Thanks for the kind words, B&C. In Mississippi, Memorial day would be a good target date for repotting the fig. Hibiscus need an annual repot. Do that toward the end of March, before it starts growing in earnest. Apple and most deciduous trees should be repotted just before or at the onset of spring budswell. Cactus - ask the cactus experts at the cacti/succulents forum. Desert rose - in Mississippi - June Umbrella plant - June There are ways to mechanically limit the amount of perched water a planting will hold, even if you're using a very water-retentive medium. Eliminating all or most of the perched water allows the grower to use media that would otherwise be or border on the edge of unusable. This outlines ways to cope with heavy (water-retentive) media Another effective way of dealing with media that hold too much water is through the use of ballast. You can read more about that technique here: Ballast ..... For now, checking your planting's moisture level regularly with a 'tell' will make a difference in your plant's appearance and level of vitality. Here's something I wrote about that: Over-watering saps vitality and is one of the most common plant assassins, so learning to avoid it is worth the small effort. Plants make and store their own energy source – photosynthate - (sugar/glucose). Functioning roots need energy to drive their metabolic processes, and in order to get it, they use oxygen to burn (oxidize) their food. From this, we can see that terrestrial plants need air (oxygen) in the soil to drive root function. Many off-the-shelf soils hold too much water and not enough air to support good root health, which is a prerequisite to a healthy plant. Watering in small sips leads to a build-up of dissolved solids (salts) in the soil, which limits a plant's ability to absorb water – so watering in sips simply moves us to the other horn of a dilemma. It creates another problem that requires resolution. Better, would be to simply adopt a soil that drains well enough to allow watering to beyond the saturation point, so we're flushing the soil of accumulating dissolved solids whenever we water; this, w/o the plant being forced to pay a tax in the form of reduced vitality, due to prolong periods of soil saturation. Sometimes, though, that's not a course we can immediately steer, which makes controlling how often we water a very important factor. In many cases, we can judge whether or not a planting needs watering by hefting the pot. This is especially true if the pot is made from light material, like plastic, but doesn't work (as) well when the pot is made from heavier material, like clay, or when the size/weight of the pot precludes grabbing it with one hand to judge its weight and gauge the need for water. Fingers stuck an inch or two into the soil work ok for shallow pots, but not for deep pots. Deep pots might have 3 or more inches of soil that feels totally dry, while the lower several inches of the soil is 100% saturated. Obviously, the lack of oxygen in the root zone situation can wreak havoc with root health and cause the loss of a very notable measure of your plant's potential. Inexpensive watering meters don't even measure moisture levels, they measure electrical conductivity. Clean the tip and insert it into a cup of distilled water and witness the fact it reads 'DRY'. One of the most reliable methods of checking a planting's need for water is using a 'tell'. You can use a bamboo skewer in a pinch, but a wooden dowel rod of about 5/16” (75-85mm) would work better. They usually come 48” (120cm) long and can usually be cut in half and serve as a pair. Sharpen all 4 ends in a pencil sharpener and slightly blunt the tip so it's about the diameter of the head on a straight pin. Push the wooden tell deep into the soil. Don't worry, it won't harm the root system. If the plant is quite root-bound, you might need to try several places until you find one where you can push it all the way to the pot's bottom. Leave it a few seconds, then withdraw it and inspect the tip for moisture. For most plantings, withhold water until the tell comes out dry or nearly so. If you see signs of wilting, adjust the interval between waterings so drought stress isn't a recurring issue. Al

joel_bc-- Here's the update: No blight or sign of disease this year even after the drizzly rain & mist from the end of August as I wrote about before. -No plastic hoop or covering on tomatoes. Removed some of the leaves from indeterminate types in cages to increase air flow, but fruits are still covered by foliage. I was concerned about the leaves staying too wet with morning dew & the pruning seems to have worked. -Growing tomatoes on the dry side & only turning on soaker hoses when the droopy leaves don't recover in cool of evening. Usually, then turn on for 3 hours that evening or next morning. I'm guessing I've done this around 6 times, so far this summer including this past week Sept. 7. -Allowed some of the potatoes that sprouted up to continue to grow. These are within 3' of some of the tomato plants. -The moved potatoes were harvested last week. A small crop about 5# or so of mostly small new potatoes, but I didn't water them more than a few times. Slugs devoured quite a bit of them, so when plants were yellowed & brown I dug them. Ripening report: Glacier has 3 almost ready. Waiting until 1st one is almost overripe as suggested by Ciscoe Morris during a garden talk a few years ago at Windmill Gardens in Sumner, WA. A few other cherry types have orange tomatoes. Most are still flowering & green. On Labor Day weekend in recent years I've stopped the growth by pinching tips & removing the blooms & very small fruits to encourage the plant to put energy into ripening existing fruit. This year I chose to leave them be since our season is so late with the dry, summer heat here now in Sept.

Alternating products will dramatically reduce the chances of strains of the organisms developing resistance. Can you say "Fungal MRSA" boys and girls? **** John, I spoke to that in my post just above yours, but MRSA? Whew, I dunno about that. LOL (Its very simple. If you are going to spray fungicides, it is completely irresponsible not to use at least two different products. If you are not going to do this, then don't spray anything at all.) I don't think I can agree with your comment about not spraying at all unless two alternating products are used. Yes, it's preferable to use two, as I also wrote above and as did mulio, but I don't think that using just one is all that bad if that's allthat someone has available to them. Through this Late BLight crisis we have here in the NE I can tell you that many normal sources for Daconil, copper, mancozeb, maneb, etc., are out of stock. New shipments of some are supposed to be arriving, per the remarks of others who have posted that online and it was also true where I live, but my local Agway was able to get what I wanted, but I had to wait quite a bit. Given a choice for those of us here in the NE who are in the target area for Late Blight right now, if only ONE product is available to someone I'd try and get Daconil. Late Blight is lethal, so I suggest getting that Daconil and using it. Just over the weekend I saw folks an hour to my south who posted pictures of their LB plants and since many local folks here where I live don't even know about the current LB problem I have no idea what spores might be wafting over my propert right now. Sigh. Carolyn,hoping that Freda gets here today to spray my plants for me b'c we're behind on th\je spray schedule.

Since I am new to Al's gritty mix, I got to start fresh looking for sifting solutions for the Turface. I thought I would share what I found. It may be useful to others, or it may be me doing it wrong and you can let me know. I ordered these screens off of Etsy, https://www.etsy.com/listing/1019347355/18-classifier-sifting-pan-stainless?ref=hp_rv-4 for about $28 each. I got the 1/8 and 1/12 sifter. They stack and are advertised to fit in a 5-gallon bucket. I don't have that but it fit in one of the larger planters I have. It is fairly easy to rock the bucket/sifters and the Turface grades pretty quickly. This is the material sizes you get: Complete dropthrough fines Caught by 1/12 screen Caught by 1/8 screen Because a significant amount falls through as fines, I decided I would use the two larger sizes and just sift with the 1/12 screen to separate the fines. This leaves a mix that looks like this: Hopefully this is not too great a variation in size and I hope you let me know. But if I sift to only use the largest size, then a significant amount of a 50lb bag of Turface is not usable. Here is the breakdown of the amounts I got. For the amount I sifted to both screens, I got a huge amount of fines (on the left). Two pots of the 1/12 sift, and only one pot of the larger 1/8 sift. That is not much useable material unless I accept everything but the fines. I am planning to use the fines in the drainage for another rain garden I am planning as part of an absorbent filter along with maybe a thick layer of peat moss. My theory is the layering of Turface with peat will help excess rain filter more efficiently into the ground. We have pretty heavy clay soil in our area.