You seem to be an extremely thoughtful grower and interested in precise horticultural knowledge. Of course horticulture in not like mechanical engineering and there is never certainty when applying research to real-life situations. There are very many variables. Creating a bern for an establishing tree can be advantageous. It assures better water drainage on the raised soil, tends to stay loose and friable and warms up faster in the spring. In all but the coarsest soils it probably is a plus if the extra managment of mounds is OK and it doesn't bother you appearence-wise. Scion rooting can be a plus but many varieties and species can't easily dedifferentiate from trunk tissue to root tissue and occassionally can rot from having soil placed against non-rooting tissue as I understand it. This is difficult to evaluate in the field, and I will say that I've seen a lot of trees with soil and mulch piled against the trunks without root or rot over the years and in the forest trees mulch themselves indiscriminately, often piling rotting wet leaves agains the trunk with no apparent damage. For non-dwarfing rootstocks it is usually recommended they be planted with graft union right at ground level although I really don't know why. I just try to plant trees slightly above the level they grew at the nursery to allow for a little sinking and mulch. As far as what species and varieties are capable of rooting from trunk tissue you probably can only find out from your own experimentation (unless you get lucky here). I believe that the tendoncy of apples to root this way is highly exaggerated and only a small percentage of varieties planted below the graft union on dwarfing root-stock are apt to start scion rooting and become excessively vigorous. Harold Tukey, the late dwarf-fruit tree specialist, wrote in his classic "Dwarf Fruit Trees" in 1964, that most varieties grown at that time were incapable of easily rooting from buried scion wood. He also said that it used to be a common practice to purposely deeply bury cold-tender rootstocks like quince (used for pear dwarfing) to prevent them from freezing in harsh climates. The pears generally failed to root out above the buried graft union and the rootstock maintained its dwarfing affect. I would be interested in others to speak of hands-on experience with scion-rooting. Burrying the scion-wood is almost universally warned against when using dwarfing rootstock, but I wonder if it isn't 90% agri-legend.

Kalanchoe marnieriana. If these aerial roots hit the soil, they will root - so beware of them hooking into a neighboring pot! LOL Yes, speaking from experience. You can actually cut them off with no damage to the plant. Or you can let it get bushy like this one. I "think" that when planted in the ground those aerial roots eventually help prop up the plant as it spreads. And they really have pretty flowers, too.

Hello Nicole, It seems that your leaves are deprived of moisture content. The Sans tells you this by bending and cracking along the axis of its normally plumb and ever so slightly curved leaves. This could mean two things, or a combination of these two. The leaves are transpiring moisture to fast, or the roots are unable to absorb moisture from the soil. Your watering interval of once a month seems appropriate, even during summer. But still, leave vitality is decreasing and your Sans is struggling and even fighting back with some creative sky-roots. It seems to me there is an overlooked factor involved overhere. Your root system is healthy but your Sans is heavily under-watered. Not because you don't water enough, but because the roots are unable to absorb any moisture. And my best bet is that this is caused by your soil not uniformly absorbing any moisture at the root center at all. Your soil doesn't absorb water anymore. Also your clay pot provides an environment which sucks out any moisture content from the already (possibly) deprived soil. Do you know what the soil is made of? Peat is well known for locking out moisture eventually. Do you water with a cup from the top, or do you place the pot in a tub and let it soak for a few minutes? I would advise you to try this last option and give it a good soak. It will possibly reenable your soil to allow moisture. But before you do please make sure this is the culprit. Furthermore, I've started to notice this root behaviour from my thriving S. T. "Laurentii" also. It has thrown up healthy, thick and white 'sky-roots' all along its perimeter this summer. I will keep an eye on them to take note about how they develop. Since they are deprived of moisture in this self occupied room climate, it's expected that they die-off eventually. Maybe nice to know, an optimised technique for growing healthy root systems finds it roots in this occurrence. It's called air-pruning and modified containers are available to support this behaviour. Anyhow, good luck with your Sansevieria. I hope my wall of text will be of any use to you and your plant.

The fabric goes at the bottom of everything. A paver walk, being comprised of many small units, is a flexible layer. They only stay level or in plane on account of a solid base supporting them. That solid base happens to also be flexible on account of being made of particles. What makes it solid is its thickness, being packed tightly and the fact that it sits on terra firma. If a very heavy weight punched down in one spot, though, the layers at that spot might give a little. Over time this might add up to depressions at the surface. To combat that, a non-stretchy fabric layer is placed below all of the compacted materials and helps to keep areas from being depressed when a heavy weight is applied to one spot. The weight of all the material above it is what holds the fabric tightly in place, as though it were stretched taught. (If you've ever tried to remove a large chunk of landscape fabric that has three inches of soil on top of it you know it's impossible to pull out.) When a heavy weight is applied to the surface layer, given that the fabric below will not stretch or move, that surface layer is also resisted from moving downward. If you place a pizza on top of a carpet, it would be pretty easy to radically deform a spot of the pizza by stepping on it. If instead you placed the pizza on a very tightly stretched drum head, the pizza would deform vastly less if stepped on. Though I first said fabric + paneIs would be redundant, I can see why it would be helpful to have both. The panel and fabric share the same capability. However, given that the panels are limited in size, they're not going to have the ability to act as the fabric would near their edges where there is little to no meaningful weight keeping them taught below the pavers. Extending the fabric below the panels overcomes the deficiency of the panel edges.