Thank you to everyone that took the time to respond. Please dont get me wrong, I absolutely love my job.... where else could you get paid to do what you love??? I also love seeing my regular customers, talking with them, swapping plants, stories(some ridiculously funny) and also extras from our veggie gardens. Every night when I come home cold and tired, and maybe sometimes irritated from cranky customers, I honestly always feel good about my day. some of my co-workers are in the same boat as me, they have to work, and really put their all into it, but get taken advantage of, you know?? Also, the owner of the store is amazing, the general manager is an a** that I would love to meet in a dark alley with a board with nails in it, he's so pompous, I'd love to just let him have it!!! Anywho...... life is life, .... I have tried to tell the higher ups with $$ signs in their views, that by excellent customer service and amazing products, they could take it to the bank, per se', but who knows..... Also, alot of customers dont realize that while we're at work helping them, our own families and gardens are being neglected.... something I can definately relate to!!! Albeit, its a job, and a job I love.... for the most part. Keep your eyes open for "melissa" in a garden center near you, and I guarantee you'll get 100% honest info and I'll do my best to help you enjoy your garden, after all, thats my job, right??? Completely O/T, but I will post some pictures of my gardens soon, my peonies are in full bloom as are my delphiniums, my pure red lilies and my gardenia trees(for North Bay!!!! Ontario) are just about ready to break wild..... Keep looking!!! I'll post soon!!! If anyone has any gardening questions or just wants to chit chat, please send me a ??? or send a mail to my private addy, msw12142001@yahoo.ca Thanks again everyone, makes those crappy days all worth it!!! Melissa

I read the whole thread from start to finish and realized why I wasn't following the thread too closely. Sweetcicily had given good advice & there was really no reason for me to add any additional comments - she covered it well, based on the information you gave. First, I really love trees, but I'm not all that worried about yours for the immediate future. It's quite healthy for a tree growing in CHI that only gets AM sun. Benjamina regularly loses some leaves through natural senescence, so loss of a few leaves, even under ideal conditions is normal. My areas of concern are: A) You haven't fertilized at all since you repotted. The small volume of soil you added, even though it did have some fertilizer in it, would not be enough to sustain a plant of that mass, so I would expect nutrient deficiencies, probably on multiple fronts. N,P,& K are all mobile in plant tissues so a deficiency of any of those would show up in older leaves. Mg and S are marginally mobile, so a deficiency of those would show up in older tissues when the plant is quiescent, and in all tissues when the plant is actively growing. Ca and almost all the micro-nutrients are immobile, so deficiencies show up in new growth. From this, you can see why I suspect a Mg deficiency, especially with your corroboration of the distorted new growth, prolly indicating a Ca/Mg shortage. B) Salt accumulation in soil (see SweetC's info above, too) is probably in play here, too. Excess salt inhibits both water and nutrient uptake, so it can manifest itself in a drought response and/or nutritional deficiencies. You really need to figure out your water issues & get that soil flushed thoroughly. After you flush the soil, fertilize immediately with 1/4 strength MG 12-4-8 liquid w/micro-nutrients. It's the best choice. Contact me off forum & I'll fix you up with a small vial of nutrients you can mix into the 12-4-8 you'll need & you'll have a complete fertilizer with all the nutrients your plant needs. I'll even send a little gypsum to help keep the Ca:Mg balance straightened out, and some chelated Fe (iron) formulated for high-pH conditions (your high pH is probably blocking Fe uptake, too). ;o) C) From all you've said about the condition of the roots, you're going have to bite the bullet & do a repot, complete with a root-pruning this summer. I'll help you through it when the time comes. If you don't, you can eventually expect branch die back, little or no branch extension, and slow to no growth. Basically, the tree will strangle itself, and "A plant that is not growing is dying". Dr. Alex Shigo - world renown for his tree research.size> Watergal also made very good points about the water from the refrigerator (Are you applying it cold? You shouldn't be; it will injure roots), the water softener (we still need to get that worked out, btw), dissimilar soils in the same container, and her repotting tips. Don't despair or throw your hands up in confusion. I know you're prolly on info overload, but the solutions are really quite simple in comparison to the physiology of what's going on with the plant. Al

