Which Turface product do I want for gritty mix? MVP or All-Sport

Will it be possible to grow citrus on a hot balcony in gritty mix if I use a light-colored grow bag ..... Yes, but you might need to provide some shade for the pot and or set it on top of some sort of insulating material (like Styrofoam) if the deck surface will get hot from passive solar gain.

If you're not going to screen the materials to an appropriate size, there's no sense in going through the effort of making the gritty mix. What makes it so productive is, it holds good amounts of water without supporting any amount of perched water worth mentioning. Once you nullify that advantage by using unscreened ingredients, it's just another medium, albeit much better than most of the bagged/commercially prepared potting media you'll find on shelves. I'd just go with the 5:1:1 mix.

Does the gritty mix get hotter compared to 5-1-1, or, will it stay cool? The gritty mix has considerably more air porosity and much better gas exchange than most potting media, so all else equal (like photo load, pot size/color, .....), it should be cooler because of the additional evaporative cooling.

Of course, watering will need to be more frequent but I can setup automatic watering. The gritty mix would require a spray emitter that can cover the entire surface of the medium because, while water tends to move downward quickly as it wets the medium, the coarse particle size and materials used don't provide the sort of lateral movement you would need in a 1 stream emitter per pot arrangement.

This is what you want for bark (at 12 o'clock):

Al

Okay, thank you.

The balcony container would be lifted off the balcony floor on some plant stand thingies I have. I could install little umbrellas to shade the pot possibly. Hmmm.

Yeah, sounds like the 5-1-1 or variation of it will be better for me. I wouldn't mind sifting if I were doing just a handful of pots. Long story short, 20x5 gallons, 3x15 gallons, and a handful of 1-2 gallons, over 150 gallons**. Not even sure how to approach something like that. And then my stomach starts to turn when I read the 5-1-1 need to be changed out once a year (maybe 1.5-2 years), and it's somewhat interesting to do the gritty every 2-3 years.. Uhhmmm.. wtf have I got myself into! :)

I also had concerns about watering indoors, but reading through the internet suggests it shouldn't be too much of an issue.

Don't know what to do :(

** 5 gal: 10x 1 year old avocado seedling repots and 10x veges (tomatoes, peppers, etc); 15 gal: 1x citrus tbd, 1x avocado repot, and 1x sago palm; bunch of house plants like hoya, spider, aloe, and dichenbachia in various pots.

I arrived home today, $42 later pleased with my purchase of turface, bark, and pumice. THe inorganic component was either very expensive or much too far (I tried many stores). The goal is to try a few of my inside plants on this and see what happens, before I try with everything else.

The turface is way smaller than I realized even after looking over dozens of images. Should I return the pumice and bark and look for something smaller, or will these work for gritty 1-1-1? It looks almost as if I could screen the pumice, if I had a 1/8" screen; 1/4" is the smallest I have.

Perhaps instead of returning, I could use the bark and pumice in 5-1-1? Hrrrmmm.

On hand I already have the small perlite, which I think will be the right size to match the turface if I run it through my kitchen strainer.

I appreciate the help, thank you for your time.

Yes, I think our posts crossed :)

Side note: what is the stand you have your pot on? That looks really neat. I've been mulling over trying to figure out how to raise pots up off their saucers. *EDIT* I looked up pot risers, and duhh.. pvc pipe makes it easy and cheap, I have plenty; also searching reveals many other creative solutions, cool.

Big Edit: I cut out a lot of what I wrote, after sleeping through this and figuring out my ultimate questions. If Al or anyone else decides to respond, I would feel bad if you went to the trouble to write an eloquent composition on perched water tables, drainage, importance of consistency in particle sizes, pulling out maximum potential of plants, etc. I've read many, if not all, those posts, and slowly grasping it, and I would feel bad if you spent time rewriting what's already here. The bottom line issue is that right now, I don't have enough experience to know whether I got the right alternative products. And really all I'm looking for is confirmation or advice what to do with what I have.

What I suspect, for gritty mix:

1. the pumice needs to go, or, sift through and keep the in-between 1/8" sieve and window screen, and keep that - this will match the turface.

