Thanks everyone for contributing and sharing your preferences and experiences of using ESCS and coconut products. Im soliciting contexual user feedback and reviews because although I like what I read about the high air-and-water-holding capacity, free draining, structural stable and inert characteristics of light weight ESCS aggregates and coir and coco husk chips and would like to use both, I have not used either one them. Long-term potting or short-term costs are not first considerations to me as long as they are relatively within my means. I figure itÂs my responsibility with the horticultural method chosen to learn from the plants I adopted in supplying and meeting the horticultural requirements necessary to maximize their beauty, health, productivity, and longevity which would include any repotting that is needed. Moreover, any monetary expenditure would be win-win both for a plant and a gardener and would still be economy as long as the horticultural success is reproducible with reduced intervention and labor and that the expenses or costs can be recovered within a reasonable time. I grow many different species of plants but mostly ornamentals. I grow some leafy vegetables, bulbs, lilies, and strawberries (which require good to perfect drainage), ornamentals such as roses and gardenias, annuals and perennials, and fruit trees such as lemons and avocado. Happy to report that my gardening knowledge and successes are both growing :) Though I am fairly satisfied with making my own soilless potting mixes and soil fertility and plant nutritional management, I hope to make another leap this coming year and with your help by building on your successes and failures. My soilless mixes are similar to what many of you are familiar with or are using. My required lightweight soilless mixes are made up a high ratio of composted bark fines (landscape conditioner) and perlite with varying amounts of needed chemical CRF, inorganic and organic amendments, greenwaste compost, or soluble fertilizers as I am gardening high on a balcony and intensively (in area unit) with the least amount of labor for highest quality and yields. Most ESCS suppliers and associated commissioned scientists advertise or claim that ES is pH neutral or that it can be easily adjusted, so if you research and read some of the actual manufacturer specs and MSDS or independent lab test results on ESCS, the stabilized pH range for the aggregates is consistent above neutral and very much higher - 100 to 1000 plus above neutral as the pH scale is logarithmic. IÂm not entirely concerned with such characteristic high pH of ESCS since I know something about fertilizers and plant nutrient management and can always look things up to pH down the growing medium if need be perhaps even at pH 9-10. However, at a highly alkaline ESCS-based root medium, the maintenance of a specific acidic range needed and desired by most plants and especially for acid loving plants like gardenias and strawberries may or may not be feasible or when other alternatives exist. In a short-term horticultural experiment on ESCS and with mixed results, John Sloan of Texas Agricultural Experiment Station suggested a high pH of ESCS may be a contributory variable or cause for the observed reduced growth in certain plant species in the experiment. On the other hand, it sounds like ESCSÂs characteristic high pH has not posed a problem in your experiences. Because both coir and CHC (coconut husk chips) are used in greenhouse productions of orchids, roses, lilies, and gerbera daisies and because coco products tested in greenhouse conditions lasted 2-3 times longer than bark, peat, and sawdust and often with exceptional root growth and yields by comparison in many plant species and in various growing medium comparison trials (not all), I was initially intending to use 50% -80% ESCS and coco husk chips/coir to replace using composted bark fines altogether especially since there can be some good amount of shrinkage even with my high perlite bark fines mix. Moreover, using ESCS, coir, and perlite would eliminate the hated chores of recycling, pasteurizing, separating, and composting old bark fines and perlite and carrying multiple big bags of bark fines as tall and as heavy as I am up several flights of stairs yearly. However, given the tested readings on salinity (ECE) and Na+ on expanded shale and both are not the best and higher than pumice, its likely high pH, and the cumulative weight wet and dry (on my large balcony), I am questioning whether I should use it at all in containers or just use it as a mulch around and over the bulbs. Pumice is a possible alternative and by comparison has a lower ECE and pH profile, but the pH range is still at 8 (or 10x above neutral). Pumice seems heavier than ESCS, and its cumulative weight of pumice in containers (dry or wet) would be an issue for my balcony and for someone who weighs less than 100 lbs to move just one small bag. Perlite and coir/CHC may have to be the backbone of my mix instead of ESCS. You think they will produce comparable success and yields?

I once grew a cutting of Norfolk Island Pine - a tree that can be used as an indoor plant in cold climates. The piece I used for rooting was horizontal, and the plant that eventuated from it continued in this same growth habit. I gave it to a friend, and over the years that he had it in his well-lit kitchen, it continued on its sideways journey. Regarding wild callery pear, I presume this is Pyrus calleryana. We have them growing in a street down the road and my boss and I used to collect the seed from them years ago. They were used for planting as root stock for Pyrus ussuriensis to be budded onto. You might like to collect some of the berries when they go brown and squashy. The seeds germinate easily. Then you can choose your favourite-shaped one.

Wow, thanks a lot for all this advice everyone! It was a while in coming, I think everyone was busy with their gardens, so in the meantime I did pour a solution of fish fertilizer and liquid seaweed on it, with the fish at half the recommended concentration, and the seaweed @ 1/3. Nothing happened. My plants still look okay but are absolutely static. The only thing that changed was the G. acaulis, but that was because an expert grower in Belgium, ala Internet, advised me that they had to have manure. So I dug them up and put manure under them and watered them. I came out next morning and found they had doubled in size (which isn't saying much). Anyhow, long story short, by now I was figuring it was something like what the terrestrialman says: I must have put too much sand in the soil. As a matter of fact, he is quite correct that the mixture I made, which I had envisioned would be aerated, is not. Actually it is quite dense. So, having already resigned myself to digging all the plants up in autumn and changing the soil (not a deal, my little alpine experiment is so small), I am very grateful for this advice. As I understand it, then, I should return to the natural silty soil and mix the shale into it. The idea of placing bowls underneath sounds fascinating, but I had understood these alpines didn't want to have wet feet (?)

Assuming you mean the Poinciana, Delonix regia. I've never really checked but I don't think it'll get up much higher. But what could also happen is that over time the tree drops it. They do lose branches from the bottom and the next lot of branches are high on the trunk but hang down close to the ground on the ends.