I poke at mine with a chopstick until the bulk of the soil falls away. A hose does an amazing job of getting the rest of it off without damaging the roots. Outdoors I use a hose-end sprayer with the shower setting. Indoors I have a small section of hose screwed onto the basement faucet, and I just hold my thumb over the end to get the right pressure. After the plant is bare rooted, the roots will be hanging straight and they'll usually be much too long for the pot. I cut them all back so that none of them will lay on the pot bottom. For a previously pot-bound plant this may mean removing several inches of roots. The plants don't mind this at all, and root pruning encourages new, healthy roots.

After you switch to your new mix, repotting will be much easier as the grit just falls away for the most part.

I'm gardening indoors only (no hose available); I mostly use hands & fingers to crumble off old mix. If difficult, I'll sometimes use a fork to fluff things up & start removing the old mix.

Chopstick very handy for this and also for repotting. A similar instrument of a narrower gauge is wooden shish-kabob stick. Shish-kabob stick has sharp tip as well to easily get at all nooks & crannies...to do the finer work as it were.

A simple, one-prong root hook for bonsai (simple to make if you are so inclined) and chop-sticks are all I ever use...

For most plants I use an air hose. If necessary I break out the bonsai root hook.

randy

Root hook? Sounds like something that a ninja gardener would use.

If it's hardened up and you believe the roots of the plant to be salvageable, immerse the plant's root ball in a bucket of water - the soil will separate from the roots.

A chopstick, a dibble or an old knife are useful, too, but if you don't mind the mess the hose is also a friend of this endeavor.

I like to use a metal kitchen fork

x

Wow thank you guys! I think Ill do a little of everything. Im super excited to get my new mix prepared and my C/S out of that peat. I used to love peat...but now...not so much. Although for my tropicals and annuals it seems to work wonders. I have still been tossing around the idea of going to coir fiber instead. Ah decisions decisions decisions. Thank you all for your advice.

Steve

Steve, if you inclined to care about these things, peat is an ecologically disastrous material. Essentially non-renewable and harvesting it is extremely destructive to local ecosystems.

Although it comes with some challenges, coir is *much* more environmentally friendly than peat.

I have heard about peat being destructive to the environment when harvested, and I would like to kind of boycott it if I could, if I could just find a good supplier of coir fiber. I know the internet right now is my only option. My problem is with the security of the transaction. I appreciate your concern for the environment jo. Thank you for confirming what I had heard. If anyone knows of a safe and good supplier of coir I would be very thankful and so would mother earth :)

Steve

If you decide on coco coir instead of a good fir bark product, be aware that many coir products are NOT pre-rinsed to rid them of the salts that are part of their processing.

I've been the routes of both peat and coco coir, and I wouldn't recommend either for use as a decent medium ingredient.

My current medium is built with fir bark, perlite, and granite chips... and I grow everything in it, from tender bulbs to orchids, and especially cacti and succulents. I like the total control I have over watering and fertilizing, and I like that it's exceptional for the exchange of oxygen and gases to the roots.

I grow indoors in the Midwest, however, so anyone growing outdoors or in a different climate would most likely want to adapt this type of mixture to suit their own needs. They might need more moisture retention, so turface might be a better choice than perlite.

There are actually several materials that can be substituted to build this type of medium, but I think the fir bark pieces are a necessary and good place to start.

There's a ton of information over at the Container Gardening Forum... I invite anyone to stop in and do some reading. The link below is a good place to start. :-)

Here is a link that might be useful: Container Soils - Water Movement and Retention IX

Check the big box nurseries in the spring, most of them will have big bags of coir then. If you're lucky they'll put it 1/2 price in the fall. I gotta make a trip to the mainland. I use this in a lot of my mixes.
Tally HO!