Maybe once I'm a more advanced orchidician I'll understand how to use it better. I am considering its usefulness as a top dressing on my 'chids to help keep humidity up; it's around 20% humidity in my home, dry as a bone. I'm worried it'd cut down on air circulation and cause root rot (again!) on them.

Thanks for your comments and since it's working great, I have intention of fixing it. What prompted me to do this post was the Xmas plant I brought home from our annual Xmas party. It's a Pot Red Crab 'Kuau Miau' AM/AOS from Kawamoto. It's in a 4" pot with bark and has a bunch of roots outside the pot. The roots took a major beating from the travel but it will reform them since it's on that course. Point is that repotting is only essential to plants that require the inside of the pot for survival. If there are no roots outside the pot and the inside is unhealthy, you have a problem. If on the other hand there is a plethora of roots outside the pot, the plant no longer needs a healthy interior of the pot and will grow quite nicely with the outside roots. This plat is in healthy new bark yet it has lots of outside roots. I plan to just put it in a empty larger pot and never repot it or replace the bark. End of story. 27 years from now it may well look like the Daffodil and get there with a minimum of work other than proper light, temp, water and nutrient. I make a big point of this when I give my Orchids 101 lectures at our show. Give them good conditions and otherwise let them do their thing. Nick

I also just started collecting and taking an interest in cacti/succulents. I find them to be so very unique, interesting & fun plants to collect. Being that I also live right of the Houston area, I to am looking around different places in hopes of finding unique plants to add to what I already have. Been reading here and getting to where I am making my own gritty mix as well for these plants in hopes of taking better care of my new babies. Can you send me some places that you have come across that have unique succulents? My usual places are just Home Depot & Lowes. I went over to Cornelius, but not very much of a selection on their succulents there. Good luck growing you new plants..

"The bigger the pot the bigger the plant isn't necessarily true", but probably is true in far more cases than it's untrue. How large a plant can get in a given pot depends more on how roots are managed than how large the pot is. Also, the bigger the pot (you bump it to), the greater the potential for over-potting, which is something you probably should avoid going into winter. I wouldn't "repot" until mid to late June. While you can pot up at nearly any time, as long as you're reasonable in your soil choice and pot size, there are still better times than others to pot up. Those times are the same times it's best to repot, and the reasons are similar. Potting up in June is less risky because the plant will be in the most robust part of the growth cycle, which means roots will colonize the new soil faster than any other segment of the growth cycle, which is an advantage for the plant. That said, repotting is much to be preferred over potting up ....... as long as the timing is appropriate. One practice eliminates all limitations associated with root congestion, the other practice ensures the limitations remain a part of the plant's existence until such time that you actually reach into the root mass with your hands/tools and correct the condition. Al