Unless you mash on the sides, as in the description you provided, it doesn't break large numbers of important feeder roots. Al

Thanks for the replies everyone and especially for the picture from Phyllis. While going over my pots yesterday I noticed not one of them had a hole directly in the middle as do most clay pots, so hubby's drill will come in handy this week. I've lurked here now for about 5 or 6 years, think I became a member in 2001, and have learned so much from all of you. I have done one BB and 2 smaller styrofoam balls, using GEII and they have held up fantastically. I also shreeked to a stop one day while driving with my son for a metal headboard that later became a trellis for one of my climbing roses. Eventually if we can figure out how to use the digital camera I bought my hubby a few years ago, I'll post pictures. Again, thanks for the replies. Alberta

I finally remembered what I once used to keep plastic cups upright. I had some trays that were for washing drink glasses in a commercial dishwasher. I got them a a place called "salvage" at the nearby state university. Someone said that universities had renamed their salvage yards to "recycle" facilities. Lots of interesting stuff at these places if you should be near a university.

Hello again all! Thank you so much for the advice--I went ahead and repotted/propagated the Sans and so far, so good (it's been one week). I took a lot of photos, and uploaded a few of them. By few, I mean, 22 photos!! A picture is worth 1,000 words, as they say. OK, so here goes (I think I finally figured out how to put multiple photos in a single post) 1. The picture above is of my very crowded Sans, in its bent-out-of-shape black plastic pot, before repotting. It was really easy to tip the plant over--heavy & tall leaves, and light soil! 2. I removed the Sans from its pot, and almost immediately half the soil nearly broke off, as you can kind of tell in the picture. Whatever roots were in the bottom half, well, I don't think they were alive (unless they break that easy?) The un-potted Sans held its shape very well though :) 3. I then began removing the plant from the soil, I think by gently breaking up the soil and maybe lightly shaking it a bit. Though there were plenty of roots in the soil, not many of them stayed with the plants..! 4. Here is a closer shot of the roots & rhizome of one of the Sans. I decided I would cut them all apart at this point. 5. Another shot of Sans roots. In this picture you can see some of the roots look dead. I gently tugged at the roots and a lot of them came off, and seemed quite dead. I hope this was OK! I was operating under the assumption that since people make cuttings of their leaves, which start with zero roots, then it would be OK if I accidentally removed a few good roots in the process of removing the dead ones. Hope what I did was OK! 6. Here is a close up of one of the rhizomes. There are a lot of holes in it. Are these holes former root locations? Are they bad? I do not know what they are. 7. This Sans rosette looked like it was coming out of two leaves, instead of the two leaves being part of the rosette. I felt like the top rosette was its own rosette because there were roots coming from it, above the two lower leaves. Because of this, I decided to remove those two leaves and see if they would take :-D 8. A picture of the now-removed Sans leaf, with a few roots growing from it. 9. I now know a lot of people start cuttings without rooting hormone, but I bought some before I read this. I've never used it before, so I decided to try it out of these leaf cuttings. I put down some plastic wrap, put some powder on the plastic, and closed the bottle to protect the rest of the unused rooting powder. 10. I dipped the leaf in the powder, and picked up the plastic to sort of "hug" the leaf. Then after I tapped gently on the leaf so the excess powder would fall off. Hope I did it right! 11. Next, I went about cutting up all the Sans into individual rosettes. I wasn't planning on cutting them all, but once I started, I couldn't stop! I used a very sharp knife for this task--a knife we use rarely, only when we need a very sharp knife. They were very easy to cut btw. I wasn't really sure where on the rhizome to separate them, so hopefully this looks OK? 12. Here are all the Sans rosettes laying on the counter... 13. I mentioned how the roots came off really easily. I also gently tugged at roots to remove what I thought were dead ones. Some roots had resistance and I left those, others had no resistance, and others seemed like they were a little thin string inside a brown wrapper--seemed very dead to me. Anyhow, this is a pile of roots left behind... and those are not all of the roots of course. 14. I bought a bag of perlite, and later, a bag of MG Orchid Mix, when I couldn't find any pine bark fines. This orchid bark mix had a LOT of big chunks, as you can see from the photo. In the photo, you can see I already added some perlite (before I realized that I would have to pick through and remove all these big bark chunks). The pen is included for scale. 15. I had a pretty blue pot laying around empty, so I decided to use it for some of the rosettes. In this photo, you can see the long wick I have put in the pot, coming out of the only hole. I wish this pot had more holes, but at least this single hole is very large. The wick helps keep some of the perlite from falling out (though not all of it...!) 16. Here is the finished product. Five (now separated) rosettes repotted into a new pot, with a fast-draining soil. Though I removed the really big chunks of bark, there are still pieces in there that I think are too big. I hope it doesn't damage the plant...! I put a lot more perlite in there than I was originally planning, since I was worried it would have weird drainage issues if the medium was half big, half small particle size. Anyhow, we'll see! I should also mention that the individual Sans rosettes are rather unstable in their new pot, but they can't be planted any deeper of course. I used some of the large bark pieces on the top to try and prop them up/wedge them into an upright position. They seem to be doing OK one week later, I think watering them helped. Also, the roots were out in the open air for an hour or two before they were repotted--in case that is significant. Also, I waited two days to water them, to hopefully give time for their wounds to heal before adding moisture. I think they are more stable in their post post-watering. They are now back by a western window, where they get some evening direct sun, just like before the repot. I have a few more pictures to post (of potting a cutting in a 1 QT yogurt container), but instead of adding them here, I'll just link to the imageshack album where they are located: http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/838/18sansqtwickinside.jpg. Thank you again everyone! Feel free to critique my work, suggestions for next time, and what you think about there being very few roots left on each new cutting... I hope to continually improve on this front! - Siobhan p.s. I realize I posted a lot of photos, and for most of you, you already know what rooting powder looks like, rhizomes, and so forth, so it probably seems very gratuitous. I posted a lot of pictures because when I was about to do this, I wanted to find a page of someone who had done this, and had LOTS of pictures... but I never found that. So, I hope you can tolerate the picture-heavy post, knowing that it may help some other new Sans owner out there... thanks! :-) This post was edited by wndy on Fri, Mar 22, 13 at 1:53