2. I just need to sift the bark through a 1/4" sifter, it's okay for it to go up to 1/4".

3. Sift the turface through window screen or a coarser sieve than what I have in the kitchen

For 5-1-1: the pumice, perlite, and new bark (from 4/21 post) are usable, however, bark may be too particle free, so I should probably up the peat a bit (in my case, I have coir on hand).

Yes?

I just found this and it answers some of my questions about size for the gritty mix: https://www.houzz.com/discussions/3323530/al-s-gritty-mix-screening-and-particulate-size

Also, for anyone who stumbles on this researching 5-1-1 or 1-1-1, and you are reading about DE products, it looks like the amorphous ones are hard to come by these days. A lot of the threads are 3+ years old now. If the product label says "100% natural", or is NSF certified or food grade or simply "natural", it's going to break down into mud. I drove out to Napa the other day, and the label has changed from what it used to be. I reviewed all the ones at grainger as well, they carry a number of absorbents. Oh, well.

I dug out my 1/4" screen, and ran the pumice through it, then sifted through my kitchen sieve (which after looking closely, has the same hole size as my window screen). Unfortunately, looks like the pumice is too big. What a shame, it's really nice (difference source from the original picture posted above). I don't have 1/8" hardware cloth, would have to go get some (it's $23 at my local big box), but if I screened the pumice, then I'll get the desired particle size, however, there will be so much waste it is not worth it.

Now, I am ready to reconsider the perlite.. Without sifting, next to the turface, it looks ALMOST right. Is this good enough, or should I really screen it at 1/8"? I'm no longer worried about the time involved, as much as I am using up what I have on hand and just getting to the next point of actually mixing this stuff. I'm ready to go :D Also, the 2c.ft bag of perlite cost $11, and although it's a bit of a drive, it's actually on my way to go see family so it is accessible. I've tried multiple building supply stores now, the local feed shops, etc. Local feed shop has chicken grit 3lb for $11. WTF. I did find the Tractor Supply outlets, they are about 80 miles away, I don't think my car could make it round trip without an hour pit stop charge, would be cutting it close.

Now I'm wondering whether the turface will crush the perlite if I do this in a 15 gallon bag. Bah Hrmmmbbrrrgg.

All non-bark components I screen at least through a window screen (approx 1/16). Ideally it would have better if it was a bit larger like 1/10 or so but it is OK. Your perlite looks OK for 511 - a little coarser grade would have been better. You can sub pumice (some on this forum do that) for perlite in 511 mix. Having a bit more of the coarser pumice is desirable for 511. You want those bigger pieces to lodge between bark to keep them from compacting and clumping. If you do not have the coarse stuff, I think you can still make a usable 511 mix by bumping up the perlite or pumice.

For gritty you need the 1/8 screen for the bark. You can find a single sieve or combination sieves on amazon. Or look in dollar stores for colanders. Or try this small piece on ebay and a bit cheaper: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Wire-Mesh-1-8-Inch-12-Long-x-36-Wide-Cut-To-Size-For-You/192636414936

Turface will not crush perlite. Perlite does crush but requires quite bit of force. But why are mixing turface and perlite - are you making gritty mix?

Specific to gritty, I got my hands on some 1/8" hardware cloth, took half a cup of the cheap washed sand I picked up yesterday and washed this morning: all passed through 1/4" cloth, and maybe about 60% through the 1/8". Very small amount through the kitchen strainer. Here's a photo of the screen parts together with Turface. I think it'll work. Again, I'm doing this because I can't find chicken grit or its alternatives reasonably priced anywhere.

If there are any people new and researching this like me stumbling on this post, it's crazy just how small the turface is. I'm still boggled that it will make up 1/3 of a few 15 gallon containers... No matter how many pictures you see with bananas or nickels or dimes, the scale just doesn't make sense until you see it.

Anyway, now I wonder if it's possible to draw some graph to help understand diminishing returns. If you don't have the ideal mix, you won't get the full benefit of course, but, what does that mean? If I water the plant correctly, and feed it right, maybe I'll have one missing leaf? Or will the plant spontaneously combust from root rot?!

I've had enough, time to plant! :) I am going to make decisions that will probably be incorrect.

Turface comes in many different labels and of those MVP and AllSport and there are other brands too: https://www.gardenweb.com/discussions/5207576/alternative-turface-blends And they also vary by from bag to bag.

