts on these): 1. I used a run of the mill mulch to top off my 5-1-1 mixes in the pots and to my dismay discovered the mulch was full of fungus gnats. I will try Gnatrol to get rid of them, but it brings up my question - what do you use for mulch for the 5-1-1? Maybe pine bark nuggets instead of this buggy shredded hardwood I'm using? (large size might help to avoid insect eggs or other stuff hiding inside?) Or do you not mulch? 2. And secondly, what do you use for day to day pest control? I'm spraying insecticidal soap almost daily to kill the whiteflies/thrips/aphids that I see on the leaves but I wonder if there's anything better I can do instead of using the toxic stuff (Sevin, etc). Thanks!

Thanks for the kind words, B&C. In Mississippi, Memorial day would be a good target date for repotting the fig. Hibiscus need an annual repot. Do that toward the end of March, before it starts growing in earnest. Apple and most deciduous trees should be repotted just before or at the onset of spring budswell. Cactus - ask the cactus experts at the cacti/succulents forum. Desert rose - in Mississippi - June Umbrella plant - June There are ways to mechanically limit the amount of perched water a planting will hold, even if you're using a very water-retentive medium. Eliminating all or most of the perched water allows the grower to use media that would otherwise be or border on the edge of unusable. This outlines ways to cope with heavy (water-retentive) media Another effective way of dealing with media that hold too much water is through the use of ballast. You can read more about that technique here: Ballast ..... For now, checking your planting's moisture level regularly with a 'tell' will make a difference in your plant's appearance and level of vitality. Here's something I wrote about that: Over-watering saps vitality and is one of the most common plant assassins, so learning to avoid it is worth the small effort. Plants make and store their own energy source – photosynthate - (sugar/glucose). Functioning roots need energy to drive their metabolic processes, and in order to get it, they use oxygen to burn (oxidize) their food. From this, we can see that terrestrial plants need air (oxygen) in the soil to drive root function. Many off-the-shelf soils hold too much water and not enough air to support good root health, which is a prerequisite to a healthy plant. Watering in small sips leads to a build-up of dissolved solids (salts) in the soil, which limits a plant's ability to absorb water – so watering in sips simply moves us to the other horn of a dilemma. It creates another problem that requires resolution. Better, would be to simply adopt a soil that drains well enough to allow watering to beyond the saturation point, so we're flushing the soil of accumulating dissolved solids whenever we water; this, w/o the plant being forced to pay a tax in the form of reduced vitality, due to prolong periods of soil saturation. Sometimes, though, that's not a course we can immediately steer, which makes controlling how often we water a very important factor. In many cases, we can judge whether or not a planting needs watering by hefting the pot. This is especially true if the pot is made from light material, like plastic, but doesn't work (as) well when the pot is made from heavier material, like clay, or when the size/weight of the pot precludes grabbing it with one hand to judge its weight and gauge the need for water. Fingers stuck an inch or two into the soil work ok for shallow pots, but not for deep pots. Deep pots might have 3 or more inches of soil that feels totally dry, while the lower several inches of the soil is 100% saturated. Obviously, the lack of oxygen in the root zone situation can wreak havoc with root health and cause the loss of a very notable measure of your plant's potential. Inexpensive watering meters don't even measure moisture levels, they measure electrical conductivity. Clean the tip and insert it into a cup of distilled water and witness the fact it reads 'DRY'. One of the most reliable methods of checking a planting's need for water is using a 'tell'. You can use a bamboo skewer in a pinch, but a wooden dowel rod of about 5/16” (75-85mm) would work better. They usually come 48” (120cm) long and can usually be cut in half and serve as a pair. Sharpen all 4 ends in a pencil sharpener and slightly blunt the tip so it's about the diameter of the head on a straight pin. Push the wooden tell deep into the soil. Don't worry, it won't harm the root system. If the plant is quite root-bound, you might need to try several places until you find one where you can push it all the way to the pot's bottom. Leave it a few seconds, then withdraw it and inspect the tip for moisture. For most plantings, withhold water until the tell comes out dry or nearly so. If you see signs of wilting, adjust the interval between waterings so drought stress isn't a recurring issue. Al

hellerlake wrote ... "The arborist's chips I have gotten always came full of shredded leaves and/or needles which begin to break down immediately. There's plenty of nitrogen/organics. As for mulched beds that have not loosened up, what were they mulched with? Bark? Bark is naturally imbued with a waxy substance to protect the tree from moisture. It's suberized. It never really breaks down, and incorporates into the soil because of the suberization. Eventually, it breaks down into waxy, little fibers that form a crust on top of the soil. " An arborist friend once had a 25' tall birch tree-spade moved to his front yard. To start, the hole was half where the lawn was, and half in shrub bed that was never rototilled - same soil to start - but had a barkdust layer maintained for at least 10 years. The half circle in the lawn when dug, was pretty much unchanged. But old bark had decomposed enough to improve the bed soil. Down to 12" depth it was darkened some, and crumbled. It was handy to have seen the side-by-side comparison where the soil history was known, to see the change on the bark side, versus the lawn compacted by mower tires and bag weight side. Sometimes I've applied both. The last home in south Oregon, I put down about 8 truck loads of the chipped tree branches first, then laid barkdust on top for a more groomed look. 20 years ago, when we got about 30 big truckloads at my mother's 2nd acre in Beaverton, the wood chips with plenty of branch wood broke down pretty quick, which was nice. Thought it may be worth adding ... One golf course superintendent I worked under at Columbia Edgewater Country club in Portland, some year back, used to add fine barkdust to the sand for some of the new greens. It was because they decomposed - but decomposed slowly. The new greens were about 3% to 5% bark and the rest sand. His education was in agronomy. From what I've seen since then, the method makes sense.