Comparing ground growing to pot growing is an apples'n'oranges comparison.

Repotting (helpful) and potting-up (so many reports of this killing plants) are different things.

Peat seems to be the #1 killer of potted plants.

Interesting ideas, Matt. I can't speak for others, but I can say that I find much to disagree with in your constructs. The saddest part is, and I mean it in a most sincere way, you've been growing by trial and error for >15 years and running repeatedly into obstacles that far less than 15 hours of reflection on reliable information would remove entirely from the well-worn trail you travel. I honestly think you'd be better served by asking for input re what you believe to be true, as opposed to presenting your conclusions in a manner so matter of fact.

Al

Mat, why not open up and try something a little different that you're not used to? You could have great results.

i can't agree with "soil is irrelevant" for any container grown plants.

There just isn't a lot of information on these plants tapla. also id rather be a trail and error, reading at libraries type of person, than some internet know it all thanks to google type keyboard warrior. I havent raised these plants much the last few years, I guess im getting back into plants.....

Tiffany, what do you mean peat is the number one killer of potted plants? Seems like maybe when you disturb the roots that are growing at the outer circle they get scars from tearing the pot off and these scars cause the roots to start to rot. Correct?

"There just isn't a lot of information on these plants tapla." Oh sure there is. They're just plants. If you can grow a Ficus or Schefflera you can grow Radermachia. Their cultural wants are essentially the same. In fact, the cultural wants of at least 90% of the plants we grow as houseplants are so similar as to be essentially the same. "also id
rather be a trail and error, reading at libraries type of person, than
some internet know it all thanks to google type keyboard warrior. [sic] If you think that's me, I'll leave you to your opinion. I'm more interested in seeing that good people get good information, which is rewarding, than exchanging jabs with lightweights, which isn't.

Seems like maybe when you disturb the roots that are growing at the
outer circle they get scars from tearing the pot off and these scars
cause the roots to start to rot. Correct? Mmmm .... no. Tiffany knows more than enough about plants to answer for herself ....... and perhaps she will. You're incorrect. I've seriously root pruned and repotted many thousands of potted plants with no root rot issues, and personally know hundreds of others who have done the same, perhaps somewhat lacking in profusion. Your root rot issues stem from your erroneous conclusion that soil choice doesn't make a difference, as long as you provide enough light. While it's true that, since a plant's level of defense against disease is a byproduct of its metabolic rate, more light CAN be helpful assisting the plant in warding off diseases if there is nothing else significantly limiting the plant's metabolism, it cannot be said unequivocally that more light trumps ANY limitation imposed by other factors unless light itself was THE most limiting factor. A quick review of Liebig's Law of the Minimum will confirm this to be unquestionably true. If you're drowning your plants, no matter how much light you provide it won't/can't play the part of savior.

Al

Al i was as careful as one can be watering this thing It was in peat with fir bark for drainage I know i did not overwater it So what caused it? You seem to know everything

And by the way i was not "excanging jabs" with anyone You misinterpreted my statements to make them look like "jabs" at other people, which they were not.

I know you said you watered "carefully", but did you leave the plant in wet soil instead of making sure it was moist, thus letting the roots breathe?

(and don't you hate it when one of the most commonly used keys on the keyboard is broken?!?)

Al i was as careful as one can be watering this thing It was in peat
with fir bark for drainage I know i did not overwater it So what
caused it? You seem to know everything This is an odd, passively-aggressive way to ask for more info. Of course nobody knows everything, but Al does know about plants and is generously willing to share info with anyone. It is because of his generously shared info that I have been able to stop killing plants.

Tiffany, what do you mean peat is the number one killer of potted
plants? Peat suffocates roots, which need oxygen & moisture at the same time to function. When I got rid of peat, plant deaths went to virtually zero at my house.

