HI Mike; Thanks. Are you talking about Turface MVP or one of the finer Turface products? I've starting using turface with a lot container trees that I am growing outside and it has seemed to work very well, in hot weather, most pots are pretty dried out in a day. I just watered a bonsai outside that was watered yesterday that is in turface, and it was pretty dry. It was a pretty small pot though. I can't remember what day I had watered the jade last, I will watch it with your week guideline in mind, but I am pretty confident that it will be fairly dried out a week after being watered. The folks over on the bonsai form were the ones that suggested I put in about 10% compost with the turface for the Jade -- Not saying that I'm sure that is correct, that's just where I came up with the mix. I have some mixed that I used turface, perlite, compost & or vermiculite. With any amount of compost (more then 10-20%) or with any amount of fine vermiculite, my mixed got too heavy. Also got too heavy with sand in them, though I think the sand may be too fine. I have tons of grit & perlite here, so I can add it in if necessary, I'm hoping not to have to re-pot it again, but will modify it if necessary of course. What would have been your idea growing medium mix for a large Jade? Do you have a preferred soil mix that you use for house plants in general? I have most major soil / and soil-less mix ingredients here, with the exception of bark mulch - I've not found a good source for bark mulch that is ground to a proper size. Thanks Jamie

What you have is "Filtered" sunlight, which is fine for now, but as your plants get older like the one on the left, you will want to get them out into full sun as much as possible unless your temps are constantly in the upper 90's or hotter, then the filtered sun would be better. It probably isn't filtered a whole lot through screen but still full sun is better and getting them outside will likely allow longer direct sun than 6 hours per day. That being said, they will still probably grow and produce where they are at. Bruce

I don't agree with blanket statements that more sun is always better. While this might be true in places with high humidity and lower elevations, here in the hot arid SW at 5000 feet, there is such a thing as too much sun, and plants which receive a few hours of shade/partial shade always produce better and are less stressed. Plants here that receive 12 hours of direct sunlight will develop a blasted look in the summer where the color is more grayish-green than lush green. The lower leaves get leathery faster than shaded plants, and the leaves rarely provide a flattened surface to the sun, no matter how carefully you maintain moisture levels. At a certain point here, sun ceases to be a critical component and becomes a stress factor. Plants grown in buckets in these conditions do even worse. They dry out very quickly, and the buckets can get extremely hot when placed on surfaces like concrete, brick, or stone. To help, you can put a layer of mulch in the bucket to help retain moisture, and if your ground temperatures are high, you can place the bucket higher up on some type of stand. Regarding your plants, yellow pear does have thinner, more sharply jagged leaves. It's typical of that variety. Under the right conditions, they can become obscenely large. Since you only have one plant to compare, it might not actually be the conditions that are unfavorable, but it could be the individual plant itself. When you transplanted the yellow pear, was it still in any type of peat container?

Several of my container plants get roasted each year by the sun's reflections off the windows of my house and my neighbors'. The way many windows are shaped actually concentrates the sun's heat into focus. Here are some pictures showing how intense this can get. Are there particular heat-tolerant plants that could withstand this kind of abuse for roughly an hour each day? Any that get bushy enough to help protect my other container plants? Lacking options here, I'll look into some outdoor sun shades for my largest windows. Thanks, Robert (Seattle)