You're welcome, Mike. I'm not sure what to say (turning red in the face as I read your post), except thank you for the testimony. I'm so glad your plants are doing better. You seem to have gotten over the fear that your plants would dry out as soon as you turned your back. ;o) That's a good thing. And you're so smooth - having women coming over so you can show them how to make soil? ..... right! ;o) I'll just close by saying again that I'm very glad you found a mix you can work with & that your plants seem to be doing better. Good luck & thanks again. Al

Finally I got all the ingredients for the gritty mix, to my surprise, the hardest to find is the pine bark fine(I still did not find it). I am using the Repti Bark for now (a little pricy -$19.99 for a 24 quart bag). But do not want to wait any more, will use Repti Bark for now whereas keep looking for I Pine bark fines. Well, I have to say the particle size of Turface and Gran-I-Grit is smaller than I thought although I saw so many pictures on GW. I still do not have Foliage Pro 9-3-6, But I got Osmocote Outdoor & Indoor plant food. The ratio is 19-6-12 ( close to 9-3-6), is that ok for now (Will order Foliage Pro from internet later. I got some Jade Plant, Christmas Cactus, Spider Plant and Some NOID succulents cuttings before I found all the ingredients. I put them in the Miracle Grow Potting Mix and they rooted already. But like most people find out already, the bagged potting mix is so hard to water when it drys - the water just stay on the top of the soil. I was repotting them (except the spider plant) into the new gritty mix this afternoon. I did not even screen the Turface and Gran-I-Grit as I have not gotten the hardware cloth to make the filter yet. But I did shake the bag before I opened the Turface to hope the smaller particles will fall to the bottom. This is how it looks after I mix the three ingredients. Follow the tradition, a dime in the center Then put the mix and Osmocote into a soaked pot, water it well until water come out from the drainage hole. Soak the cutting that grown in the bagged potting mix, Remove most of the soil from the root - but not all - intimated by afraid broke the root. Put the plant into the gritty mix. It is actually hard to make a proper hole to put the roots in - the gritty mix is heavy so they keep falling into the hole you make for the roots. Final results: How do they look? Am I doing it right. I also have some Spider plant rooted, not sure is gritty mix good for them too. I had the impression that gritty mix is very good for woody plant, but Spider plant is somewhat herb? Should I put them in 5:1:1 mix. (I do not think I will make 5:1:1 mix though, since pine bark fines are not available and Repti bark is pricy). Also, Does anybody know the ID for the two plants on the last picture (the one that not Christmas Cactus or Jade Plant) And if anybody knows where to find pine bark fines in new England area, please let me know. Thanks.

Here in East AL we had a WONDERFUL weekend compared to what it's been. It rained off an on all night Saturday then stayed damp, cloudy and sprinkled off and on the next day. Sunday night was even better with several big bands of wet weather that passed through during the night. I don't have a rain gauge so I'm not sure what our totals were but it didn't disappoint here. It's trying to drizzle again so we may get more tonight even though the chances of rain dropped to 20% or lower for the next week. I swear they can't predict diddly though. Those percentages on weather.com might drop from 70% to 20% or reverse and go from 20% to 70% within just a couple of hours. I don't even know why I bother checking them so often anymore. Up-to-date local forcasting my @$$. Hope everyone had a good holiday break. Danielle

Marilyn, The closest river is 11 miles away and several hundred feet lower in elevation, so not to worry about the rivers. Hope all my Texas friends are safe and out of harms way. My younger son lives in Spring, just north of Houston. Haven't heard a peep out of hims in weeks. Spring has several swampy areas. I bet they are wading. Normally, the snakes there are just awful. Can't go out in the back yard in summer for all the copperheads, and talk about mosquitoes! Can't imaging how it must be right now with all this rain. Jeez! Bet the Geckos are loving it though. :) BTW, the Four O'Clocks are doing fabulously. I expect them to start blooming soon. We've had two whole days of sunshine and I was able to mow and trim the grass. Yippee! All my flowers and tomatoes are so happy! But, as I write this, huge thunderheads, probably the ones you mentioned Marilyn, are boiling and rolling in and I think I am beginning to hear some far off rumbling. Boo Hiss! ~ Annie