When it comes to root health, pots with gas permeable walls carry the day. Terra cotta clay pots are better than plastic or vitrified clay pots and fabric pots are better than terra cotta clay. The reason is greater gas exchange through container walls and the fact that an increase in gas exchange comes with an increase in evaporative water loss, which can be a lifesaver when using water retentive media. There will still be a PWT in these pots, and for any given medium it will the same ht in a pot with rigid sides as in the fabric or air pots at container capacity. Container capacity is a measure of how much water the grow medium in a pot or container holds at the moment it has stopped draining after having been watered to the point of complete saturation. The ht of the PWT and how long it affects root function is usually key/critical in determining what opportunity a plant will have to realize as much of its genetic potential as possible (within the limiting effects of other cultural influences). The factor that most affects the ht of a PWT is the size of the particles from which the medium is made. So, reducing the duration of PWTs limitations increases the opportunity for plants to realize a greater measure of their genetic potential. But wait! There's a more important consideration. If you place your fabric containers directly on the ground/soil, from the perspective of hydrology it changes the fabric container to a raised bed; this, because water is free to move through the fabric between the grow medium and the earth, with the earth acting as a giant wick. This means, because of the increase in the force of adhesion in the mineral soil beneath the pot (due to a mineral soils much larger o/a surface area on a per volume basis), water in the soil will be pulled downward with enough source to overcome the capillarity holding it perched in the container. As long as you don't place the fabric container on coarse sand, peastone, or other large particles, the earth will likely pull all perched water from most media one is likely to use in a container. I've mentioned this and the fact that healing in your pots situating them directly on top of soil turns them into raised beds. the only caveat being it's essential that there is a 'soil bridge' so there is continuity of the soil column between the soil (earth) and the grow medium in the container, through the drain hole(s), so water doesn't have to jump an air gap to exit the container. This applies more to pots with rigid walls and is not a factor when discussing fabric containers. Al

er - I didnt say that the USDA/NAIS makes no mention of GPS. But heres what the divine Miss MZ has to say ------ The "National Animal Identification System" - A Threat to Personal Privacy and to the Viability of Small Farms By Mary Zanoni February 15, 2006 The NAIS would require two types of mandatory registration. First, premises registration would require every person who owns even one horse, cow, pig, chicken, sheep, pigeon, or virtually any livestock animal, to register their home, including owner's name, address, and telephone number, and keyed to Global Positioning System coordinates (for satellite-assisted surveillance of homes and farms), in a federal database under a 7-digit "premises ID number." (Standards, pages 3-4, 10-12; Plan, page 5.) ------ "keyed to Global Positioning System coordinates (for satellite-assisted surveillance of homes and farms)"? What a carefully-crafted sentence fragment. Can you say obfuscation? Translated (from lawyerese I suppose) to plain English: Mr NAIS inspector guy (the surveilleur) is going to use a GPS receiver (satellite assistance) to find your (the surveillee) driveway, just like Mr UPS delivery guy does. Now why is that so scary? Somebody enlighten me, please.

Thanks, Kim, for starting a new thread! I promise to not blind people on the new one! LOL I included a link below to the new thread. I sure hope you're doing better, Kim... You're still very much in my thoughts and prayers. Dorothy, I'll shoot you an email on the fonts later after I finish the file for the WOW swap. In short, for bigger font, use everything between the quotes, but replace the two quote symbols with a ""font size=4>Type whatever you want in here between the HTML codes."/font> If this isn't clear, I'll send more later by email.... I hope I don't forget... If I do, just email me! LOL Blessings, Angela

Well, I'm still not sure exactly what's going on, but here's the newest. Per my builder, the price from Carpet Express is pretty comparable to what the flooring store buys the carpet for. The flooring store is now in a fight with Mohawk as to why the price over the internet could be so low. He is willing to find a local installer for me who he estimates will charge about $3300 to install, making the total price ~$8000. He is trying to get the flooring store to give it to me for $9200 installed, as he thinks that is a fair price. Of course, he recommends the latter. The other option is Lowes which would be about $8000 as well. He says their installers are crap. Then he gave me a long lecture about how "in the quality of house you're building, that much money to ensure a better product blah blah blah warrantee etc. etc., carpet is only as good as the installation blah blah" I do feel like he thinks I can just toss money around since we are building a nice house, and we have agreed to some expensive upgrades lately (finishing the basement).