Seems like maybe when you disturb the roots that are growing at
the outer circle they get scars from tearing the pot off and these
scars cause the roots to start to rot. Correct? If one investigates how bonsai masters keep potted trees alive for hundreds of years, one will learn about root pruning. No need for me to try to condense that, the subject of many entire books, into a sound byte/nutshell version here but I can tell you that I have been doing it to all of my woody entities for decades with no adverse effects, just the good results of vigorous new growth.

You said that your actions thus far resulted in a dead plant. Instead of disagreeing with suggested improvements in technique without the benefit of experience in what was suggested, why not experience another way for yourself and then make up your own mind?

"And by the way i was not "excanging jabs" with anyone You
misinterpreted my statements to make them look like "jabs" at other
people, which they were not." [sic] I didn't misinterpret anything. In saying "id rather be a trail and error, reading at libraries type of person,
than some internet know it all thanks to google type keyboard warrior" [sic}, I figured that in you resides the feeling that I hide behind a keyboard and make warrantless attacks on whomever might pass within a keystroke. That actually sounds more like a hook or a cross than a jab, but no matter. Knowing you harbor that feeling sort of changed me from someone perfectly willing to do all I could to help you get beyond the impasse at which you find yourself, to someone now more interested in providing as much logical contrast to your reasoning as required to limit the potential for others to find themselves serving as unwilling habitués of the same impasse. I think you'll find this will be a fairly common reaction to your approach, but I'll hope I'm wrong in that and you do find the help you need to get beyond the obstacles you and your plants face.

Learning to grow well requires associating or assembly a number of pieces - sort of like a jigsaw puzzle. Someone who already has command of the basics can help another person who's interested in listening put the border of that puzzle together in very little time - a few hours of reading the right material and you have the basics covered. You're not even there yet; still, you're adamant that your observations ARE what they SEEM to be to you. Several growers of above average ability have already disagreed with you on a number of points, and from their input, I can see they're thinking an attitude adjustment might help open the conduit through which any meaningful information might flow, in either direction. Think about that for at least a moment before you let your emotions take control of your reasoning and you put the finishing touches on poisoning the well.

Al

Al Really, I mean no disrespect, but do you even know anything about me? You seem to write me off pretty quickly.... The reason I was mad was that I wrote this when I was in a good mood and excited, and you say something like "15 years, wow I could have learned all there is to know about radarmachera in 15 minutes" Which is basically calling me stupid or slow. I did not like that. I dont want to get into any fights, so lets just stop with the personal jabs at one another okay? I am not here to fight but to learn, and contrary to what you might think, I AM willing to concede im wrong and to learn and be a better grower. You dont need to just say im this and im that and write me off so quickly, hey, you barely know me. You hurt my feelings . I have been growing plants including radarmachera for the past 20 years, im not a lightweight and not the moron you make me out to be. Lighten up

Tiffany, that is interesting. So what kind of soil based mix do you use or recommend? I AM going to grow radermachera from seed again, I even bought some Daminozide off ebay. I'll go to get the liners and grow them probably into 4" pots again. Ive done it before successfully, just I planted too many seeds into each pot and they were overcrowded and also I sprayed them so much with fungicide that when I sold them to people (for like a couple bucks) they did not make it long.

Al, again im sorry if I offended you in some way.....

Tiffany im really interested in what you use or would recommend for a soil based potting mixture.....

I dont like a lot of peat, im old fashioned. I had more success with these plants when I used plain old potting soil and clay pots, and stuck them in full sun.

I use a decent potting mix, some small orchid bark , Perlite. I use about 1/2 potting mix, 1/4 bark, 1/3 perlite. The potting mix is my peat base and works much better than pure peat.

I agree with you regarding light. I tend to push plants close to their light limits.

Some plants do not like their roots disturbed, but I've never had one die from trimming roots. I always do that when repotting even with root sensitive plants.

I grow a lot of orchids and some do not like to be repotted. The worse that I've experienced is a bit of a set-back. Possibly no flowers for that season. But the growth is worth the flowers.

I don't mean to interrupt this thread, but thought I'd share my experience.

