Hey Mike, Wow, you have 25 Clivias!!! Amazing. You sure have a good number of plants. Clivias, palms, citrus, etc, etc. Leaf Mold is broken down, composted trees and shrubbery. One of my plant books explain which medium is used in place of leaf mold, I can't recall type or find the book. Actually, even though compost is excellent for gardens, I wouldn't use in place or in addition to indoor plants. For one, it'd probably decay, keep soil wet, plus think of the insects. Yuck. Centipedes, milipedes, worms, etc. I repot Clivias once every three years. The oldest, (started from seed in 1982,) cracked three pots over the years because roots grew and grew and grew. LOL. It it said Clives don't like their roots disturbed, and usually when you repot, for some reason, (this happened to me, I don't know if it happens to everyone) the years I repotted, the following late winter/spring, they didn't bud. It's true they enjoy being rootbound. The tighter the fit, more flowers you get. If your Clivias need repotting then do so. What material are pots? Clay, plastic? What color flowers? I love variegated..I have 3 Clivias, two tiny. Got one shoot from a friend, 12/05 (7 leaves) (when older it'll sprout yellow flowers) and won the variegated on, I think Ebay (6 leaves.) They are slow-growing. Both are few yrs old, stared with 2 and 3 leaves. Take about 7 years before blooms. My oldest has orange and yellow flowers. If roots are growing above soil line or of out drainage holes, then repot, but don't pot up too large. Also, I wouldn't touch Clivias in bud/flower. It may or may not kill blooms, it's up to you. Good luck, Toni

"Do not fear the garbage can". I needed to remind myself of that on a couple of occasions recently. Good advice. Purple, sounds like you'd need to trim roots very drastically in a lot of repottings I've done recently if you are looking for the roots to "fit back in a pot without bending or curling". Just bought plants are often so pot-bound, that even if you step up the size of the pot the normally-recommended 2 inches, you'd need to trim more than half the length of the roots. Do I read you right? A pothos I repotted recently had these long streaks of roots. I can't imagine trimming them to half the diameter of the pot. I trimmed a bit, but not even close to this, I would just lay them randomly bent on a layer of the mix before adding more mix on top and calling it a day. What does anybody else do? With this hoya I repotted, I did not trim the roots on purpose at all, thinking some definitely ripped off while separating the plants, and I did not want to do more damage. Would you have? And I wonder about this: "I arrange the roots going straight out from the crown, spread out as much as possible, then start scooping in 'dirt,' then jiggle/raise it a bit, which I figure places the roots is the best possible position to regrow throughout the pot, mostly out but a little bit down, and plenty of material falls between them to end up under the crown." This mostly makes sense to me, except I wonder when you raise the plant a bit to get the roots to point down slightly, aren't you also raising the mix on top of the roots, thus forming an undesirable air bubble underneath? I guess the "jiggling" part hopefully fills that space somewhat, although to do that completely would require the mix to form a small hill underneath the roots, and I can't imagine any amount of jiggling could do that with the way gravity works. More broadly, I am very interested in what people do to avoid big air pockets - not the little beneficial ones that aerate the roots (I guess that is more of a question of the mix structure, not repotting techniques), but big ones where roots will never get water and eventually just dry out because of sub-optimal repotting. This clivia I repotted comes to mind here. The roots grew very vigorously in a pot like this (http://www.containerstore.com/shop/containers/openBinsBaskets?productId=10018611) to the point where the plant started raising itself very visibly from out of the pot. When I lifted the roots to see what was happening, I saw that because of the structure of the pot and strength of the roots of this particular plant, they would find the wall of the pot, and then they would go straight down (couldn't circle because of those zig-zagged walls). When they reached the bottom, the plant would literally raise itself up on its root tippy-toes like a ballerina, leaving the mix underneath, especially with my lifting the root ball to check, yet more mix would drop to the bottom. I did not get to repot right away, and eventually (soon), the roots not on the walls of the pot all died because they were not in contact with the mix anymore. So, at repotting pictured here, I got myself a plant with very meaty and tight roots basically forming a dome with empty space underneath. Getting the mix in there was my concern, so let's just say there was a lot of shaking and tilting the pot. :-) But that was not the last repotting of the plant. When I made gritty mix recently, I thought I'd replace the mix, as clivias like it on the dry side. To my disappointment, the roots that time looked less healthy than at previous repotting (pictured) - unfortunately I did not take a pic this last time. Not only did the roots not grow back in the middle of the root ball / under the stem, but also one side of the roots, maybe a 30 degree segment of the root ball, was all rotted away. I guess I did not get enough mix into the center to get new roots to regenerate, AND my mix before gritty mix was too moisture-retentive. Lessons learned: * that zig zag pot was inappropriate for clivia root structure and the growth rate (the pot is still ok with drilled holes for a lot of other plants, I think); * repot sooner when you identify a problem, especially with a vigorously growing plant; * to fill the void in the middle with mix that new roots could repopulate, I could prune many roots right down to the stem, so that there is some space next to the stems into which some mix could fall through into the space underneath I as trying to fill. This would require much more than half of the roots to be cut off right at the stem (see the pic), which seems very drastic. * I guess another idea to fill that space without such drastic root-pruning is too take a pot with a big drain hole, not cover the drain hole with anything, to repot as usually, as if that empty space was not a concern, then duct-tape the whole top of the pot tight, so that it can be turned over without the mix spilling out, and then pour as much mix into the drain hole as it would take, while periodically shaking the pot a bit to settle it. This last idea gives me an itch to repot yet again, perhaps next year - although I hope very much the space in the middle got filled through that rotted-away 30 degree segment on the side. I am just glad this clivia seems to be a real trooper, taking all my "learning" (or "abuse" when looked from the plant's perspective) in strides, growing through much of this turmoil. Any more comments/ideas are very much welcome. (Also how I can write more briefly, haha).

