====>I guess I don't fertilize nearly enough. I NEVER fertilize trees...they are on their own. well adam perhaps you are wiser than i! between the 10-10-10 and the nh 2 times I AM FERTILIZING TOO MUCH!. so says the nursery where i bought those tress 6 years ago. he was stunned they went from 6-7' in oct 99 to 20' now. he told me STOP! he thinks this is why i'm having problems with pine shoot moths and another 20 spruce 25' to the east that get nothing (same age but smaller) are not being attacked. ====>So you basically have two sprayers. With the 2 gallon hand pump sprayer, is that on wheels that you wheel around as you go? I have seen the backpack. Would you mind if I asked where you bought them and if they were expensive? i have two 2 gallon hand pump sprayers i carry they are not on wheels (1 organic the other not organic), a 4 gallon back pack sprayer and i use the 1 qt spray bottle a lot as i don't fertilize in the garden all that much. the 2 gallon sprayers are available anywhere, blue seal, agway (both argricultrual/feed stores), tractor supply company, on the internet from any gardening and many seed companies. the 2 gallon sprayers were bought many years ago i'd guess $15-20, today i'd say they are about $20-30 roughly. the 4 gallon back pack was just bought at tractor supply. they have 2, 1 is $49 the other is $79. i bought both, tested them with water and chose the more expensive. sorry it took so long to reply, i don't come to this forum too often. tom rich manure nh will wash out of the soil or off the leaves if you spray and it rains say in 12 hours so don't use it if rain is predicted. after 2 or 3 days i wouldn't worry, the plants have gotten the benefit from it. tom

Tina, you would have to treat the water for parasites. Melafix would not do that. You can purchase parasite treatments at a pond store or pet store. Follow the instruction to a "T" as it can be powerful stuff. Treatments usually are done over a few days with measured doses. Stay away from using straight Potassium Permanganate,should anyone suggest using it, unless you know exactly what your pond gallonage is and what you are actually dealing with. It is too easy to overdose with P.P. and end up killing everything in the pond. I dose my ponds, with a treatment, in the fall before closing them up, just as a prophylactic against parasites. "Horton"

Have you tried a salt water dunk for your affected fish? I've had good luck with that. And you don't affect anything other than the fish that go in the bucket with the water/salt mix. BTW use POND SALT not Table Salt. The iodine in regular table salt will kill your fish.

Dogma is holding firm to the belief that something could neither be a conceptually or practically superior practice because you believe something else seems to be satisfactory - 'works for me'. Old beliefs are like a pair of old shoes - we often value their comfort so much we tend to ignore the fact they're full of holes. Almost everyone prefers the relative comfort of belief to the exercise of reason because believing is easier than reasoning; which brings us full circle to why there are so many more believers than thinkers. My $.02 I'm pretty sure you're not suggesting that a haphazard approach (a little of this and a little of that, even though I know neither what the plant needs nor what I'm giving it) is a superior approach to a well-reasoned supplementation plan. Discounting all reason because we're satisfied with the status quo is self-limiting by default. BTW - if Punky's trees are in pots (don't think that was made clear), moving closer to how nature does things is an exercise fraught with obstacles. Growing in the ground and growing in pots are widely divergent cultures. On a scale of 1-10 with growing in the ground being a 1 and hydroponic growing a 10, conventional container culture is probably a 7 or 8. Al