Insofar as how it would impact root health, there is no difference between plastic and high-fired clay/ceramic. If you can see no crazing (myriad small cracks reminiscent of a fish net with small holes) in the glaze, you can eliminate anything toxic making its way from the pot to the grow medium. If you haven't fertilized or used any type of tonics, insecticides, leaf shine, detergents, etc., it's a very good bet you have unwittingly over-watered due to the fact there is no way for water to evaporate or be used by the plant as the new medium is not colonized by roots and remains a hostile environment to roots due to lack of oxygen. My suggestion would be to lift the plant from the pot to see it the lower reaches of the soil column are saturated. If so, see figure D below. Remove the soil from the new pot, place an over-turned pot in the bottom of the pot so it fits snugly, and cover the drain hole of the over-turned pot with something that won't rot (it does not need to allow water to drain through the hole in the over-turned pot, but it's ok to use a screen if you wish). Mix enough of the soil that falls away from the roots or remains in the large pot with an equal measure of perlite and fill to the top of the over-turned pot, then reposition your plant on top of the pot. and back-fill with the remaining soil w/o the extra perlite. The shaded areas in the images above represents perched water. By comparing D to A, you can see the over-turned pot significantly reduces the amount of excess (perched) water your soil will b e able to hold, so air will return the the soil much faster. The operational words for the moisture level of a grow medium is damp/moist, never wet/soggy. After having put the pot to work as ballast, start checking moisture levels with a "tell" you can make from a wooden dowel rod. It is far superior to a finger or a "moisture meter". More about using a 'tell': Using a 'tell' 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 plenty of air (oxygen) in the soil to drive root function. Many off-the-shelf soils hold too much water and not enough air to support the kind of root health most growers would like to see; and, a healthy root system is a prerequisite to a healthy plant. Watering in small sips leads to avoid over-watering leads to a residual build-up of dissolved solids (salts) in the soil from tapwater and fertilizer solutions, 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. Questions? Al

Hosenemesis, I trade plants on the internet with lots of people. Mostly I find trades thru Dave's Garden. If you want I could make a division of Casablanca for you. So if that sounds of interest just send me a list of plants you could trade for. As far as getting the non-photo post pushed down the list -- so now that there are three responses if no one else responds then it will go down the list -- yes? Its a bit confusing since the posting with the photo has more responses -- and is further down the list. Danty Danty

http://www.authorama.com/old-calabria-8.html By Norman Douglas And another of those things which emigration and the new order of affairs are surely destroying is that ancient anthropomorphic way of looking at nature, with its expressive turns of speech. A small boy, whom I watched gathering figs last year, informed me that the fig-tree was innamorato delle pietre e cisterneÂenamoured of stones and cisterns; meaning, that its roots are searchingly destructive to masonry and display a fabulous intuition for the proximity of water. He also told me, what was news to me, that there are more than two or three varieties of figs. Will you have his list of them? Here it is: There is the fico arnese, the smallest of all, and the fico santillo, both of which are best when dried; the fico vollombola, which is never dried, because it only makes the spring fruit; the fico molegnano, which ripens as late as the end of October and must be eaten fresh; the fico coretorto (" wry-heart "Âfrom its shape), which has the most leathery skin of all and is often destroyed by grubs after rain; the fico troiano; the fico arzano; and the fico vescovo, which appears when all the others are over, and is eaten in February (this may be the kind referred to in StamerÂs "Dolce Napoli" as deriving from Sorrento, where the first tree of its kind was discovered growing out of the garden wall of the bishopÂs palace, whence the name). All these are neriÂblack. Now for the white kinds. The fico paradiso has a tender skin, but is easily spoilt by rain and requires a ridiculous amount of sun to dry it; ihe fico vottato is also better fresh; the fico pezzottolo is often attacked by grubs, but grows to a large size every two or three years; the fico pascarello is good up till Christmas; the fico natalino; lastly, the fico -----, whose name I will not record, though it would be an admirable illustration of that same anthropomorphic turn of mind. The santillo and arnese, he added, are the varieties which are cut into two and laid lengthwise upon each other and so dried (Query: Is not this the "duplex ficus" of Horace?). "Of course there are other kinds," he said, "but I donÂt remember them just now." When I asked whether he could tell these different fig-trees apart by the leaves and stems alone and without the fruit, he said that each kind, even in winter, retained its peculiar "faccia" (face), but that some varieties are more easy to distinguish than others. I enquired into the mysteries of caprification, and learned that artificial ripening by means of a drop of oil is practised with some of them, chiefly the santillo, vollombola, pascarello and natalino. Then he gave me an account of the prices for the different qualities and seasons which would have astonished a grocer.

