Alright exciting progress today. I went to the store and picked up.. An aluminium 1/16th inch insect screen, a 1/4th inch wire screen and a 25 pound bag of mannapro poultry grit. I sifted the bark and ended up with this, and I'm impressed with the result. This is what did not fall through the 1/4th screen. This is what did fall through Most of the bark was less than 1/4th, the red bucket is the less than 1/4, the white is large than 1/4th. Both are 5 gallon buckets. The more interesting result i think is what happened with the oil dry. It had already been through a 1/16th inch fiberglass screen, and i kept what was on top. But i was SHOCKED how much more fell through the 1/16th inch metal screen. And most interestingly, before I ran it through the metal screen it was in a 5 gallon bucket and it was almost full to the top, maybe down 1 inch or so. After i screened it and put the good stuff back in the bucket, it was full to almost the exact same place!!! So much so that if i added the stuff that feel through the screen on top, it would have over flowed the bucket. This means that the stuff that was screened out was simply *in between* the bigger pieces, taking up precious space for air. :-) This is what fell through the 1/16th inch aluminium insect screen So, here is batch number 2, a much larger batch, with less small pieces of oil dry, and less large pieces of pine bark. Oh, and the second bag of granite was purple instead of white/gray, not sure why? Time to repot some things!

Thanks! It was an Ebay steal, so I'm not certain who the grower or supplier was... but the seller is in Michigan. The bulbs arrived via USPS Priority Mail, and were packed very nicely. I called the Post Office as soon as I knew they had been shipped, and she called me this morning to say the box was there! I picked it up right after lunch! I just finished potting it up, and it took a really large pot! Now for the recipes... I'm going to copy/paste the article and recipes in their entirety for anyone interested in the text that goes along with the recipes for Al's Mix... I must give credit where it's due... Tapla, or Al, is responsible for the article, the knowledge, and the mix. He's also responsible for many happy gardeners! Read on... Container Soils - Water Movement and Retention A Discussion About Soils As container gardeners, our first priority should be to insure the soils we use are adequately aerated for the life of the planting, or in the case of perennial material (trees, shrubs, garden perennials), from repot to repot. Soil aeration/drainage is the most important consideration in any container planting. Soil is the foundation that all container plantings are built on, and aeration is the cornerstone of that foundation. Since aeration and drainage are inversely linked to soil particle size, it makes good sense to try to find and use soils or primary components with particles larger than peat. That components retain their structure for extended periods is also extremely important. Pine and some other types of conifer bark fit the bill nicely and Ill talk more about them later. The following also hits pretty hard against the futility of using a drainage layer in an attempt to improve drainage. It just doesn't work. All it does is reduce the amount soil available for root colonization. A wick will remove water from the saturated layer of soil at the container bottom. It works in reverse of the self-watering pots widely being discussed on this forum now. Since there are many questions about soils appropriate for use in containers, I'll post basic mix recipes later, in case any would like to try the soil. It will follow the Water Movement info. Consider this if you will: Soil need fill only a few needs in plant culture. Anchorage - A place for roots to extend, securing the plant and preventing it from toppling. Nutrient Sink - It must retain sufficient nutrients in available form to sustain plant systems. Gas Exchange - It must be sufficiently porous to allow air to the root system and by-product gasses to escape. And finally, Water - It must retain water enough in liquid and/or vapor form to sustain plants between waterings. Most plants could be grown without soil as long as we can provide air, nutrients, and water, (witness hydroponics). Here, I will concentrate primarily on the movement of water in soil(s). There are two forces that cause water to move through soil - one is gravity, the other capillary action. Gravity needs little explanation, but for this writing I would like to note: Gravitational flow potential (GFP) is greater for water at the top of the container than it is for water at the bottom. I'll return to that later. Capillarity is a function of the natural forces of adhesion and cohesion. Adhesion is water's tendency to stick to solid objects like