Of these MVP and AllSport seem to have less of the real fine stuff. Yours does look like it is skewed towards the smaller particles. I suggest start with what you have now. And observe the plants and be prepared to revisit them next season. And by that time you may find a better source.

Your washed sand looks quite usable too.

Also be aware that 15 gallon of gritty will easily be 100+ lbs dry. I tend not to have gritty mix pots beyond 5 gallons or so. I prefer the 511 for ease of moving them around for large pots.

Yup, and thank you :) I had reviewed that thread a few days ago, which helped steer my research. I have a grainger about 40 minutes away from me, and this page here helps a lot with the different brands and products:

https://www.grainger.com/category/safety/spill-control-supplies/absorbents/loose-absorbents

I had read comments here and on other boards about the DE products requiring less sifting/waste, so I studied the SDS sheets for all the DE products there on Grainger's site, and unfortunately, all are listed as "natural", so they will likely fail the water-freeze test. They also have the different clay options, turface vs. pro's choice (and that was fun trying to figure out the differences in the product names OMG), but I decided to go with Turface MVP since they are right down the street from me.

A friend of mine is into cycads and he pointed me to a sand product that has #12 in the name. He put a ruler next to the sand, and the particles look incredibly uniform, ranging 1/16 to 1/8 inch.. that's on the small side based on the comments here (1/8"< and >1/10" ideal). I drew the correlation to mesh size, and realized the #12 means 12 holes to the inch [wikipedia link]. I now I'm hunting for sand, silica, granite, rock, etc screened to #7. If it exists!?

As you recommend, I'll stick with what I have. I was wondering how much a 15gal gritty would weigh and that's why I asked whether the turface would crush perlite, because, well, that's a lot of turface (but I guess physics and force spread out, etc). Further thought on this, I'm not sure whether it makes economical sense.. it would take more than one bag of turface to make a 15 gallon pot of gritty. Ugh.

BTW, I've mixed up a 3 gallon pot of 3-1-1 with my bark, pumice, and coir, watered it until water ran through, then set it out on the deck. I'm going to see how long it stays wet in both a plastic pot and grow bag. If wet too long, I'll adjust to 4-1-1 and run the test again, and finally 5-1-1 if necessary. Of course, having active roots will change things, but I'm hoping to get 3 or 4 days in the summer heat.

Thanks for playing along :)

Great that you are going through the process yourself. We all have to do that and keep at least mental notes. Once you have the plants in those mixes you will get a better feel. Gritty mix is unlike any other mix you would have encountered before. It is a learning experience. I would not hesitate to water it more frequently when freshly planted and then wean off as it is established. I would also say keep a small bag of sphagnum moss handy. When I see some plants struggling for water in high heat, I put a layer of the moss on top of the soil to reduce evaporation loss. If need be provide afternoon shade.

I got introduced to bonsai and bonsai soil mixes more than 20 years back. Got introduced to gritty mix by Al may be 10 yrs or so. It has been my go-to mix ever since for long term plants. Main reasons are that it has great adjustability, easy to understand the roles of each component and easy for me to source those here in Pittsburgh. But since I started with bonsai mix I kind of knew what I was getting into.

For me the real game changer was the 511 mix from Al. Now here is a mix which is lightweight and has great water holding and air-porosity, easy to get the components and virtually any plant can be grown in it (even some of the cactus and succulents if you are careful with watering). And it is a very forgiving mix. Just made 25 gallons and more to come soon.

Great, thank you. Certainly an interesting experience! Your tip about putting moss on top of gritty brings up a couple more questions/strategies:

- would mulch accomplish the same thing?

- what about lining the inside of the container with it to help slow down the drying?

I bring up the second question because of one of the original questions in this topic: planting citrus on my balcony. In addition to the hot temperatures**, and quick draining media, I've purchased a woven-style grow bag that's white. I really want to try a citrus there one more time, and so perhaps the moss would be good way to slow things down? That is, assuming I stick with gritty, especially accounting for 100lbs for the 15 gallon bag, hmmm. Keep gritty indoors and 5-1-1 outside :)

**The east-facing balcony is strange.. early this morning it was only low-mid 60s (F), but I was breaking into a sweat from the sun and the heat just sitting there trying to eat breakfast.