Good luck,

Jane

I appreciate being asked about a recipe but I can't share mine because I don't have one. Were I to follow a recipe, I wouldn't be naive enough to think I would need to invent a new one. My plant budget is SMALL so I try not to spend much/any of it on bags of stuff to fill pots, (and most of which to be found within any reasonable distance from my house come from companies I don't want to patronize.) I've taken various principles learned from those here on GW and elsewhere and applied them to what I can find/create/manipulate from my small suburban property and do what I can to make it work.

I'm not at all against recipes, and am not saying anyone should or shouldn't follow one. As an analogy, consider an orchid in the common for-sale condition of having been packed with sphagnum moss so tightly into a pot that, if left that way, most of them die. The sound-byte info is to remove all of the moss and use orchid bark. I'm sure that works, but the occasion of buying a clearance orchid (my first and only) did not change my plant budget to then allow for the additional purchase of orchid bark. So I took what I understood about the principle of why one would remove the moss to remove it, but put some of it back, after loosening and fluffing it up, and put the orchid and very loose moss into a pot big enough to keep it from tipping over. The orchid has grown a few new leaves and new blooms after a few months, so it seems to be working. It's the principle of the advice that was important, not necessarily exactly following a specific action.

When the light really went on for me I think was when I read the 'pot of...' analogy. I won't explain it as well but imagine you have a jar of pea pebbles and pour water in it. It's going to run through immediately and the pebbles will dry very quickly, within minutes, because they don't fit together like puzzle pieces and there are fairly large pockets of air between them. Now imagine pouring water into a pot of sand. It will stay moist much longer to dry because air is not circulating around the much smaller particles much, if at all. Now imagine watering a pot of just clay. The water can hardly pass through and may take minutes or hours for the excess to drip out, they may stay moist for a very long time, maybe weeks if it's not hot & the sun doesn't shine right on it.

Whatever you're putting in pots, if it's more like the clay than the pebbles, roots will have less oxygen. Without the air/oxygen, the roots can't function, can't stay alive, and then can't deliver moisture to foliage. It's the particle size of the "ingredients" that determines whether or not it *can* rot roots.

True. That's why I use orchid bark and perlite. Makes a nice, well draining mix that doesn't require daily watering and stays light.

Jane

Hmm interesting. So the "all peat" mixes, done incorrectly with too much peat and not enough "pebbles"...... are as bad as soil mixtures (done correctly) in that they hold water like a sponge. ok I knew this about soil ovbiously, but thought peat couldnt cause rot. Okay, so if I were to simply add fine grade tree bark and sand or vermiculite, maybe SOME peat, I would have a pretty well rounded soil based mixture. Then it would be up to the location and amount of light. We got some in over the years, and the ones in soil/sand/fir bark always looked cool to me and they didn't dry out so fast as to leaf loss. Which anyone whos owned a chinadoll knows they loose their glossy appearance one they get to the point of full wilt. Its a very fine line with these tropical trees.

I would not use vermiculite, only perlite. Home Depot carries bags of perlite. Always rinse before using and don't breathe the dust. I always work with it after rinsing through a strainer. You can buy small orchid bark from any orchid dealer on line. You can also buy large, course perlite from the same dealers. For you plants, seedlings, small is fine.

jane

Thankyou for the ideas. I will definitely use them. I just like the looks of a dark rich soil, amended with sand and fine grade tree bark. Over the course of the last 15ish years ive seen many different china dolls come in. And they always look a little bit different. I pay close attention to the soil and also how much, or little they have been sprayed with B-9. Its very cool to see how many different ways these plants can turn out and how many different ways they can be grown, from pure peat/bark to soil based dark soil, and from heavy shadecloth 73% or more to full sun. I use to work at Kieth St. germain's dracena farm down in homestead, and he did not even spray them with B-9 until I talked him into it. Then he started growing them in full sun, or under his 63% shade. They are really cool to watch grow into an 8" pot when they are all lined up in rows and smelly and starting to first put on those dark green leaves. Having experienced first hand all the different ways, and having grown them from seed previously, I look forward to growing them again.

