Beginner Gardening: Good Growing Practices - an Overview for Beginners, 1 by tapla

tapla wrote:
B - I'm glad for you that you have gained a clearer understanding of the science re PWTs and hopefully how to implement the concept so it works FOR you and your plants. This link

http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/1073399/

will explain it in greater detail, if you have an interest. You're being much too hard on yourself by calling yourself lazy, which I'm sure is not the case. Even if you fully understood the concept and chose an extended interval between waterings at the expense of plant vitality, no one should suggest you're lazy. We all order our priorities differently, and none of us knows what's best for you. We can usually speak with a fair degree of certainty about what might be best for the plant, but not the grower.

The symptoms of over-watering are almost exactly the same as under-watering. This is because over-watering also makes it more difficult for the plant to move water to its distal parts, so plants can actually be dying of thirst in a sea of plenty when they are over-watered. Over-watering also makes it more difficult for the plant to take up certain elements under water-logged conditions, so nutritional deficiencies can also be a problem in water-logged soils, even when the supply of nutrients is entirely adequate.

Test your soil by pushing a wood dowel or bamboo skewer deep into your pots. If they come out wet, cool on your inner wrist, or dirty looking, withhold water until the skewer comes out clean - then water THOROUGHLY. If you CAN'T water thoroughly w/o risking root issues, maybe a closer look at your soil's composition is in order.

Foliar feeding is used primarily in agriculture when a crop is growing so fast it cannot get all the nutrition it needs via the primary pathway. Nutrient applications are usually limited to one or two nutrients shown to be deficient by tissue sampling. If you DO see any notable improvement after foliar feeding, it's probably a good indicator there is something wrong with your primary supplementation program. Also, some plants are much better able to absorb nutrients applied to foliage than others - so it's possible in many cases that your efforts might go for naught. You can only gain by foliar feeding if the nutrients you are supplying are indeed deficient in the plant. If there is no deficiency of what you are supplying, there is NO potential for gain - it can only limit.

I don't know what all you have available to you for making soils, but I would suggest that you try something based on larger particles than the possibilities on your list. The two soils I use are shown below.

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Karen - did you review the sketch I posted just above? It shows how tipping the pot or wicking can help eliminate a LOT of excess water. How large is your cactus?

Al