soil particles and the sides of the pot. Cohesion is the tendency for water to stick to itself. Cohesion is why we often find water in droplet form - because cohesion is at times stronger than adhesion, waterÂs bond to itself can be stronger than the bond to the object it might be in contact with; in this condition it forms a drop. Capillary action is in evidence when we dip a paper towel in water. The water will soak into the towel and rise several inches above the surface of the water. It will not drain back into the source. It will stop rising when the GFP equals the capillary attraction of the fibers in the paper. There will be a naturally occurring "perched water table" (PWT) in containers when soil particulate size is under about .125 (1/8) inch.. This is water that occupies a layer of soil that is always saturated & will not drain from the portion of the pot it occupies. It can evaporate or be used by the plant, but physical forces will not allow it to drain. It is there because the capillary pull of the soil at some point will surpass the GFP; therefore, the water does not drain, it is "perched". The smaller the size of the particles in a soil, the greater the height of the PWT. If we fill five cylinders of varying heights and diameters with the same soil mix and provide each cylinder with a drainage hole, the PWT will be exactly the same height in each container. This saturated area of the pot is where roots seldom penetrate & where root problems frequently begin due to a lack of aeration. Water and nutrient uptake are also compromised by lack of air in the root zone. Keeping in mind the fact that the PWT height is soil dependent and has nothing to do with height or shape of the container, we can draw the conclusion that: Tall growing containers will always have a higher percentage of unsaturated soil than squat containers when using the same soil mix. The reason: The level of the PWT will be the same in each container, with the taller container providing more usable, air holding soil above the PWT. Physiology dictates that plants must have oxygen at the root zone in order to maintain normal root function. A given volume of large soil particles has less overall surface area when compared to the same volume of small particles and therefore less overall adhesive attraction to water. So, in soils with large particles, GFP more readily overcomes capillary attraction. They drain better. We all know this, but the reason, often unclear, is that the height of the PWT is lower in coarse soils than in fine soils. The key to good drainage is size and uniformity of soil particles. Mixing large particles with small is often very ineffective because the smaller particles fit between the large, increasing surface area which increases the capillary attraction and thus the water holding potential. When we add a coarse drainage layer under our soil, it does not improve drainage. It does though, conserve on the volume of soil required to fill a pot and it makes the pot lighter. When we employ this exercise in an attempt to improve drainage, what we are actually doing is moving the level of the PWT higher in the pot. This simply reduces the volume of soil available for roots to colonize. Containers with uniform soil particle size from top of container to bottom will yield better and more uniform drainage and have a lower PWT than containers with drainage layers. The coarser the drainage layer, the more detrimental to drainage it is because water is more (for lack of a better scientific word) reluctant to make the downward transition because the capillary pull of the soil above the drainage layer is stronger than the GFP. The reason for this is there is far more surface area for water to be attracted to in the soil above the drainage layer than there is in the drainage layer, so the water "perches". I know this goes against what most have thought to be true, but the principle is scientifically sound, and experiments have shown it as so. Many nurserymen are now employing the pot-in-pot or the pot-in-trench method of growing to capitalize on the science. If you discover you need to increase drainage, you can simply insert an absorbent wick into a drainage hole & allow it to extend from the saturated soil to a few inches below the bottom of the pot, or allow it to contact soil below the container where it can be absorbed. This will successfully eliminate the PWT & give your plants much more soil to grow in as well as allow more, much needed air to the roots. Uniform size particles of fir, hemlock or pine bark are excellent as the primary component of your soils. The lignin contained in bark keeps it rigid and the rigidity provides air-holding pockets in the root zone far longer than peat or compost mixes that too quickly break down to a soup-like