Ill probably use a topsoil amended with some large grain sand (pool filter?) I know I should use perlite but im kinda stuck on this sand thing. lol Probably soil + a little peat + sand+pine bark

Good luck to you.

I like your thinking. Just don't give up. Keep trying things which you feel comfortable with. Plants can surprise you. I could write a book about plants which did amazing things when they should have died. One never knows!

Jane

Mat,

it seems you care more about how the soil looks to you than how it actually affects your plants.

The addition of pine bark does nothing unless it takes up at least 70% or more of the mix.

I wouldn't use top soil or sand.

...soil + a little peat + sand (+ pine bark) will likely = dead plants because these things are all small particles. The spaces between the larger particles of bark will be completely filled & airless, rendering the bark a moot & ineffective addition. There's no reason to mix substances consisting of small particles, it won't improve anything. Use only substances with only larger particles.

Lol dave, your right. I have seen plants potted in soil based mixtures with what appeared to be sand and fine grade bark. I would like to use this, maybe not topsoil but at least potting soil. A ton of tree bark and a ton of large grained sand would loosen the soil, especially if ammended with peat, correct? Tiffany, im open to suggestion on a soil based mixture, but you never answered me.

Ornamental trees, ficus, radermachera, norfolk island pine, bonsai, all seem to come in a well draining SOIL based mixture, this is what i would like to use. Someone please tell me the recipe.

Gaining an understanding of the concept this link takes you to will change the way you look at media for growing in containers. My most productive soil is so far from what you're thinking and describing you'll be shocked when you look at the picture. The link will leave you with an understanding of why it's so productive.

Like this:

Hmm now I am brainstorming...... swaying back to the 5 1 1 mix. Would it be possible to use this same philosophy but substitute regular potting/garden soil instead of peat? Even if not I am considering the fact that for the next forseeable future, I will be living in apartments, and probably growing china doll plants into 4" or 6" containers. Under floruesent lights and along the window as well. Dont even see the point of getting too many things going at once now since the house I was gonna rent with a friend of the wifes backfired, and we'll likely be stuck in apartments the next few years at least. Im just gonna try and get one that has sunny windows. I have daminozide, and I can get radermachera sinica seeds for $3 per thousand. I just went and bought a 48 cell pack liner from the nursery for 2 bucks, keeping cost at a minimum, the strip lights are only 10 dollars at Walmart. If I can ever get ahold of eric and actually get the seeds, I could do a "winter" crop. Hmm 6" pots would be to big, probably have to grow them into 4" like I did years ago. Need to get some better fertilizer as mine is years old and has gotten wet.

Ive thought about a few things, and why the soil on the plants we get in from florida always looks so loose and rich at the same time.

1. They are very carefully kept "evenly" moist so that they dont dry out or dont rot in shipping.

2. They are on a semi for 3 days straight, that HAS to loosen up soil

3. If im not gonna have to grow indoors under lights, its gonna have to be a free draining mix.

I meant if they are gonna be grown indoors under lights.

Peat and peat based potting media have always been interchangeable as fractions of the 5:1:1 mix.

Al

Yes Mat, I always use miracle gro potting mix as my peat part of the 5:1:1 mix. However, I wouldn't use garden soil. I also wouldn't use any sand.

edit, oops, Al just said that. Haha

Agree with Dave. Don't use garden soil.

Jane

I'll show you guys what im talking about. Ill start some Radermachera seeds this late witner/early spring. Next May ill stick some plugs from the liner into an 8" (2 gallon) pot with topsoil, grit, and treebark, and grow them sucessfully all the way into the pot by the end of summer. You'll see my point then i guess. Ive seen it done. They are trees, it can be done. The sun is the diffrence maker. I agree it isn't feasable for the normal person to do, or in the house at all, but just for fun, for me being advanced at growing these housplants......it would be a fun experiement. Wish me luck.