I applaud your perseverance. I've never yet made any gritty mix, largely bc I get completely lost when thinking about the particle size. Someday, some genius will make a consistently 1/10" mix of something. And people like me will buy it (unless it is super expensive in which case I'll stick with 5-1-1).

Anyhow, the reason I'm commenting is to say, you can try doing both the shading and the raised bottom. I garden on a hot patio too, and ime you can't make roots too cold, at least not in this area. You could try putting the grow bag into a larger light colored container, and sit it on maybe an overturned pot at the bottom to raise it up, and then sit the whole thing on wood blocks or rocks.

With my really large pots, where I don't have a bigger pot to put them in, I make them skirts out of light colored fabric, which helps a lot but really looks kind of sad. (I should probably just grow smaller plants.) I can't lift the nice ceramic pots so I can't buy those, and I'm not going to pay out for the fancy plastic ones because ime no plastic lasts in the sun. (Perhaps there is some new tech though, I can't say.) Home Depot sells some nice wooden planters that you could put a good sized pot in, and those look nice. I think wood *can* last in the sun if it's painted (but may not always). However the water draining out will do a number on that too eventually. I haven't found a great solution yet, to be honest.

I haven't mulched but it is on my To Do list.

Oh, also ... I don't know your situation but my patio has solid walls, so the air in it just gets super hot. So what I really need are wooden planters on stilts, but with hardware cloth bottoms so the water can drain. You can actually find pretty nice tall wooden planters these days ... but roommate hates the way they look, so those are out too.

I like sphagnum moss because it does not degrade but when dry it can be blown away by wind. If birds are making nests they like to harvest it too. But here that happens in spring when it is cool and I do not need the moss anyway. Not a fan of wood mulch in pots. It can degrade and introduce finer stuff over time. Instead try a layer a of smaller turface on top.

From plants perspective a clay or wooden container is better since they allow gas exchange and keep the pot cool through evaporation. Lining the pots will defeat the purpose.

You can shade the pot by other means like a wood barrier (sort of like a fence). For large plants I stick several cuttings of swedish ivy - grows fast, looks good and hangs down the side of the pot shading it. It has shallow roots and does not compete much for nutrients.

Cedar/redwood will last 3-4 seasons here and in your area it should be more. I would not bother with painting them - they will flake easily if the wood stays wet. Plus it will close the pores and prevent it from breathing. I like the look of natural wood as it ages.

I have one molded styrofoam pot that is quite wonderful in keeping the roots cool. It looks like a real thing. Cannot remember how and where I got it.

Things to ponder about:

• A larger pot is more stable from temperature and moisture stability point of view.
• You can alter the gritty mix to hold more water. Bump up the turface with respect to grit. Eg: 3:1:2 of turface:grit:bark.

Great, thanks two you both for the info :) The last two citrus I attempted to grow were in ~18x18 pots and raised off the ground: one with those frilly metal plant stands from HD about 12" up, the other on a little wooden dolly about 4" off the ground. The pots were ceramic, but painted/glazed (which probably helps explain the issue). I know the temperature got pretty toasty in there, as I attempted a repot last year and it was quite warm.

Pot within a pot seems like a good idea, as well as the companion plants or even wood structures to provide shade, fantastic, thanks! I do like how the plastic mesh bag-pots look, and will give them a go, as a bonus, they are lightweight.

My balcony has the glass "wall" surrounding it, but there is a 4" gap or so on the bottom. The floor is some sort of artificial wood with narrow gaps between the slats, so, technically, I have ventilation, but it still gets warm.

I got very excited last night and mixed up the 3-1-1 to ~30 gallons last night, and now I'm realizing I may have over-done the lime,: I used 3/4 cup for each 10 gallons, crap, palm to face. I still have enough bark to bring it up to 5-1-1.

I think tropicofcancer's fence idea is a good one, esp if you make the outside of it light-colored. If you can take care of the heat that way, it really opens up your container choices.

