Hey Josh, I have been been using Pro-Tekt with my Foliage Pro all winter and i can say that my plants have definately been happier than in the past... When i take my rain water and place it in my watering cans, i add the Pro Tekt first to all of the water and then stir it in. (1/4 tsp per gallon) Then i go back and add my Foliage Pro to the water. I keep it upstairs and let it warm to room temperature and then water. The combination of the two will definately help your plants and im so happy to have found my Pro Tekt. My Hydroponics dealer had to order it for me. I still can't find or he wont (says he cant..) order it for me. He looked it up and says its not available. Hmm? I still order my Foliage Pro from Ebay. They have free shipping anyway. Have fun with your Pro Tekt!!! Hope you are feeling better!!! Happy Spring AL!!! Take Care, Laura

"It looks like you switched to the Dyna grow 9-3-6 last year. Do you still use CRF in your soil mix if you are still using this fert?" Actually, I rarely use the CRFs at all. I like the near complete control the soluble fertilizers give me in containers. I'm pretty diligent about fertilizer applications, so I really don't need the CRFs to cover the 'in case I forget' base, or for any minor elements they might supply. I included them in the soil recipes to make it easier for others. As long as you're faithful to your nutrient supplementation program, you can easily do w.o them. If you think you'll be lax at times, I'd include them. 109 ppm alkalinity is nothing to be overly concerned about with fast container soils. It would be interesting to learn how the Ca and Mg levels are though. Alkalinity is related to pH because alkalinity (practically speaking and for our applications) determines your water's resistance to pH changes. If you have water 'A' at a pH of 9.0 with an alkalinity of 75 mg/L CaCO3, and water 'B', with a pH of 8.0 (a full point lower to begin with) and alkalinity of 300 mg/L CaCO3, it will take about 4 times as much 35% H2SO4 (sulfuric acid) to bring the water with the lower pH down to That aside - your water is better than mine, so I really doubt you'll have Fe/Mn issues if you're using either the 9-3-6 or MG. I will say though, that bark/peat soils have a potentially high Fe:Mn ratio, so applying Fe w/o Mn could easily create a deficiency of Mn. If I were in your shoes, I would do nothing until I actually saw evidence of an Fe deficiency. Then, I would acidify. Oh - the other likely cause of an Fe deficiency is too much P, which combines with the Fe to form an insoluble precipitate, so avoid the high P fertilizers - they are useless unless you are using them to supply the exact amount of P needed while intentionally (severely) limiting N. I used this strategy last year: I fertilized with regular dosages of 9-3-6 until the plants were well established. I then cut way back on the dosage and added ProTeKt to the solution. I rather like to envision that I used the added K (and got the benefit of the added silicon) to change the fertilizer ratio to 3:1:3 from a 3:1:2. This allowed me to reduce the dosage of N (reducing vegetative growth) while still having adequate P and K. Take care. Al

"But it's through Mary's kind of open, honest blundering that we all learn. She may have been a dumbass in this particular circumstance, but she was an honest dumbass, and there's not much more we can ask of one another." That is true when you look at it from the first post and I was going to let it go with my first post until she came back with an attitude, blaming someone else for her actions and changing her story to a native story to get herself off the hook. That is when her dumbass honesty went right out the door. Then the others pile on. Glad C3D ended it with the truth about euthanasia. I'm with you Z-Chick on the instant brain death method. She really would have faired better if all that 'support' didn't show up to aggrevate the situation. Who am I to judge her - nobody. I've cleanly killed plenty of animals and that IS hypocritical from a death standpoint. I am sorry but I could not let it pass because she was killing a hapless creature and looking for congratulations. She faired FAR BETTER than the frog and we all know she will do the same thing again - she said so directly. She will control her pond against nature. Wait until the first snake shows up, or raccoon, or heron...... If anything - other posters will learn not to be such dumbasses but I don't believe it will stop them from posting to learn. This person was not posting to learn. I am done with it (I hope) unless another dumbass pops up (and then this dumbass will jump right back into the thick of it). Not much more I can say to the original OP however - as I shredded her actions to the maximum already (good, bad or ugly as it may have been). The 'plant boy bring it' was hysterical BTW. Good thing you said that because that post hit about 3 major nerves for me and I did hold back. Anyway - who wants to lay down money that thread is not done:-)

Thanks, DA and owbist, for the additional input ! :-) owbist, that's something I may consider in the future. For now, though, acquiring an additional monitor is a bit too costly for the use I'd make of it. :-/ DA, to be a bit more specific... my goal in part is to have the other user be able to (among other things) play the Pogo games without squinting ;-) and have me able to access my daily websites without horizontal scrolling if at all possible. While your F11, Ctrl +/- suggestion is very helpful (!), it wouldn't resolve the Pogo issues, since those games have a pop-up play area that isn't affected by those functions. And since the other user finds the native 1280 x 1024 setting too hard on the eyes, we've had Resolution Changer on this computer ever since we got the LCD monitor nearly two years ago, in order to have the monitor set at 1024 x 768 all the time. That setting allows the Pogo games to be more viewable/enjoyable for the other person and has been fine for me -- until this most recent issue: one of my email providers (EuMX.net) upgraded their RoundCube webmail to a version which, for some reason, does not fit on my non-widescreen monitor's display without the horizontal scrollbar. So, since we already have this 'utility' on the computer for easy viewing anyway, I was curious enough to ask if it would be too hard on the computer or the monitor if I were to begin using it to jump back-and-forth between the two resolution settings. I'm glad to find out it wouldn't. :-)