Yes Nick, it can cost a bit more but is the good stuff.

Thank you Tracy, I saw the free shipping and thought that may be worth it all by itself. I hope the prices don't increase between now and February.

Nick, I'll bottom-line it to keep the typing short. Get your own ingredients. I tell you this, my friend, because you're going to have more plants than you have now and you will want to be able to tweak your medium. This means you'll end up wanting to get some or all of the components of this mix anyway.

You really just need pumice and repti-bark. This is my sifting-free formula. If the plant I am using it for needs to dry faster, I eliminate the bark. If it needs to drain fast but retain moisture, I add more bark. If it needs to retain moisture even longer, I top-dress with pea gravel. If the moisture this variation is still not enough, I move that particular plant to soil and perlite (I don't like having to water more often than once a week and I prefer if I don't have to do even that!)

When the plant does not like being disturbed too often, I narrow it down even further to just pumice so I dont have to worry about the bark breaking down and clogging up my soil. And bark does clog the soil when it breaks down (takes about two to three years and washing it off the other ingredients is a pain).

I have extreme xerophytes that are so moisture-averse I have them in 60 percent granite grit and 40 turface. But these are special and I only have about 5 of them.

Pagan

Thank you Pagan, I wasn't aware you could leave out the turface, that was the one that I couldnt find locally anyways so its a huge bonus to leave it out.

Guess I'll call the local quarry about grit pricing. Any idea on the size of repti bark?

repti-bark only comes in one particle size, I think. Some people hammer them into smaller bits but I don't bother. Besides, that will only create dusty bits that I have to sift out and blegh to that. Leaving out the turface does mean you have to substitute another porous inert material so I use pumice.

I do not substitute perlite for pumice because if you have seen the normal bag of perlite, there are probably 7 pieces that are of the right size (about 1/8 to 1/4 of an inch) in every bag, the rest is dust.

I get my pumice from either eBay or Amazon but that's because I'm all the way here in the volcanoless flats of the Northeastern seaboard.

P