I'm in the process of switching over all my C&S to gritty mixes so I thought I'd document some of it here. This is a lot of work but it made sense after learning more about mineral-based mixes and their advantages for C&S. I've always used commercial potting soils mixed with perlite or pumice, and it worked well for the most part. But over time it would get compacted and I always dreaded repotting because I occasionally got a "bad" bag of mix. Nothing would thrive in it, but you wouldn't find out for months and at that point it was too late in the season to repot again. So I got tired of playing the lottery of not really knowing what was in that stuff.

The other thing that instigated it is that I just plain have a lot of neglected plants. It's time to get them out of their compacted, brick-like soil.

So to start off with, here's an Echinocactus texensis that I bought in 2008 and (gasp) it was still in the original container!

It had grown enough that it was bulging the container on all four sides. Spination is good, given how much I neglected it. This plant has been grown super hard - lots of sun and very little of anything else. E. texensis is native to West Texas, Arizona and Northern Mexico so it's tough as nails.

The soil was a brick of sand and perlite. Also, about half the mix had crumbled away and drained out the bottom. A spider was living in the empty space in the bottom and hustled out of there when I pull the plant out.

As compacted as it was, the sandy brick crumbled easily so it didn't take me long to get it all off the roots. I forgot to take a picture of the roots but they were still in pretty good shape despite the abuse.

More space and a better mix. Given this plant's rocky native habitat I omitted the fir bark in the standard 1:1:1 gritty mix and went with 1:1 granite and Floor Dry (DE). Had I put this in a plastic pot I would have gone with 2:1. If it had to go seven years in this mix it would probably still be in good shape.