consistency. Conifer bark also contains suberin, a lipid sometimes referred to as natureÂs preservative. Suberin is what slows the decomposition of bark-based soils. It contains highly varied hydrocarbon chains and the microorganisms that turn peat to soup have great difficulty cleaving these chains. In simple terms: Plants that expire because of drainage problems either die of thirst because the roots have rotted and can no longer take up water, or they starve/"suffocate" because there is insufficient air at the root zone to insure normal water/nutrient uptake and root function. To confirm the existence of the PWT and the effectiveness of using a wick to remove it, try this experiment: Fill a soft drink cup nearly full of garden soil. Add enough water to fill to the top, being sure all soil is saturated. Punch a drain hole in the bottom of the cup & allow to drain. When the drainage stops, insert a wick into the drain hole . Take note of how much additional water drains. Even touching the soil with a toothpick through the drain hole will cause substantial additional water to drain. This is water that occupied the PWT before being drained by the wick. A greatly simplified explanation of what occurs is: The wick "fools" the water into thinking the pot is deeper, so water begins to move downward seeking the "new" bottom of the pot, pulling the rest of the water in the PWT along with it. If there is interest, there are other simple and interesting experiments you can perform to confirm the existence of a PWT in container soils. I can expand later. I remain cognizant of these physical principles whenever I build a soil. I havenÂt used a commercially prepared soil in many years, preferring to build a soil or amend one of my 2 basic mixes to suits individual plantings. I use many amendments when building my soils, but the basic building process starts with conifer bark and perlite. Sphagnum peat usually plays a minor, or at least a secondary role in my container soils because it breaks down too quickly and when it does, it impedes drainage and reduces aeration. Note that there is no sand or compost in the soils I use. Sand, though it can improve drainage in some cases, reduces aeration by filling valuable macro-pores in soils. Unless sand particle size is fairly uniform and/or larger than about ½ BB size I leave it out of soils. Compost is too unstable for me to consider using in soils. The small amount of micronutrients it supplies can easily be delivered by one or more of a number of chemical or organic sources. My Basic Soil I'll give two recipes. I usually make big batches. I also frequently add agricultural sulfur to some soils for acid-lovers or to soils I use dolomitic lime in. 5 parts pine bark fines 1 part sphagnum peat (not reed or sedge peat please) 1-2 parts perlite garden lime (or gypsum in some cases) controlled release fertilizer (if preferred) micronutrient powder, other continued source of micronutrients, or fertilizer with all minors Big batch: 2-3 cu ft pine bark fines 5 gallons peat 5 gallons perlite 2 cups dolomitic (garden) lime (or gypsum in some cases) 2 cups CRF (if preferred) 1/2 cup micronutrient powder (or other source of the minors) Small batch: 3 gallons pine bark 1/2 gallon peat 1/2 gallon perlite 4 tbsp lime (or gypsum in some cases) 1/4 cup CRF micro-nutrient powder (or other source of the minors) I have seen advice that some highly organic (practically speaking - almost all are highly organic) container soils are productive for up to 5 years or more. I disagree and will explain why if there is interest. Even if you were to substitute fir bark for pine bark in this recipe (and this recipe will long outlast any peat based soil) you should only expect a maximum of two to three years life before a repot is in order. Usually perennials, including trees (they're perennials too, you know) ;o) should be repotted more frequently to insure vigor closer to their genetic potential. If a soil is desired that will retain structure for long periods, we need to look more to inorganic components. Some examples are crushed granite, pea stone, coarse sand (see above - usually no smaller than ½ BB size in containers, please), Haydite, lava rock (pumice), Turface or Schultz soil conditioner, and others. Thank you for your interest. Al Fassezke

