it looks like the mix you made will enhance uneven drying out process. It seems to have too many fine particles and a few big pieces that will gravitate towards the top as the finer stuff settles towards the bottom and staying wet far longer than the top.

Thanks, Josh. PT - Yes, that mix could be used to repot the plants you mentioned, and offers much greater potential for healthy root systems than soils that retain excessive volumes of water after the pot has stopped draining. If I was repotting any of the 3 plants you mentioned, without question I would put them in the gritty mix, which is equal parts of screened pine or fir bark, screened Turface, and crushed granite in a size range that finds almost all of the particles centered at from just below 1/8" to slightly larger than 1/8". It's extremely durable (structurally stable), which is a very important feature of a quality soil, and guarantees excellent aeration, which is a key element of a healthy root environment, for several years - for much longer than it would be prudent to go between repots. "5:1:1" means 5 parts of an appropriate sized pine bark, and one part each of sphagnum peat and (preferably coarse) perlite. Well aerated soils require a commitment on your part to finding or making the soils, and a little more frequent watering. Once you locate the ingredients and are set up to build the soils, it doesn't take that much effort. The up side includes a much higher probability that plants will be able to grow much closer to their genetic potential on a healthy root system (they can't, on a compromised root system), and a lot less angst/effort to attain the degree of satisfaction and accomplishment most of us are looking for from the growing experience. Much more info can be found at the link I left just below. AL Here is a link that might be useful: Click me & I'll take you to more soil info.

Is that Pine bark fines, perlite and peat with lime? Is there any way you can throw some light on that and grab a better shot? Good thinking to use the 5.1.1 mix! Mike

@Nil13 made reference to the Whitcomb 311 mix, which is an earlier historical attempt to create a more coarse potting soil for container plants. I think it is extremely helpful to read a document written by Carl Whitcomb that explains how he came on this formula by accident. Essentially what happened is he accidentally left nine test pots under a bench and everyone forgot they were there. They had successfully nearly killed all of their test plants by watering in a normal potting soil mix and the unwatered plants started to do very well. What I have started to realize is that any plant can do well in many different soil mixes, if you are able to carefully control the watering. This explains why so many people on this forum claim gritty mix is not as good for their succulents as their (fill in some random horrible soil with lots of small particles) mix. Inevitably those people are growing their plants indoors. They have enormous experience with their plant type and they know exactly when to water the plant. So that is the case of a very skilled gardener compensating for a very bad soil. What gritty mix does for me is let me grow succulents outside in very abusive weather conditions, without the plant dying. A plant can get a week of rain and it will still drain well. During Summer, gritty mix will tolerate a bit of overwatering, although you still really need to pay attention to not overwatering. Whether you make your 511 mix with perlite/peat, or with two parts Turface, or with lava and pumice, is probably in the big picture not going to be the deciding factor in whether your plants grow well or not. Success can be add with any of those mixes because the size of the particles allows the roots to breathe and prevents capillary action of water from bring the perched water table to the top of the pot and drowning the roots. Fine-tuning how you make 511 is a question of matching the plant type to the moisture retention of the soil and to the watering habit and climate exposure. Any 511 variant is going to do better than almost any commercial potting soil because of the larger particles used in the majority of the mix.