Thanks X! I tend to do well with orchids in sphagnum, so for now I think I'll keep my epis in it as well. I've done quite a bit of internet searching on epis over the last coupla days, and what I keep finding are all these complicated mixes -- very little mention of sphagnum as a pure medium. But I like sphagnum, so I'll give it a try with these guys. For the other species, I know it's hard to make an across-the-board recommendation. I think the hardest part for me is the "no peat" rule. I'm gonna have to spend some time looking around town to find any kind of pre-made medium without peat, or to find pumice, or to find coir. But I do know two places in town that sell Farfad, so I'm going to start there. I'm not quite dedicated enough (yet) to pay for shipping costs, so it's gonna have to be local. As for my growing environment -- in warm weather, I throw everything outside. Very little true full sun, mostly dappled shade to a few hours full. Knoxville, TN -- warm and humid, but not as bad as many other parts of the country. In cold weather, shelves in front of very large south-facing windows. I have had some trouble with rotting in the summers, because I haven't in the past done enough to protect the plants from watering. I gotta work on that next summer! My biggest succulent buddies right now are agaves and haworthias, especially a few variegated ones of each that I just bought. I would be very sad if I killed them this winter! Thanks for your input!

I have soaked cuttings for more than 12 hours but more than that would be trouble. Really only very stressed and dessicated cuttings need such treatment. Water is H2O, an oxygen molicule with a pair of Hydrogen molecules, one positioned off to each side. Plants don't starve for oxygen while under water although if their tissues are not made to endure such conditions they can certianly rot. Shallow non moving warm water can be very low in available oxygen but an air pump can fix that easily. I think the best method to root involves a moist substrate which can be organic or inorganic in nature, soil, peat, perlite or hydrotron for example. The next most important or perhaps the most important factor to get a nice fast rooting response in delicate or fussy cuttings is high humidty. Many commercial setups use a misting system where plant cuttings are placed in plugs or on moss and automatucally misted every minute for a few seconds. Using a sealed bag or rooting chamber is much easier and it really works well, heat speeds up all plant processes so hot and humid is what you want. The use of an aquarium air stone and pump is often called deep water rooting and there are cloning setups available althogh you can make one very easily using hydroponic net pots, a bucket and a lid, rockwool and and aquarium air pump and air stone. GG you are growing Hoyas right? LOL Mike

Posts show up after you RELOAD OR REFRESH the pages. Usually (internet browser dependent) you see a different color text for threads that have new messages posted vs. older threads with no new posts. If you post a new message, you have to click on the PREVIEW and tghen SUBMIT MESSAGE to get it to SAVE to the forum. Once there, you simply go back to the main thread page and REFRESH. It should show new posts in any threads. To find old posts, doing simple searches on a couple of key words is best. For instance if you wanted to see things about harvesting greens, you would type in the search window the words 'harvest greens', and it should bring up threads with that text in them. I grew just 'gourmet salad greens' last summer. I planted twice, the first ones planted the end of May lasted until August. By then some of them were sending up flower and seed stalks which I pluck off. I planted a small amount of seeds again in mid August and had more greens, mostly bib, red leaf, and several other gourmet type greens. All made a great salad. I do not spray anything and not much was chewed or damaged. I picked so much I was gving away many 2 gallon bags packed tightly with them. I would not use any cutters, but instead snap off the tender leaves near their bases. The leaves were rinsed off and placed in small batches into a salad spinner to get excess water off them. They remained quite crisp for nearly 4 days in the fridge if bagged. I only pick the larger leaves of most. A few days, and new leaves show up and the previously smaller ones are now bigger and are picked. Depending on the type of greens, you should be able to pick almost every other day once they start to come in. I had about 20 locations where I put in several different kinds of seeds in the same spots, so each location had a nice selection to choose from. All matured quite well together.

I cut back into a dead looking stem very conservatively and see if there is green around the perimeter of the cut. If not, its dead and I cut a bit deeper. I give each stem a chance to put out new growth from as high up the stem as possible. If there is the slightest chance that the terminal bud is alive, I don't touch that stem at all. Those would be the earliest flowers. Often this produces a lopsided plant, but I don't care. I rarely get a live terminal bud. Maybe 1 in 100. After doing this for awhile, you will get a feel for how deep to cut right off the bat. Then when all the leafing out has occurred, I go around and snip off anything I left behind that is truly dead.