No worries John, I feel no hostilities from you or frostiness. Just inquiring minds want to know. I will repeat though "The source of nitrogen I think is not of great importance compared to making sure the fertilizer you use has all the micronutrients plus calcium and magnesium. The purpose of my original post was that someone should not worry about whether the fertilizer they use has urea or not." I think people look at fertilizer as a quick and easy thing that they can change and feel like they are doing something to help their plants. Things like adding more light throughout the year, increase humidity, better control of temperature, regulating ph take more effort and/or cost more. Jane is on to something when she says "The biggest change I've seen in my growing conditions would be increased light over winter. I'm getting blooms on plants I've had for years without blooms." and Jan when she says "Now to figure out how to get my city water with a pH of 9.0 to a level to make better use of all those delicious trace elements!" One thing everyone can do that is not expensive is get a water quality report from their municipal water district. This should be free. Some cities require them to be given to customers. San Francisco customers get a water report twice a year. The reports maybe online. The report will tell you things like ph, hardness, and about minerals and pollutants in the water. These can vary from spring to fall. I suspect with Jans tap water ph of 9 that her municipal water source comes from a river that flows through limestone, maybe like the Colorado. She may find she gets plenty of calcium and magnesium in her water and doesn't need it in her fertilizer. As far as nitrogen forms in fertilizers, it maybe good to cover your bet with all three as they have varying times of utilization, but I think over time it doesn't mater. I think the different nitrogen forms are present in the potting mix after each fertilizing and get used the next time, washed out, or help break down your potting medium. John to help you search for a holy grail in fertilizer you may look at these: 1 Simple sugars after all that is a big part of what the plants are making. Jerry Grow- no longer made as far as I know - exploited this. Works better in highlight and warm to hot weather. Needs more scientific study. 2. Nickel as a trace element. It is use by plants as a catalyst in urease enzyme so it is never used up, but plants grow. I have only seen one fertilizer that had nickel in it made by Hydrofarm. I have no idea if they still make it or not. I do think you can grow orchids fine with urea free fertilizer relying on ammonical nitrogen and nitrate. I will mention two things that havent been mentioned so far and are needed in the break down of nitrate to ammonia to be use by plants. Two enzymes are required. Nitrate reductase involving two electron reduction of nitrate to nitrite. The other enzyme nitrite reductase involving a six electron reduction to transform nitrite to ammonia. As you can see there are a lot more steps to get from nitrate to ammonia then with urea. Cheers, Mark Sullivan

It's very pretty! I bought all 3 of my variegated AV's on the discount racks at grocery and one-stop type stores, usually for under a $1. I think they just sneak in with the regular stock and most people who shop there don't notice or care about them so they sit there with the rest. They all had names that matched their appearance when I looked them up so they weren't mislabeled. I always swing by the plant section just to see if anything cool is mixed in with the standard stuff.

From the Mantis web page "The Mantis ComposT-Twin dual-chamber composter holds almost 25 cubic feet of raw material" that's 10 bushels in each chamber!" 14 lbs X .29 is 4.06 lbs total Nitrogen that I added using just the lawn fertilizer. Compost density - Who knows? Assume it's 30% water, and the organic matter weighs almost nothing. The tumbler is now about half full, now that it settled about 50%. Water weighs 62.42 pounds/cubic foot. 62.42 X .3 X 25 X .5 is 234 lbs of compost, before the N was added. That means that I added 1.735% Nitrogen by weight. Or a 57.6:1 C:N ratio, ignoring any N from the Starbucks Coffee grounds I added much earlier. So from this simple math, my addition of the fertilizer does not seem to me to be out of line at all. In fact, had I done this calculation earlier, I ought to have added twice the fertilizer than I added! Thanks for indirectly suggesting that I do this simple math as a double-check on my "ongoing experiment". Jim Since the core temperature was only rising slowly, perhaps a degree F or two a day, today I added 4 lbs total of Urea. I've yet to do the math on that, but mentally I'm not out of line with this addition, since it's about twice as strong as the lawn fertilizer. Here is a link that might be useful: Mantis ComposT-Twin page

How do I test the soil to get accurate results and know what it needs as far as nutrients? You can't. Only professional soil testing labs can do an accurate soil test. One is available from your local county ag extension office if needed. However when growing in containers with proper potting mixes it isn't necessary and very seldom done. Proper soil-less container mixes are already pH balanced prior to bagging/sale. When reusing them the second year many will add a bit of lime to the mix but is properly amended with some fresh mix even doing that likely isn't necessary. Search terms 'rooting cuttings', 'cuttings', clones', etc. Should I be looking for at-least "Premium" potting mix? Depends on what you mean by "premium". AFAIK Miracle Grow Potting Mix is considered a premium mix. So is Sta-Green, Farfad, and hundreds of others. Don't get me wrong, there is absolutely nothing wrong with the mixes recommended on the Container Gardening forum. They are great and used by many, myself included from time to time, and if you are container gardening exclusively then worth the time and effort to use. But they sure aren't the only options available. Thousands, again myself included, garden in containers with commercial soil-less mixes quite successfully. My personal preference is ProMix BX but it may not be available in your area and the MG mix is available most everywhere. As for "needs for nutrients" ANY container regardless of the soil-less mix used in it, will require regular supplemental feedings of a balanced N-P-K-micro fertilizer since nutrients leach out every time you water. How often depends on the size of the containers and how often they have to be watered - a weekly diluted to 1/2 strength mix is commonly recommended. Low-nitrogen works best with tomatoes and 100s of brands are available. Liquids used as a regular part of the watering regimen work best but granular can work too when used properly. Synthetics work better than organics because there is no soil food web, no micro-herd, in soil-less mixes to convert the organics as needed. The issue is not the brand of mix used but that it be soil-less. Hope this helps. Dave PS: you can read through many discussions here on growing in containers that contain all this info and much more from many experienced posters if you just put 'container' in the forum search bar at the bottom of the page. Here is a link that might be useful: rooting cuttings discussions