If you're not bare-rooting the plant, you should use a soil as close to what it's in as possible. If you ARE bare-rooting it, you should use something like the gritty mix. Maybe: 2 parts fine pumice or Espoma Soil Perfector 1 part calcined DE (NAPA Floor-Dry) 1 part conifer or redwood bark All are easy to find Al

Well, I'd be really impressed if you find a store that has all of those things! It took me a month to find just the 1:1:1 ingredients and of course they are at 3 different stores but well worth the effort. You'll find the gran i grit at a grain/feed store, the MVP Turface I found at an irrigation store (Ewing Irrigation - don't know if they have Houston stores), and I had to screen the Home Depot Sure Stay "Premium Pine Mulch" to get my fines. If you end up doing that, you can use the finest remaining particles in place of peat moss in the 5:1:1. Oh, and wall mart has perlite. Good luck to you on your quest, it is like a treasure hunt and so exciting when you actually find the stuff! Nik

Hello, first post here :D Can anyone recommend a source around Portland for the appropriate bark for the gritty, 511 and similar mixes? Horizon in Milwaukie (near Bob's Red Mill) carries Turface MVP, and down the road, Concentrates (across from Lowes) is a good source for granite / grani-grit, perlite and other container planting materials. Bark is another story- everything I find is too large, any help is appreciated! :D

Only he can say for sure, but I think Al's recipes call for pine bark because it's pretty easy to find good bark on the east coast. He also recommends fir bark, which seems to be more common around here right now, but that may be because everything is scarce off season. Some members have posted about finding something called mini nuggets that were just right for 5-1-1. There's no standard terminology for this stuff, so the only way to tell if it's right is to open the bag to get a closer look. A guy at HD was happy to do that for me and even had a bunch of tape 'patches' to close the bag when I was done. Mulch can be completely uncomposted, slightly composted, or so broken down that only a small portion of a bag is usable. "Soil conditioner" is often exactly the kind of bark fines that work in 5-1-1 or even gritty mix, but I've seen bags labeled soil conditioner made of all kinds of things that wouldn't act like bark fines in either mix.