I'd chop 'em all off just above the crown and keep the soil damp, but not wet. WHILE you repot, it's important to keep the roots constantly wet. That means you need to be dipping them in a tub of water at least every minute, or removing the old soil with water pressure. The all-important fine roots dry out and die quickly unless you stay on top of keeping them wet. AFTER the repot, it's important that you keep the soil moist where it's occupied by the roots, That might mean watering every day until the roots start to colonize the deeper part of the pot. Other than that, you'll need to get a feel for how many fine roots you must leave to support the water needs of the top of the plant. I regularly remove up to 90% of a plant's roots during a repot and I almost never ever lose a plant unless it blows out or an animal helps it out of the pot. Al

Exactly, the paper i pasted from describes the same phenom you have been describing for over 10 years. I have always raged that the big greenhouse media suppliers claim that 30% perlite into a peat is a high porosity mix. And so many growers prefer short squatty containers [helpful for blow over prevention but nothing else] Container Geometry is almost as important as the mix. i remember in 1984 I took a 400 level greenhouse management course at University of Delaware. The prof soaked a rectangular sponge and held it by the edges parrallel to the sink flatwise and let water drain, then he rotated the sponge on the shorter vertical axis and more water drained, when that free drainage ended he then rotated the sponge vertically in it tallest plane and more water drained. When I read your suggestion about using a draping shoelace as draining wick to lower the PWT the distance of the wick, I shouted YES at the elegant simple brilliance. In 1977 I grew a marijuana plant in a milk crate full of gravel, the stalk was over 2 inches in diameter [no different than growing in glass.] BTW, in your gritty mix what are the ratios and actual particle size for each component? I would think to use slightly larger particle sizes than i think you were using and i would probably consider using zeolite or a calcined DE or calcined clay. BTW, Ep minerals makes several absorbents both DE and Clay, Calcined or regular as various spill absorbers available in any auto parts store. 5o pounds for about 10 dollars. Don''t know the particle sizes but likely need to be screened to eliminate the fines. The clays are generally calcium bentonite and not sodium bentonite so less sodium and less swelling. I beileve Arcillite and Tuface are calcium bentonites. I was just thinking that decomoposed granite and even bark add no water holding capacity but with DE and Proper sized ceramics you could add more waterholding capacity but still maintain the airspace. The airspace in the ep mineral clay was pretty low when I measured it last, but I did not screen it. Somewhere I have a spreadsheet with AFP, WHC, TP, TPv, etc for over a dozen components and mixes. I have run quite a few in both 16 oz and taller 32 oz cups, [1 liter exactly when filled to rim overflow which makes that size intuitively easy for all the math. I think i found your posts about 3 years ago and then lost them. Am I correct in thinking you have some water release curve data around somewhere. Someone posted some WRC showing that Axis DE or perhaps the Axis clay media held huge amounts of water but easily released over 75% to the plant. TI can not find that post. I was actually searching for Vertical hydraulic conductivity, Capillary Rise and Capillary rate and wicking when your links showed up. The axis DE is like $90 a bag for 50 pounds so i think I could more cheaply reproduce from other products but have to screen. where I live in idaho, there is a Celatom DE plant less than 60 miles away, 2 zeolite mines, a sodium bentonite mine, WHC and Airspace mid 20s in the 2 larger particle sizess. Also the best white pumice [Hess] source mine a few hours away. I had hoped better water holding capacity. I plan on rerunning all the mixes again in a few months now that i have more standardized my process using multiple cup sizes, some of them tamped or shaken to settle, some top watered, some bottom water, measure distance of subsidence if any. I also have a vegetronix tensionometer now and will take additional measures at various depths to measure the exact tension and also verify depth of pWT which i can usually see through the transparent cups if I use a marking dye and saturate from below. Anyway I will share those spreadsheets in the near future If i were to guess, you have some sort of plant and soil science background or some civil engineering background and a love for plants. At any rate, your explanations and examples are some of the best I have ever come across, and your shoelace suggestion is brilliant, truly. i read so much WRONG advice or the wrong analysis for reason why something works or does not work. it is refreshing to come across accurate information Garret Goyette

I've been following this discussion with real interest. Last year my husband had an emotional affair with a woman he met on his commuter train. It did not get as far as the OP's adventure but speaking from the perspective of the wife...It has taken a lot of working, talking, and refocusing to get our marriage back on track. Looking back my husband has realized it was completely unreal and not the answer to our problems. Hindsight has shown him her eagerness to destroy our marriage displayed her true character just as other posters have suggested to the OP. Also, I find it difficult to believe that the problems all come from his wife. Marriage is two people. I doubt he is open to all the good advice given here. It seems he has already made excuses for his behavior and rationalized the whole sordid event to convince himself of his righteousness. Sorry to go on. It all struck a nerve

Thank you Casey, that helped energize us through the home stretch and we're now pretty much done, barring the finishing. "We" she said possessively, but to be honest my role ended when the design and shopping were done. I really have to hand it to DH for the work. Well, and I kept the kitchen cooking during construction :-) I can do woodwork, but the precision measuring and clean cutting are way better than I could have done. (The bottom drawer still needs to be adjusted just a tad to rectify the left gap, for the perfectionists out there). So here is the pretty-much finished project. (The bottom drawer still needs to be adjusted just a tad to rectify the left gap, for the perfectionists out there). One criterion having been that the drawers would look good when open, they do indeed show no plywood from the sides. In the second photo you can also see the triangle piece that connects the drawer bottom and front and supports the bottom. So far the side rails simply function as the stops, and we don't have anything yet to prevent me from pulling them out and dropping them on my foot. Working on that. Fortunately they are deep, and it's unlikely I'll make the error. The most fun of course was playing with the exotic woods to pick up the colour scheme of the kitchen. The bloodwood picks up the brick in the chimney that absurdly rises through the kitchen counter; the purple heart picks up the maroon field and backsplash tile, and the blue the accent tile ( the main field is bird's eye maple). In the third photo you get a bit more of the flavour of the kitchen, which we wanted to be consistent with even if we weren't copying the rest of the cabinetry. The blue is actually something called alowood, a softwood that is factory-stained and hardened. We were going to stain something blue ourselves so finding this at the lumberyard was a bonus. It was pretty good to work with. As many of you likely know, the purple heart is a very hard wood so the planer caused a bit of ripping from time to time, but fortunately not badly on the face we wanted to use. Also, it's actually brown when it's first cut, and turned more purple after a day or two - I gather this is usually a reaction to heat? Sun streams into the window onto the drawers, so maybe that or the light. And with Slideez, they do slide well, albeit that's empty. I don't want to put anything in them until they're finished - I think we'll use polyurethane on the inside, and we haven't decided on the best outside coating yet. Thanks again for the interest, and I hope this account is of some use to someone. KarinL