Gary

I can only comment on price of gritty - I find that it is not expensive making my own. I use mix of gravel+perlite+turface for all my succulents and also for few of other plants I have and buy ingredients in 50lb bags. The mix is also much better draining and I can adjust amount of turface to adjust water retention. I never bought ready-made mixes sold by repotme or bonsai jack and can't comment on quality. Price would be too high anyway, and I would have to pay postage/handling - not willing to do so for nearly 300 containers.

I haven't been able to get pumice and shipping from US would be too high. I do not know price of pumice (or other ingredients like scoria, growstone and similar that many ppl use), so perhaps it would increase total cost, but for ingredients I am using it is cost effective.

Screening could be annoying, but I try to screen as much as possible at the same time. I look at it as 'nothing is free' - so I am willing to do some work even if annoying. Not sure if pre-made mixes have 'ideal' size of ingredients anyway (I have seen comments that they don't). I like to know what goes in the mix and have control over amounts of each ingredient.

We need to know what you are pottng, and how long the mix is needed to last before repotting?

My 50 pots contain a wide variety of plants (i.e, succulents, sego palms, geraniums, impatients, skyflowers, camellias, Brush Cherry, lavender, bougainvillea, clivias, dwarf orange).

In the past, I've used pre-mixed potting mixes (like Miracle Gro, PRO-MIX, Kellogg, etc) when the potting mix becomes depleted (in nutrients or in volume), I pull the plants out of the pots, wash the old potting mix from the roots and repot in new potting mix.

Hi Rina..I love the sounds of that mix you use..Do you find it dries out much too fast for some plants verses using bark?

How often do you have to water tiny plants in small pots like let's say in a hot sunny window sill or out in full sun?

Thank you

To make 40 cubic feet of "gritty mix", I bought:

7 2-CF bags of GreenAll micro-bark; $9.99/bag; Armstrong Nursery in Claremont CA

10 75-LB bags of Granite No. 5 (1/4"); $6.80/bag; Roofline Supply in Riverside CA

13 50-LB bags of Turface MVP; $13.00/bag; Ewing Irrigation in Riverside CA

Now, can someone tell me:

• should I rinse any of the ingredients before screening them
• what size of mesh should I used to screen the gritty mix ingredients?

1/8" - 3mm

1/4" - 6mm

3/8" - 9mm

1/2" - 12mm

Hi Mike

I don't find it drying up too fast in my climate. I keep all my plants outdoors during warm enough months. They get watered when it rains, otherwise I water using rain water collected in rain barrels. We have some high temps currently (high for us - just about 90*F) and am still watering succulents about every 3days. Most of my pots are plastic. I have very few tiny pots, and they get watered according to what plant is in - have some small aloes that I water approx. 2x/week or less. I was away recently and left all plants outdoors - it rained 3x in 3 weeks and that's only water they got. I left all small pots in more shade - sun only for couple of hours early morning.

All other plants were watered 1x/day, I had timer on for 25/min at 6am. Everything survived, except for couple of cucumber seedlings - they were too small and soil was dug out/messed up by squirrels...:(

About half of my plants other than succulents are in gritty, so far 1x/day was enough.