Dear all, I have spent the last two days reading this forum. It's addictive. I am very excited. Even when I not reading, my mind keep thinking about soil mix all the time. Last year, I bought a mango tree and emperor lychee. However, they didn't do very well since I put them in the containers. After reading Al's posts, I believed I don't have the right soil mix for them. According to Al's and many people in this forum, Al's Gritty Mix is great for Tropical Fruit. Unfortunately, after spending a day today shopping for the ingredients, I realized that it is hard to find Screened Turface and Gran-I-Grit in my area. Therefore, making Al's Gritty Mix will be a challenge for me. However, I found fine Pine Bark, sphagnum peat, perlite, garden lime, which are the right ingredients to make Al's 5:1:1 mix. My question is: Can I use Al's 5:1:1 for my Mango Tree and Lychee? Please share if you have any experience growing tropical fruit tree with Al's 5:1:1 mix. Thank you very much. Anthan

I post this frequently (Remember please, it's a copy/paste from a thread I replied to a while ago): Peat - Renewable or Not? - Does it Matter? Chicken Little would be aghast at your inference!! In my estimation, it doesn't matter much if it's renewable or not, and I refuse to be made to feel guilty about using any form of peat. Here is a reply I often leave when the non-renewable thing comes up: "Sorry, but I'm not buying the non-renewable lament. In Canada alone, there are more than 270 million acres of harvestable peat bogs. If we make the conservative guess that the harvestable portions of these bogs are 10 feet deep, that means there are probably more than 900 billion cu. ft. available for harvest, just in Canada! That doesn't even take into consideration what's available in Europe, Asia, or places like New Zealand where they also mine peat. Canada currently has mining/harvesting operations underway on approximately 40 thousand acres or about .014% (that reads 14 one thousandths of 1 percent)." Check the math - it's accurate and conservative. It's more likely that the next ice age will be upon us and glaciers will have covered what's available before we even use a noticeable percentage. Renewable/non-renewable = moot. Al

ashley, what is your definition of a 'soilless' mix? Historically, this term refers to a potting medium that is largely composed of peat moss with a few other additives such as perlite, vermiculite, bark fines. The vast majority of bagged potting mixes on the market are soilless mediums. These mixes can be anywhere from mucky and heavy to porous and fast draining. Depends upon the manufacturer's recipe, and the source of the peat. What is NOT in a soilless medium is clay, silt, sand or other particles that are a part of a successful (outdoor) soil system. It is those mineral solids that determine an outdoor soil's texture. SoilLESS means any medium without those particles and composed mostly of other things. I 'think' what you mean is the artificial mixtures so many of us use containing various amounts of Turface, perlite, bark, grit, and peat. We can call these mediums soilless, also, but applying that term solely to them is misleading. Bagged potting mixes have been labeled on the package as 'Soilless' for many years, generations. I've been trying to remember, just for the heck of it, when the first 'soilless' recipe came out. I think it might have been the famous Cornell mix, and I also think that it might have been in the forties or so. Anyhow, steve needs to evaluate his desire to grow containerized plants and the cost of the water to support the plants. I'd like to encourage him to 'experiment', as he says, with 5:1:1 mix (or whatever) with his one plant. Using a mulch on the surface, as Josh recommends, is a good idea. It will require more frequent watering, though. There's no getting around that. You might also consider adding some of the very porous ingredients to your existing potting medium when you do your repotting. That is a good way to see some of the benefits of using bark fines or Turface, without going cold turkey. I'm really curious, steve, about the kind of medium you are using now? I can't imagine not having to water a containerized plant more than ONCE per week in the summer. What's your secret? Don't be bashful.

Great post. I tried this method this past weekend. Relative to the lawn mower method of chopping up large pine bark chunks, I found this method to be cleaner (it doesn't shoot pine chunks out the sides like a mower will), a bit slower than the mower, and produced a lot more fine particles. I have a high speed Toro leaf blower/mulcher with a metal impeller. A large percentage of the particles coming out felt like fine compost, and a large number of chunks went through looking unscathed, so I didn't get the mix of particle sizes that I was hoping for. I suppose if I had a 1/8" screen, I could have sifted out some of the fine stuff. As it was, I got about 3 gallons of material, and made a side batch of 5-1-1 to try with some peppers, but I didn't mix it in with the rest of my 5-1-1.