It's a great video, Tracy! I don't know how I missed seeing it before now. Your
'Kinkosei' (at least that's what it looks like
) is very nice. Your advice about how the moss helps to alleviate your low humidity issues during winter is spot-on.
I am a chronic overwaterer, however, which makes me one of those people you mentioned who must incorporate a hollow space into the center of the mound to aid air circulation and periodic drying of the roots. Something which I find works quite well for this purpose is one of those practice wiffle golf balls.
I have also taken to growing many of my plants hydroponically in chunks of granite using an ebb and flow system of watering.
Someone recently asked me a question about root trimming, Tracy, and I'd like your opinion about it. Apparently this person has the same problem I do. I have very little root die-off. My Neo roots can sometimes get to be quite long and unruly, but I try my best to train them in the way I want them to go. When repotting Neos, do you ever trim any overly long yet healthy roots in order to facilitate fitting a plant into a pot?
We all want specimen-sized plants, yet there comes a point when the sizes of the pots required could get to be ridiculous without doing some judicial root trimming. I often wonder how the Japanese growers at the shows manage to fit such huge plants (for a Neo anyway) into such tiny pots. On the rare occasion I need to do so, I will cut a root in order to make the plant fit. Most of the time, however, I just keep moving my plants up into larger pots rather than trim a healthy root. I have taken to using Cymbidium pots or other large deep pots as I can find them.
Finding Neo pots (whether the economy types or the high-end decorative ones) in really large sizes is impossible, at least here in the States. I like the typical decorated glazed footed pots with a big drainage hole. I have some fairly large Neo pots such as this, but nothing nearly big enough to hold the ball of roots on a giant chunk of Nishidemiyako, Shutenno or Shojo. Putting a super large Neo plant into any of the available sizes of Neo pots is pointless since 75% or more of the roots would be outside the pot and the mound of moss would have to be at least five or six times as high as the pot itself. :rollhappy: Obviously some roots (sometimes quite a few) will be outside the pot and outside the mound on specimen-sized plants of certain varieties, but eventually it gets to the point where I simply give up, divide the plant and find someone to whom I can give the excess portions.
