There you are! I left a post on the "Container Soils" thread over at the container forum, hoping that you'd see it. Basically, it said I couldn't reply to your email message because of how you have your user page settings configured. Along with your email came a message saying (PLEASE NOTE: The member responding to your post has chosen not to reveal his or her email address. Therefore, you cannot reply to this message via email.), which is why I didn't reply.

A-D) yes
E) It sounds like you should only need the insect screen if all but the Turface are prescreened.
F) If your containers don't have holes, they only need 1 at the lowest point in the bottom or on the side where the bottom and side wall meet. For ceramic and glass, a 1/2 or 7/16" diamond core drill is better. Put a little water in the bottom of the bowl as a coolant as you drill. It will make the drill last much longer.
G) The white fiber painter's masks work well. I work outdoors on a breezy day with the wind at my back & don't bother with a mask, but I don't have a lot of problem with swirling winds where I live.
H) I use a mortar mixing tub. The ends are tapered and the sides not too deep. If you have a wheel barrow, that will work well. Don't trey to mix too much at a time - maybe about a gallon of each ingredient. Moisten it before you mix to keep dust down.
I) Yes - something so the effluent hasn't a pathway back into the soil. The two should be completely divorced from each other. What you decide on is up to you.
J) Again - of your choosing.

If you're not in too big of a rush, I'd order the FP 9-3-6 and wait for it to come before I started fertilizing. Your plants will colonize the soil with roots a little faster if you don't fertilize immediately after repotting, and if any of your plants are looking a little rough, I'd wait until closer to summer to do the repotting.

You did a lot of homework! Thanks for the kind words.

Al

TAPLA! Thank you so much for the response in the 11th hour, before my shopping extravaganza!

I just checked my account, and it reads:

"Show my email address to: Members
* Allow other users to send you email from your profile page or if you wish to receive message reply notifications."

...but maybe I had changed that setting too soon before my first posting to you, so the system hadn't caught up in a few hours...

OK, in regards to (F) and (G), I can see my mistake. I added two more in, but messed up the list order, so there are double-F and double-G. The one that I'd most like help with is the first (F):

F. An alternative to mix in so I can maybe water less often: Pea lava? Coarse horticultural perlite? Pumice? Horticultural charcoal?
Hope to get a reply by lunchtime. If not, I'm still grateful. Thanks again for the reply!

Mary

Don't know about why the settings were so. Send yourself a test message & see if you can reply to it to ck it out.

Was busy all day at work, so no time to reply. You can vary the water retention of the gritty mix by increasing the amount of screened Turface that goes into the soil and decreasing the amount of grit commensurately, so instead of a 1:1:1 (same as a 3:3:3 mix) mix of Bark:Turface:grit, use a 3:4:2 mix of bark:Turface:grit. It doesn't make sense to go through all the work and screening and then sacrifice the benefits the soil offers on the altar of increased water retention when you can retain them w/o using fine particles that clog air pores and reintroduce the PWT you're striving to eliminate.

You really shouldn't need wicks to help drain a well made gritty mix because the particle size distribution is too large to support a significant amount of perched water. There are also some tricks you can use to encourage more water to leave the pot than will exit under the influence of gravity alone.

How'd you fare today?

Al

Thanks for asking! As my MN family would say, "Uff da". I am so sore from shoveling and then lugging my own ingredients. It took 7.5 hours, and four stores. My fingertips still hurt from picking up those big bags by the corners, and I only got them just inside my apartment building. I have yet to lug them all the way into my basement storage. But ooh boy, I'm proud of myself! I got lots of bark, granite, and Turface MVP. I also got some pea lava to try out, three planters and three screens, a tarp, a diamond core drill bit and a three pack of regular ol' dust masks.