Okay, once I made my pond substantially larger last year I had the obligatory algae bloom and then Clear Clear water. That was until I had an early autumn here in the midwest and a maple tree filled my pond with leaves (prior to me netting the pond). Since that time I've only had tea-colored water (!!!), and it has confounded me! I've cleared the leaves from the pond long ago but I still have tea colored water, it is now almost June of the following year. The Professor has pointed out that a nearby mulched garden bed could be fouling my water. It's a long shot but maybe. I'm working on curing that now by introducing a larger rock-lined edge around the pond. But I'm interested in some things that Sandy has said in another post about anerobic bacteria / die off of good bacteria / sulphur smell and lack of oxygen. It has made me think of this above posting by Watershaper talking about flocculent (sp)-- I think I know what this (flocculent) is but I'll have to do more research-- and activated carbon, as well as oxygenation. My setup is a 2800 gal pond focusing on aquatic plants, I have about 8 large marginals, and 8 hardy water lilies. I have a large Savio skimmer and an Atlantic Bio-Falls. The plants in the bio-falls are starting to root now. The other plants are doing so-so; larger ones have gotten fertilized with Highland Rim tabs for the first time this spring ( I didn't do this last year), but smaller plants seem to struggle. Of my overall 2800 gals most of this is in the lower pool, where I have the water lilies. The depth is about 34 inches with several shelves. I have a wide but short height falls between the upper and lower pools, only about six inches of falls by 40 inches wide (weir). The upper pool is approximately 200 gals. This is where I've put most of the marginals, the depth is only about 18 inches (deepest) with about 12" the norm. I have everything in pots in sandy-clay soil with pebbles or sand tops. I have the bio-falls up stream from the upper pool and about a five foot quick descending stream between them. It is lined with rounded cobbles. I have been fighting string algae all winter and spring. Again, I've been fighting STRING ALGAE ALL WINTER & SPRING! While I've gotten a hold of it in the lower (larger) pool, the stuff is still forming anew in the upper pool around the plants and rocks of the stream... this is coming right off the bio-falls! I haven't been able to figure this out. Why would the water coming off the vegetative filtration be the most prone to develop the algae?! I'VE ADDED SOME HYDROGEN PEROXIDE TO THE MORE STILL WATERS AND IT SEEMS TO KILL THE ALGAE, AT LEAST IT CLUMPS AND I CAN SCOOP IT OUT IN A DAY OR TWO. But why would my bio-falls and stream bed coming off the falls be so prone to algae just when the vegetative filter is starting to really grow? This should be the exact opposite, should it not! :( Next, I actually have two pumps in my Savio skimmer basin. One I have going to the Bio-Falls and the other I have going to a pipe with cut out holes that discharges just under the weir of the bio-falls to create a rapids effect. Both pumps are Laguna 3500 gph (I would estimate a 12 foot head, so they what, discharge about like a 2800 gph pump). Okay, so that's the setup. A few fish, 12 to 15. Mainly Fancy Goldfish of medium size, less than four inches. I test the water chemistry almost weekly. Here it is, without fail: pH: 8.5 ( I no longer try adjusting pH down ) KH: 9.25 degrees or 166ppm ( I buffer with Baking Soda as needed) GH: 3 to 5 degrees Nitrite: Nitrate: (hard to read the scale but no more than this) CO2: (not sure if the chart the Tetra Pond Test Kit gives is good for ponds because it says for aquariums on the CO2 sheet, but given the pH and KH it would be 0.8mg/lf Water Temp.: fluctuating this spring between 64 F and 73 F. The above results were from yesterday (almost any day) at 73 F in the late afternoon. So... Okay, I've had the "rapids-creating pump" off for a few days just to save electricity dollars. But I turn it on today after a good 2 weeks off. I get a huge plum of fine muck like sediment discharged thru my rapids pipe and into my stream & upper pool and there is a very strong sulphur smell that lingers for about 4 or 5 minutes, it makes me think of Sandy's previous post about anerobic bacteria creating the smell and killing the beneficial bacteria. Would this account for why my bio-falls is not "eating-up" my excess nutrients that cause my string algae (occurring IN and close to the falls)??? I have a lot of fine sediment on the bottom of my pond. It is only about quarter of an inch deep sediment but it seems to be stirred-up quickly by any kind of movement. Is this causing my water to be tea-colored? It's so fine. If I move the net into the lily pool to remove string algae I get a cloud of fine, brown debris. I believe this is what my second pump, when I turned it on for the rapids, sucked up the pipe to the cloud and stink-up (sulphur) my stream bed. So Watershaper says use a flocculent. I haven't goggled "flocculant" yet but I imagine it is something to bind particulate together. Okay. Might work. He also says add "activated carbon" which I believe is a form of charcoal. Where do you get this? I mean besides the pond store that sells it like gold? What else am I missing? Professor? Oh I know, I want to ask about Oxygen that's dispersed in the water. I believe the pond gets an oxygen boost from three sources in my pools. First I have the falls from the vegetative bio-filter, this is the Atlantic Bio-Falls; then I get oxygen (I think) from the rapids of the steep stream; then, I believe I get oxygen from the 6 inch falls located between the small upper pool and lily pond pool. My question is this: how does oxygen travel in a larger pool of water? If my lower pool is roughly 2400 gal. and all of the turbulence is on the west side, is the far east side of that lower pool being oxygentated? I wonder. Sandy indicated that she cleared water by adding a bubbler to smaller pools. Can it be that with one or two 2800 to 3500 gph pumps in this roughly 3000 gal pond that I'm still not getting enough oxygen to make things balance??? What you say?

Stacie, what a great tip. I will do that next time. A big improvement on my tea towel-lined bowl idea (which was pretty good). Okay so here is the upshot: By the time I got around to frying the latkes this afternoon, the bowl looked BLACK. Looked like squid ink latke batter. But guess what! That was just the top thin layer. I was able to scrape almost all of it off, probably losing only about 3 latkes' worth, and stir the last little bit down into the big bowlful without a problem. I still had over 60. So the latkes look okay after all, and they taste fantastic (Jack snuck one and swooned, and although he likes everything, it's hard to get a major reaction out of him.). I'm sure glad I didn't dump them and start over (I doubt I would have anyway). I wonder if I wouldn't even have lost that little bit if I'd put the plastic wrap right down on the batter instead of across the top of the not-quite-full bowl, as it is the exposure to air that is the culprit. If you like ground potatoes instead of shredded for latkes, I can definitely recommend using the grinder over the FP -- just a perfectly even texture, not too fine, not too coarse. I can't believe we ever bothered to make them when we had to use hand graters, both because of the elbow grease and time required and the inevitable knuckle scrapings. Okay, to thank you all for coming to my rescue yet again, here is the method (I just learned it a few years ago; wish I'd always known it) for making latkes ahead and reviving them, for anyone who doesn't already know: Place cooked latkes in a single layer on a double sheet of foil, folded so that you can open the top. Close tightly and freeze flat. When you want to eat them, place foil pack(s) on baking sheet(s) and heat at 425 F for 7 minutes. They crisp right back up. Serve hot with sour cream and applesauce. Mmmmmmmmm!!!!!!!!