If you want to learn more about phals specifically, I recommend reading the culture notes offered at several phal vendors, namely Big Leaf Orchids, Bedford Orchids, and Robert Beddard Nurseries. Lots to glean from them. Each one has a slightly different emphasis, so together you get a pretty good picture of phal culture. There is also an excellent small book by Bob Gordon, called *The Culture of the Phalaenopsis*. The Gordon book is available used thru Amazon. I think it was about $15 or less used. High quality paperback with spiral binding. For a good overall discussion of the importance of "balancing factors", I recommend the notes at the url below. Light, warmth, water, fertilizer and air do all have to be "in balance", and this often isn't discussed. So these notes are a good addendum to the others. For learning about other kinds of orchids, the books recommended by previous posters would be excellent. Taylor's Guide to Orchids has a section on general culture, and a page or two of pictures and notes on each species for an small overview of the orchid world. There is also a series of Orchid Digest issues each devoted to a different orchid type. These are wonderful, about $3 each as I recall. Pictures are wonderful, and there's culture information as well. The Canadian Orchid Congress also has a really good series of culture notes for all different kinds of orchids. Worth reading. Here is a link that might be useful: need to balance cultural factors

Thanks, Michael. I have remembered that you've mentioned that before for sandy soils and have been thinking about adding it into those beds. I think I read that someone has been using "nitrogen-enriched" kitty litter with good success. Do you know a reason why that's not a good idea? It seems like it would be a source of cheap nitrogen, anyway. Rosefolly, as I've looked at the nutrient availability chart related to pH there's something else that happens with boron at high pH. I think I understand that at low pH plants uptake too much boron but at high pH boron become inaccessible so you get a deficiency. But I don't quite understand because at pH 9 and above it looks like it uptakes well again. Here's a link to one of those pH nutrient-availability charts. Thanks for the birthday wishes! Here is a link that might be useful: pH nutrient chart This post was edited by harborrose on Thu, Sep 19, 13 at 20:34

I frequently borrow gardening books and magazines from our local library. I also have about a kazillion websites bookmarked for pretty pics and I especially like some from the UK, even tho their climate is milder than mine, because I like cottage style gardens. One site with North American gardens is www.houzz.com - one can view landscaping from various areas of NA, also porches, etc. There are a lot of good gardening blogs also - one of my favs is a GW poster - her site is http://definingyourhome.blogspot.com/ - again a warmer zone but still lots of nice eye candy and info. Pretty pics from the Netherlands here: http://www.korfhoeve.nl/ - just click on fotogalerie - no need to speak the language, the pics say it all! Magazines such as http://www.homesandgardens.com/gardens/ from the UK have lots of garden ideas. Many other magazines also have garden pics online. I'm in a bit of a hurry right now so am just grabbing links as I find them in my bookmarks. http://yardshare.com/ has quite a few 'real' gardens, some are inspirational. And sometimes I even like looking at all the plants at http://www.richters.com/ for inspiration. My apologies for not posting clickable links, I must learn how to do that! :-)

Great post. I tried this method this past weekend. Relative to the lawn mower method of chopping up large pine bark chunks, I found this method to be cleaner (it doesn't shoot pine chunks out the sides like a mower will), a bit slower than the mower, and produced a lot more fine particles. I have a high speed Toro leaf blower/mulcher with a metal impeller. A large percentage of the particles coming out felt like fine compost, and a large number of chunks went through looking unscathed, so I didn't get the mix of particle sizes that I was hoping for. I suppose if I had a 1/8" screen, I could have sifted out some of the fine stuff. As it was, I got about 3 gallons of material, and made a side batch of 5-1-1 to try with some peppers, but I didn't mix it in with the rest of my 5-1-1.