In other news, over the past few months, I have bought four 6" plants and put them into 511 mix. Two rosemary, then two lavender. Each of them looked happy and then wilted and dried from the ground up. Transplant shock is my best guess. I'll make another post because this is a different topic, but in case you don't see it, I thought I'd ask you, Al. I'm at a loss. What are the specific steps that you take to transfer the little guy from store to new planter? Am I killing them by getting rid of the old soil too aggressively or is it the lime/fertilizer?

Mary

;-) It's your thread. No one's going to get on you for straying off topic.

Rosemary and lavender want to be repotted in the spring, and neither are particularly finicky when it comes to repotting. I have several old rosemary (12-15 yrs) that want to grow up to be bonsai, and I find them to be easy to repot. I wonder what's happening for you?

Can you provide a picture of the soil & a description of what's in it & how you made it? Did you bare root the plants? keep the roots constantly moist during the repot? add fertilizer to the soil? use something other than dolomitic lime?

I'm very irreverent when it comes to repotting young plants. I normally rip the bottom half of the roots off with my hands, then spread the roots out by working my fingers up into the center of the root mass & then outward, removing most of the original soil. I pot them in danp 5:1:1 and water well, then put them in the shade for a day or 2.

Did you bring your plants inside or keep them there after the repot? If so, were you using central heat or air at the time?

I can't think of any other questions, but that should keep you busy for a few.

Al

heroic effort!

Tapla, thank you for trying to help me figure this out. Each of the four little plants were about 6 inches when I bought them and I wonder if they were just too delicate to survive repotting⦠The first one was Ellwoodii, then a rosemary, then two lavender plants in a row - all died a fast decline, as fast as when cut flowers take that final nosedive. Maybe a couple of days and then there was no saving them.

I removed most of the original soil from each of them using my fingers and a chopstick. Maybe I didn't keep the roots moist enough⦠but I immediately put them in the sink and poured a bunch of water through until it stopped draining. Then I let them sit away from sun on the coffee table for a couple of days. I may have turned on the steam radiators or used the gas oven, but the apartment temperature tends to stay in the 60-75 degree range all year. Not too hot, not too cold, but fairly dry. It's been a warm winter here in San Francisco, with spring-like temps outside, about 55-75 degrees since January, actually.

My plants can't go outside, so I keep them in my bay windows. (I don't have access to a yard or any outdoor space for plants to live, unless you count the back stairwell in the middle of my building's lightwell.)

~ Mary

PS - I'm still sore, so I'm lugging those bags of ingredients through my building a few at a time every day. Next time, I'm hiring a beefy teenager to do the lifting!

Thank you, petrushka, for the encouragement. This does feel like heroic effort!

May we all make our plants happy!

Mary

The fourth plant has died. Still trying to figure out the reason...

My bay windows are facing south, so plants get some sun.

And I left no pudding attached to roots, which worries me that I manhandled the roots to death (as gently as I could).

So, I have yet to draw a conclusion... Is my 511 mix somehow burning the plants with too much total dissolved solids?

Is it too much of a gamble to buy 6" plants because they might likely go into shock?

These four dead plants came from: Ace hardware, florist, Trader Joes. Do I have to only buy from nurseries?

Thank you for your help!

Mary

Maryartist, I keep my Ellwoodii in full sun. When I kept it in the darker room for 2-3 days, it started dying, but I saved it. Also, I did not wash the roots when repotting. I kept them as they were, with all the soil plus added soil to fill the new, larger pot. I use Nature's Guide Garret Juice to make the soil mildly acidic.

I hope this helps and your cuties stop dying. Good luck!

mary,
neither rosemary nor lavender likes it indoors, as a general rule. unless you have a cool sunroom with southern exposure, rosemary won't make it. and lavender? wow, i wouldn't even think of trying it indoors. it's a strictly outdoor plant.
may be the xfer from reg soilless mix to gritty was too much of a shock?
why not try smth more suitable as a houseplant?

This post was edited by petrushka on Sun, Apr 6, 14 at 22:38

I did not know that Ellwoodii, rosemary and lavender do not like living indoors, so it's no wonder they died. Thank you.