Oh btw ... don't ask me how or why I know this ... ahem ... but where I am, the heat can be brutal and there isn't any AC to speak of, so ... since your little wall is glass, you could even try lining it inside, with first a layer of parchment paper, and then a layer of *foil* ... and mind you, the parchment paper is only there bc it blocks glare for the neighbors, and makes it all look less sad ... I have done this on windows and it really helps quite a bit with heat. Parchment paper, meanwhile, is tough to tape (of course since it is non-stick). I don't remember how I did it, maybe with duct tape. Also white, if you have any. I used parchment paper bc it is heat resistant. We really don't want to start any fires. I don't know if that's really possible, but, who wants to find *that* out? Anyhow you could try paper/foil lining while you look for fencing.

Tropicofcancer, that is a very intriguing idea about the swedish ivy - btw, is that a plectranthus? People out here sometimes call that plectranthus Creeping Charlie. I happen to adore it, and I even have access to some ... and I never thought of it as a way to shade my pots. Whoa.

As for turface mulch, that also sounds good. Could I put it on top of a layer of window screen, so I could move it later? Hmm. Anyway, thanks for all the great insights!

I'm going to give the 1-2 week wait before using the 3-1-1 to check the pH, since I added about 1/4-1/3 cup more lime than I should've. Two days since I put a sample 3 gallon outside, and it is dry about half way into the pot already (daytime temp has been a little warmer than usual at about 80F, we're going through a mild heat wave here in so cal). That's a bit quick, hmm.

Back to gritty. My kitchen strainer was too fine after further reading, so I found extra window screen material in the garage. The holes measure just about 2mm using my calipers. Neat. I'm now beyond confused after completing the sifting of my cheap bag of dirt and about 1/3 way through turface (holy crap this takes FOREVER!).

Confusion because of this recent thread: https://www.gardenweb.com/discussions/3323530/al-s-gritty-mix-screening-and-particulate-size#n=35

Not to mention discouraged, because I thought I had a good amount at ~60% extraction, and now with more careful screening, the 25lb bag leaves me with only about 1.5 gallon of useable sand. Ugh.

The following picture shows the sand sorted to

1. >1/4"

2. 1/4"<>1/8"

3. 1/8"<>2mm, and

4. <2mm

Screen turface in the middle of course :) Do I just use #3, or can I mix up #2 and #3, since the bark will be about the same? A lot of #3 actually looks like it would fit into 3/8" mesh, which I couldn't find anywhere. I do have a hard time believing #4 won't work as it does seem to drain water well :(

And screening turface is annoying as heck.. it just keeps going and going, at some point I stop trying to screen and call it "good enough" (it doesn't pour through the window screen, just kind of rain drops through, I use my hand and it helps it rain a bit more, squeezing the smaller pieces through the aluminum mesh).

Given how long it took to separate the inorganic sand, it'd probably be better to drive out 80 miles and pick up a few bags of the chicken grit *if* this gritty mix works out for me. *shrug* On the bright side, my hands are super smooth.. that gives me an idea :D

I finished sifting the turface mvp. The 50lb bag took a little over an hour. I ended up with ~10 pounds of fines and ~40 pounds of > window screen. Based on several posts here, I probably should have screen a bit more thoroughly to end up with ~15lbs of the fines, but I think I need a better screen, this aluminum window stuff began to stretch and tear.

Now to figure out if I use the #2 and #3 rock particles from last night's post, and then chose the first plant victim, but I think I need those plastic meshes for the bottom to keep this from spilling out!

N2SG: Yes it is Plectranthus. Grows fast and extremely easy to propagate by cuttings. I also stick them in various empty spots in the yard as ground cover.

j: The proportions varies between bags. 10 pounds of fines out of 50 sounds good to me. BTW I would not used the fines below 1/16 as top layer for keeping the moisture in. I use the stuff between 1/16 and 1/8 for that purpose. I may use the very fine stuff as a top layer for growing from seeds. Earlier I had said use the fines without being precise.

I found another shop that is 45 minutes away, they have the 25lb manna pro grit for ~$10. However, it has probiotics... is that okay or will it give my plants gas?! :o

Just give it a good wash. Funny how rocks now are sold with probiotics for healthy chicken/turkey.

One week later, the extra dolomitic lime in the 3-1-1 mix results in a 9.5 pH. I'm not sure it is going to get any more acidic in the next 7 days. Is this something I need to worry about, and if so, how to fix it?

I'm debating using this either for tomatoes or avocados. I have some feather meal 12-0-0 and dr. earth fruit-tree fertilizer as far as products on hand. Oh, also some citric acid.