>Any screen or hardware cloth works. 1/4 hardware cloth seems to be the best but I have accumulated many of these band pots with all sorts of bottom screens from the local NARGS . Chapter sales and plant venders. But if you use a coarse mix like rotted pine bark and turface you don't need a bottom screen if you pack it against the Anderson bottom flat. For most mixes after the initial watering in, I find the mix stays in the band pot without a screen unless a tree root moves in from below. and empties the pot when you pull it up. Dimwit that I am, I threw away who knows how many of those pots, screen included. (Turns out that the pots I ordered are about twice as big as I imagined; probably should have looked at a rule to see how wide three and a half inches was, but they will still work.) I dislike organic matter in a pot. Or in the garden. Organic matter=soil-borne pathogens, a barrier to penetration by rain, and other gross stuff. I was told that some of the oncos, like Iris paradoxa, grow in soils with quite a bit of organic matter in the wild, but here they get “sandy loam”, a purchased soil with no organic matter in it. Bob Nold Denver, Colorado, USA _______________________________________________ pbs mailing list pbs@lists.ibiblio.org http://pacificbulbsociety.org/list.php http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/