Quick update- I have spent all day/night (literally for the past 13 hrs and it is now almost 1am) fretting over the possible death of my guys; reading and reading and becoming more and more confused between the various websites' info. One thing that has not confused me is the confidence everyone on THIS site has in Al's GM [Al, how r u not mass producing this already?! ;-) ] The current status of my guys are that they r not sitting in water but have received 2 very hot and steamy treatments in my bathroom over the course of the night- i am hoping this will mAke due by supplying SOME semblance of water w/o drowning them.... one website I read mentioned letting the roots dry out??? Again- lil Miss Confused over here :-/ All is (hopefully) not lost bc thru my trusty google search and Turface's website, I've located a dealer who is less than 5 miles from me! :-D I'm emailing the unsuspecting manager tomorrow and hopefully will be able to move forward w/ what seems to be one of the hardest of the materials to find. *fingers crossed* I will admit that altho I have pics, I am simply too embarrassed to post them :( and also have further confused myself by reading mentions of the 5:1:1 mix but out of pure exhaustion have not fully read up on-yet. It sounds like Al's GM works for all of my guys including all of the succulents I have managed to NOT kill (yaaaay me!). From the fellow forum members' posts, sounds like I can find the proper bark and granite supplies at my local Home Depot. Al - I know you are out there somewhere and I thank you for sharing this knowledge with the rest of us newbies!!! Will post again RE: the process!

Sorry Josh. I didn't phrase my question correctly in the first post which is why I added this. "Will they grow upwards after being put in new pots at this late stage or will they just remain at the same height?" oregonwoodsmoke - I have been checking the soil to make sure they need the water. We were experiencing a period of extremely hot and sunny days that were drying them out very quickly so they were getting two small portions of water a day. The weather has been more dreary the last couple of days so they're currently getting a break. I thought I had read that a 7 inch pot would be okay for the jalapeno and cayenne peppers. They seem to be doing quite well so far anyway. I have one of the bell peppers in a 5 liter pot now so I'm waiting to see if this makes a difference before I move the others.

That looks like a large terracotta pot. It might have a drainage hole. However, it looks too big and I can't see the kind of soil in it. I'm guessing that isn't a pot full of quartz sand. However, if it is a large pot full of quartz sand then I can see how that might be difficult to correctly water to keep the plants healthy. The two spiky plants in the back look like Hoodia. They are Asclepiads rather than Cacti. They look unbothered about anything. The front left plant might be a dark-leaf Aeonium. However, I'm not sure the stem should be that dark. The stem might be rotten. The center red ball cactus was grafted on to a root stock and the root stock died. Unfortunately the red ball cactus can't be saved without grafting it on to another root stock. The dead root stock is a common problem with that plant. I agree the P. afra in the back right and Echeveria in the front right look like they can be saved. You might have to cut the long stem off the Echeveria and reroot the top. If those were mine I'd prefer to plant each one in separate smaller pots. Group plantings in a pot bought at a store often don't work long term. In this case the plants might look like they need to be watered but have been watered too much, or been moist too long, and lost the healthy functioning of their roots. Without healthy roots plants can look like they need water even when the soil is moist. Some people asked if the dish was purchased "as is". I'm guessing they meant to ask if it was purchased as a group of plants in one pot rather than ask if it was sold marked as is meaning no guarantee the plants were healthy. If they were sold with no guarantee then I wouldn't bother trying to return them. Sometimes I buy plants like that.

Thank you! I will do that asap. It was on the windowsill of my laundry room most of the time but we had our furnace go out in February and it took them a couple of weeks to get the replacement in so I put it in the living room overnight because the laundry room was getting so cold. And I only gave it a few mls of water a week aside from spritzing it down daily with the water bottle--thank you so much for that tip!