I think you are making a mistake trying to be a designer and a retailer at the same time. Any form of retail is a huge time sink. Someone has to be there whenever you are open. You fill in when someone doesn't show up. As the owner manager you have a lot of hats to wear. My suggestion: Don't do retail. Or if you do, only open 1 day per week so that people can see samples. Get a place out of town. You need a couple acres for this. To me, custom design has to take into account the space where the design fits. Which means calls on customers. Which takes you away from your business. And non-custom design container gardening strikes me as being little more than flower arranging. An aspect of container gardening: Customers can re-arrange the containers easily. Perhaps you should consider teaching customers to be their own designer, and sell them the containers and plants to implement their design. So this is the low level end of your trade. Sell plants. Instruct in their care. Run classes 2 evenings a week. Part of this is selling a line of containers -- and offer trade-ins on containers. One of the concepts that the landscape design industry needs to over come: Landscape is seen by many if not most people as static art -- like a painting or a sculpture. A better view is that it is a very slow performing art like a play or opera. Hard scape features are the 'set' But over the seasons different plants step forward to say their lines. Example: I used to sell windbreak and shelterbelt trees and tell people to plant them 8 to 12 feet apart. This meant a long wait while they got big enough to be effective. I warned people not to plant them too close. And had one customer who put white spruce 4 feet apart on both sides of his driveway. Black Canyon Drive. A better approach in my not very humble opinion is to plan for the death/removal of plants. E.g. If you have only room for a single row of trees, alternate spruce and swedish aspen. The aspen give you something very quickly. The spruce take their time. Eventually the spruce will crowd the aspen, and you remove them for firewood. Stage two: Rent entire container gardens for parties. Initially do this cheap: And have a card dispenser on every large contaienr. Wonderful publicity. See if you can put containers with brochures at public places. Libraries, park entrances. If you wanted to make out like a bandit with a container business go upscale: Suppose you had 10 customers with an average of 30 containers each. That's 300 containers total. You have 1000 containers. Once every two weeks you go by the customer and swap some containers. Not all of them every time. This is built in to the monthly maintenance fee. So as soon as the daffodils are starting to fade, you crew runs around and swaps the daffy containers for tulip containers. The daffies are grown on to recover for next year. Tulips are replaced with iris. Iris are replace with lilies. You have a show that constantly changes. Some pots would be there for the summer. Some year round. Bring special plants in for parties. Have an extensive line of unique containers but make them so they fit standard nursery pots. The ornamental container stays at the customer's house. But one or more pots fit the container. This allows your customers to have truly custom look while many of your containers can be semi-standard. While your crew is there, they check the automatic watering, deadhead as needed, check for thrips, vacuum up dead leaves and so on. If the 12 hand bonsai jack pine is looking ragged, it's trimmed, or marked to be swapped next visit. Restaurant patios are a large potential market. Offer a one month trial at a modest fee. The restaurant owner tracks patio occupancy and sales for two weeks before and after the trial, as well as during the trial. The plants take up room, but they give privacy, shade, and a very different ambiance. To do this you have to look into the restaurant at various times of day to see how close to full occupancy the patio is. Take pictures. You need them anyway to do your plan. Sherwood Botsford Sherwood's Forests Tree Farm "Trees for Rural Living" http://sherwoods-forests.com sfinfo@sherwoods-forests.com 50042 Range Road 31, Warburg, AB (780) 848 2548