It's my pleasure to share photos and information... I'm glad they were helpful. I, too, find a picture to be worth a thousand words... it really helps puts things like size, type, and exactly what the reader is trying to impart, into context. There's a lot to consider when deciding on the best path to a perfect medium... your climate, growing environment, the amount of time you can donate to care, type of plants, available products, cost... and the list goes on. At one time, I thought I was doing alright with regular old bagged potting soil... and for certain applications, it's not the worst thing... but for long term indoor use, it just doesn't make the grade. I found myself frantically searching for a solution to the fungal and rot problems I was experiencing on a rather large scale. Finding Al's articles was like finding a vein of pure gold in a mine! And once I had digested the knowledge contained within those articles, I knew exactly what my problems were and how to solve them. My quest for ingredients began. It took me a long time to locate the items I wanted, but my persistence paid off. I now have a medium that suits my exact needs. I'm very lucky in that the amounts I require are small, and that the bagged items I purchase are ready to use. I have yet to experiment with outdoor use, and until I can locate larger amounts of the necessary ingredients, I'll stick to using the medium for my indoor plant collection... which is now thriving, I might add. The one thing I will say is that the ideas behind this medium type are solid. The science is there. The proof is in the healthy plants I have, the live and fleshy roots, and the complete lack of rot and fungi problems. Even the fungus gnats have gone elsewhere. And I'm finding that this medium is not only ideal for my bulbs, it also works well for orchids, cacti, and even the regular old spider plant I recently rescued from its pot of collapsed dirt. Of course, a gardener must take into account quite a few variables when looking at mediums... but the end result we are all looking for is healthy plants, and that absolutely begins with the medium, at the roots.

You did a beautiful job on the ball, all the squares are so neat!! Great design &works well with base too! She'll watch over your garden for many years, I'm sure! TFS Jan

I could never get the page to load for me off that link. It would just churn and never load. I googled and found a link that would load. Reading it now. Here is a link that might be useful: 100 year hotbed

Yes, fermenting in the jar is considered a safe way to make kraut and is handy if you only want to make smaller batches. You are just using quart or even pint jars rather than a crock or 2 gallon jar. ;) But her statement of "without further processing" isn't quite accurate unless you just want it for fresh eating and not storage. Once it is fermented (avg. 3-4 weeks) it needs to be refrigerated and eaten OR processed for long term storage. Drain the brine and save it, taste, rinse if too salty, bring the brine back to a boil (you'll need to make some extra brine usually), into hot jars, cover with boiling brine, BWB 10 mins for pints, 15 mins. for quarts. Dave Here is a link that might be useful: NCHFP - Sauerkraut