I don't see any reason not to use straw, but no real reason to use it, either. Those of us who use the straw method are often doing it because of our hard intractable soil. With your bags, this is not an issue. Potatoes don't need a lot of fertilizer, and especially not a lot of nitrogen, which mainly results in rampant vegetative growth. They do need ample water, especially through the time that they bloom. Afterwards, it's more crucial to make sure they aren't waterlogged, as this can cause the tubers to rot.

Agree with 3 strikes and you are out ------ don't necessarily follow it. After 2 strikes I take pause and try to find out as much as possible about the natural environment of the failing plant. I also try to identify a grower who successfully grows them. I have tried over and over again with Dendrobium cuthbersonii and have always failed . So I finally talked to Tom Perlite from Golden Gate Orchids who grows these things like I grow Dandelion and got some hints from him. Now it takes me 2 years to kill them instead of one. I have finally given up on these little beauties. Dendrobium nobile is another example. No matter how closely I follow the instructions as to how to grow them, winter rest etc, I cannot get a decent bloom. Either they don't bloom or they make a few lackluster blooms. So I finally talked to the grower in Hawaii who is the source of most of the commercial nobiles you see on the market every spring. Success, last spring all 3 of mine bloomed ------------ with a few lackluster flowers! Enough, they went on the plant table of my society and I'm done with them. Miltoniopsis; Killed every one of them in the past. Finally talked to Theresa Hill form Hillcrest Orchids who grows beautiful Miltoniopsis. Her advice was simple, keep them cool in the summer, warm in the winter, they like to be within 5F of 60F. Doing this I am now growing them successfully, meaning the plant is increasing in size. Last year they even bloomed, one or two spikes on a large plant. That should have been 10 spikes or more. So I'm not there yet and unless they pick it up may also give up on them but not yet. Parvisepalum Paphiopedeliums: I just got started with these so have no failures to report. Go to the Gallery where you see an entry I placed yesterday of my first success with Paph armeniacum. They also have a reputation of being a little difficult and I had a discussion with Dr Holger Perner at the San Francisco show who thinks most people are growing them wrong. Most people treat them as cold growers. True in the winter but not true in the summer. In their natural habitat, the ones from China get treated to a bright, sunny, cold, dry winter and a shady, hot, humid and very wet summer. The result of the monsoon season there. So unlike Dracula who should be kept as cold as possible in the summer, these Paphs should go in the warm greenhouse and drenched every day. Since there are 35,000 species of orchids available, I generally don't mess with ones that don't like me. My greenhouse is full of robustly growing plants. Not because I'm a genius but because that is the price they have to pay in order to stay. If a plant lingers, grows poorly and fails to bloom, I will get rid of it. Visitors to my growing area think I do magic because most plants look very healthy when in fact it is a process of throwing them against the wall and if they don't stick, they don't stay. There are innumerable others to replace...

Hopefully for you guys where posting pictures is not something you understand, this explanation may help a little. HTML is something called a "tag language", recognized by browsers - Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, etc. Commands in this "tag language start and end with brackets: Where SBR (start bracket) equals the single character symbol: And EBR (end bracket) equals the single character symbol: > I'm going to use SBR and EBR because if I put in the real brackets the browser will get confused. The most important part of the command to allow you to post photos in a forum like this is: SBRimg src="http://some url address"EBR If the URL is the real URL of your photo, putting the SBRimg src = in front of it, then the EBR at the end tells the browser that what is between the tag is a photo, and it resides at that "http" url address. Simple as that. Most online photo holders have a button you can press to get the "html" code for your photo. I use flickr, and the button is "share". For the most part you should just be able to cut and paste the entire thing right into your text here, and it'll display the photo. Most often there are additional tags like:SBRa href = "xxx"EBR, which means - allow clicking on the link. Or height = "XXX", width = "YYY" which sizes your photo in "pixels" on the screen. But mostly, finding the place to get the "html" code for your photo and just putting it in here with your text, exactly as it is shown to you, should work. Good luck!

Mr Kapaun, my most humble apology. I am not computer literate, yet, so I was not aware the two items I sent were not to be together for the readers. I had the filler cap off while I was cranking the engine over to get the gasoline out of the cylinder. That's when the air/oil residue came out the filler. It would appear I need to seek a repair person locally to fix the engine, as I am having a difficult time putting in words what the engine problem is. Again, to all, I apologize for my making two entries on the same problem. Thank you all so much.