The best medium to plant newly rooted figs in is one that provides the greatest amount of aeration and ensures that aeration for the expected interval between repots but is still something you can deal with as far as the intervals between watering. IOW, you'll get the best growth from a soil you need to water daily or even twice a day, but if that is too inconvenient, you'll need to adjust to something more tolerable. How much vitality you sacrifice for convenience depends almost entirely on how far you go in the other direction and how fast air returns to the soil after a thorough watering. E.g., if you were using a soil/plant combination that required daily watering and could magically change the soil to one that only required watering every two days, there would be some degree of sacrifice in potential growth and vitality. If though, you could magically change to a soil that required watering only every 5 days, there would be a considerable sacrifice in growth potential and vitality. Soils that remain waterlogged for extended periods kill roots, and the plant pays to regenerate those roots by spending energy it would normally have put toward increasing mass, more blooms or fruit, extending branches ...... You may be referring to something I wrote about roots: While fig cuttings may root readily in water, the roots produced this way are quite different from those produced in a solid, soil-like or highly aerated medium (perlite, screened Turface, very coarse sand, e.g.). Physiologically, you will find these roots to be much more brittle than normal roots due to a much higher % of aerenchyma (a tissue with a greater percentage of inter-cellular air spaces than normal parenchyma). If you want to eventually plant your rooted cuttings in soil, it is probably not best to root them in water because of the frequent difficulty in transplanting them to soil. The "water roots" often break during transplanting & those that don't break are very poor at water absorption and often die. The practical effect is nearly equivalent to starting the cutting process over again with a cutting having diminished energy reserves. If you do a side by side comparison of cuttings rooted in water & cuttings rooted in a solid well-aerated medium, the cuttings in a solid well-aerated medium will always (for an extremely high % of plants) have a leg up in development on those moved from water to a solid medium for the reasons outlined above. Al

L.A. Please do tell what your Turface source was. AFAIK (for non-mail order) some from NYC have used SiteOne at $27+/bag (was John Deere Landscaping) out in NJ or a garden center out in Long Island. Recall others here said they did pickups in Brooklyn (Gravesend) from a residential house/mail-order Bonsai business, but personally I never got a response to inquiries.) There are much more serious NYC growers here (often in C&S) who'll probably post, but I'll summarize my own limited experiences in case it helps. Probably depends a lot on where in the city you are. If you drive it's often quicker to head out of the city than thread through it to find media components. And it may be cheaper to pay high shipping charges for mail order, than what might be spent on gas and tolls to source things. uncomposted bark for 1:1:1 gritty mix: After screening, I find about half of a ReptiBark bag is between 1/4"-1/8". I never found anything else local. Looked for orchid clubs, but they seem to have few and irregular meetings (schedules like "third Sat of every other month unless postponed") with only a random chance of bark for sale. (Unless there are some with absolutely no online presence.) Get the impression that since Nero Wolfe left the city, Westchester and Long Island may be better bets for orchid societies. Only ever found one reference to a "show" with vendors, and that was out in Suffolk County. Mail order has many options. Especially if you don't want to screen. Some here reported using a fir-bark vender in OH (Roberts), but I've gotten the best price from a vendor in PA (FirstRays), because of closer=cheaper shipping and regular discounts. They sell Besgrow's Orchiata bark - it's a processed and sized pine-bark for orchids. Precision grade at 4-6 mm and Classic at 6-9 mm. "partially-composted" bark for 5:1:1: Most commonly find (unusable) cedar mulch stocked in and near NYC. Sometimes see (huge) pine bark nuggets (but don't have access to a metal-blade leaf-mulcher-vac, and the nuggets are too dense - or my car too light - to crush them as people here say). Occasionally see shredded pine mulch (unusable bark+wood mix). Never located anything good at HD or Lowes. If you're near the trendier parts of Brooklyn, Gowanus Nursery carries a soil conditioner (aged pine bark fines) that has been reported either good, or too small/composted (sounds like you have to check the bag). Others have used Agway-associated garden centers on L.I. (Hicksville is closest), or Northern NJ, for their brand, but have to check stock or ask if they'll order. Also, for stuff like perlite, some here have mentioned a larger hydroponic shop in Queens. Never been there, but think they mean Hydroponic Garden Center/Beer Brewing Supplies in Flushing. There was an old-time Agway associated pet/feed store in the Bronx (Morrisania), but heard it closed a couple of years back.