krns, All 3 of mine are currently blooming again! I set them out on the deck in bright, not direct light. Temps have been ranging from the 40's at night to the high 70's by day. I'm still watering 2X a week. Miracle Gro 2X a month. I'm wondering. I do give my (all) plants SuperThrive once a month. Could that be it? Come to think of it, my night blooming cereus blooms every 2 months, and my orchids bloom quite often, too. Hmmm.

I was suggesting that you mix regular potting mix with an equal amount of orchid bark. If you think that mix would be too loose to hold your plant up, it probably would be better to wait to repot until spring after it grows more healthy roots. You'll just need to be very careful about not watering too often in the African Violet mix. One thing you could do is make sure the very tops of the roots and the crown of the plant are not covered in soil. I usually grow my clivias like this because when I do, it is easier to tell when the roots show any problems. It doesn't hurt clivia roots to be exposed to the air. They can even grow in trees in their native South Africa. My favorite Garden Web forum is the Container Gardening Forum. One of the regulars there, Al, who goes by the screen name Tapla, has produced several very detailed posts about potting mixes for growing in containers, which are very popular. I have been growing plants all my life and clivias for eight years. I've had by far my best results in the past two years using the two potting mixes Al developed, called gritty mix and 5-1-1. Both are based on small chips of pine bark. The gritty mix is what I use for clivias, but either mix is far superior to anything you can buy in a big box store. If you are interested in doing more reading on this subject, here are three long threads discussing potting mixes. The first one was started by me and discusses my first time planting a clivia in the gritty mix, which is equal parts of pine bark, granite and calcined clay. The second one explains all the details and includes Al's recipes. The last one is also by Al, and discusses what to do to keep a plant healthy when it is potted in something like African Violet mix. All these posts include lots of photos. First time using Al's Gritty Mix... in an emergency Container Soils - Water Movement & Retention XV Dealing with Water-Retentive Soils This post was edited by Ohiofem on Wed, Dec 5, 12 at 17:12