Around here the pine bark mix at Home Depot that works is the #302 Golden Trophy bags. I've been using this for the last 4 or 5 years. The only problem is that the #302 bags vary significantly from pallet to pallet. You need to check an open bag and make sure. If the chunks are small then the entire pallet is probably OK. If not the bags in the entire pallet is not usable. I got burned this year in my first buy and had to unload all the bags to someone's in ground garden (after a harsh winter I wasn't thinking straight :-). The bags were wet and the chunks seemed small after a quick inspection but after getting them home they stunk (which I heard was not good) and had a lot of sticks and bigger chunks hidden in them. A week later I went to a different Home Depot and found a pallet of perfect #302 pine bark and loaded up as many bags that will fit into the van. A couple of years ago the good pallet of #302 was behind a bad pallet which required me to climb over the bad pallet to get to the good pallet. The employees at Home Depot must have thought I was nuts. Last year I found #302 Golden Trophy at Menards with the same pallet to pallet differences but this year Menards doesn't seem to carry it.

Greg, That picture of the forest of B.yatay palms was taken in Argentina(El Palmar)National Park.Cool picture,Butia palms as for as the eye can see.What I meant by the experts saying that T.fortunei is best suited for our region is our soil and climate and rainfall is just about exactly the same as where they grow naturally.I don't need to add sand to my soil,at least in the front and side yards.My soil drains to good,that was the problem for the Trachycarpus palms.16 feet down under my soil is solid granite rock,I live on top of a big granite hill.I cant plant anything in my back yard anyhow.I have 4 pitbulls in a 6ft fence.I've tried to plant stuff back there and they will tare it up,even pull it slap out of the ground.The only thing back there is a Red Oak tree that's probably 150yrs old,it's huge.The back of my house faces north,no good for palms anyhow.I do add Palm Tone and Superthrive in with the soil when I plant a palm.I use both about every 2 months from May to September also.Plus I foliar feed them with Neptune's Harvest,fish and seaweed fertilizer every weekend.I have 3 T.fortuneis,1 T.wagnerianus.I ordered a 3 gallon T.princeps yesterday.I haven't had a problem with any of the Trachycarpus palms this year since I started using the Superthrive.It makes palms grow like crazy :)

I have Japanese Maples that have gone 2 weeks outdoors without watering in cooler weather, albeit smaller trees (12-15") in bigger (2-2 1/2 gallon) pots. My GM is quarter inch 1-1-1 Pine, granite, turface. You'd be surprised how much moisture GM holds. That being said, I don't know ficus and I don't want to be the one to give you bad advice that damages/kills your plant. I'd try to get someone to water them...if you can't, I'd turn the heat down as low as they will tolerate, cover the Top of the pot to prevent evaporation and put a curtain in the window to cut down or eliminate the amount of direct sunlight the receive.

I think its less than a year old and have not fruit yet. What happened was....6 mths back i bought a cutting from a local nursery and it doubled in height in 3 mths putting out new bigger foliage. 2 mths ago, the lower leaves started turning yellow and fell off, leaving only the top leaves intact. At the same time it stopped growing. The watering/fertilising schedule was as usual and tree is in the same spot since it arrived. Nothing's changed. I read from the net that it could be soil getting too compacted. So, I tested by watering thoroughly until water started draining out from the bottom, waited 15 mins and stuck my finger in. Turns out, top 2" was dry as suggested. Repeated and still the same results. So I repotted (removed only abt 50% of old clayey soil) into new 1/1/1 compost/perlite/burnt earth mix, waited a month and still no growth but no further leaves dying either....it became completly dormant. A mth ago I came across Al's posts for the first time, started reading his 10 years worth of info and i decided to try 511 on the fig tree. This time, took tree out, cleaned out all the old soil and repotted into the new 511 mix. Did not see any visible root rot or nematodes or fungus etc. A week into the 511 repot, all leaves turned yellow and fell off except the 2 tiny ones on the very top. 3 weeks later i saw the new root growth followed by a new leaf. This is how it looks like before 511, now its "bald": 5 days into 511: Side note, i'm using this bark size, is it too big or too small? Singapore is in the tropical belt just above the equator, with hot and wet weather throughout the year. Humidity is very high mostly and lots of rainfall esp year end (think hawaii minus the hurricanes). I'm staying in a high rise apartment and the fig tree is located along the corridor where there is no direct sun but is very bright and partially sheltered. Our tap water comes from reverse-osmosis filtration so not much salt/deposits and is soft. Ph about neutral i believe. Do figs go into dormancy in this kind of weather? I really cant figure out what's going on with the tree. I am wondering if the tree stopped growing and lost its leaves due to root issues or other factors?