He's probably thinking of parboiled rice hulls; and, while they are reasonably stable for the duration of a normal greenhouse production cycle, their lack of long term stability would likely lead to structural problems for long term plantings (a year or longer). As an aside, when they have started to break down, fungus gnats love them. I'll take a moment to point out that concentrating on your medium's structure and structural stability to the degree you can be sure your soil will remain stable for the expected interval between (complete) repots is a very good way to approach media for container culture. Al

rager ... I got quite excited and emailed that company. Here is their extremely thorough response: "we Dillo dirt only. we only level st Augustine grass ". lovely. Seems like there is money to be made in the area as no one either A - knows how to do it or B - wants to do it. Out of curiosity do you remember who you used and what they charged? The picture looks like they did a great job. I'm leaning towards doing it myself and renting some equipment. I've convinced a neighbor to do it with me and rent a bobcat for loading the dirt into the back of a dump trailer pulled by a riding mower than drag it using a homemade drag. Can anyone comment on time of year and if I can do it soon with my backyard already greening up? It would be great to do it at the same time I scalp the yard at the beginning of the season.

My current attempts to take cuttings and root them over the winter are not going well. I normally don't even try, but I need to build up stocks asap, and I have cuttings and room to spare. I'm not sure they would root, even with bottom heat. The last two batches of plants I potted up are just sitting there. We have had quite a cold December. On the other hand, I've got two very healthy Salvia gesneriflora Tequila and a S. karwinskii that I've kept in my 45 degree kitchen (I live in an unheated rental, and I love my electric blanket and my sweaters) for a month. The Tequila went into full bloom around Christmas, and the flowers held on until yesterday. These were plants that were dug out of the ground. They haven't dropped many leaves, and have been growing new foliage at an infinitesimally slow rate. They were dug up after a few near-frost days (I covered them with tarps for the coldest nights). They will soon go into my newly re-erected greenhouse, now that I am about done rearranging the tables inside. I see I will be dealing with botrytis this January, so I will next be thinning out dense foliage, pruning, and getting a fan or two running.

@dani_m08 I use two basic media I make myself. In return for the effort it takes to source ingredients and put the media together, I get media that allows me to water to beyond the point of complete soil saturation with no need to be concerned that I might be over-watering, and a byproduct of highly aerated, free-draining media, which is the ability to have in place a nutritional supplementation program that requires no guesswork. The ability to always water correctly and maintain a sound nutritional supplementation regimen are essential parts of any care plan focused on maximizing your plants' opportunity to realize as much of their genetic potential as possible. My initial foray into growing in pots was the result of an infatuation with bonsai trees. I was thunderstruck when, wandering around a hotel on a business trip, I discovered workers setting up a bonsai show. I fell in love with the diminutive trees and decided right than and there that I HAD to learn how to "do that". I set about chasing that goal but soon discovered I didn't have a clue, and was forever being frustrated because I couldn't keep my trees alive; so, I set the trees aside and hit the books, as this was all in the 1908s before the net was a thing. After about 3-4 years of fairly diligent study, I started over and was blessed by some newfound abilities. Since, I've been devoted to learning how to become more and more proficient in the art. Fortunately, as I learned about soil science and the plant sciences, almost all I learned could be widely applied to almost everything commonly grown in pots. This is the soil I use for mostly succulents and trees: It's made with pine or fir bark, a calcined clay (almost ceramic) product called Turface MVP, and grower size poultry grit or #2 cherrystone. Below, is the mix I use for mixed floral plantings, veggies, and single potted plants other than succulents: It's made from 5 parts of pine bark, and 1 part each of perlite and sphagnum peat, pl;us an appropriate measure of dolomitic (garden) lime. Getting to the place where you can water correctly w/o worry that the soil will remain soggy so long it seriously limits root function or wrecks root health is a real game changer - likely the largest step forward a container gardener can take at any one time. Over the years I've thought a lot about I've given a lot of thought to what represents the shortest route to a green thumb in terms of time and I always come to the same conclusion. It's knowledge. Learning by trial and error, getting bit on the butt by our mistakes, is a hard way to learn. This is especially true in light of the fact that w/o the knowledge to properly evaluate what we're seeing in our plants, we're pretty well doomed to repeat them. Also, our mistakes are often not made manifest until long after the error was committed, making it difficult to put together cause/effect relationships. It makes far more sense to learn all you can and then, use your practical experience (which would otherwise be devoted to trial and error) to validate what you already know. I promise you'll leave the trial and error crowd standing in your slipstream. More often than not, swarms of fungus gnats are the result of watering intervals too short. Often, allowing the soil to dry down and checking moisture levels with a "tell" before you water is all you need to keep populations controlled. Using a 'tell' Over-watering saps vitality and is one of the most common plant assassins, so learning to avoid it is worth the small effort. Plants make and store their own energy source – photosynthate - (sugar/glucose). Functioning roots need energy to drive their metabolic processes, and in order to get it, they use oxygen to burn (oxidize) their food. From this, we can see that terrestrial plants need plenty of air (oxygen) in the soil to drive root function. Many off-the-shelf soils hold too much water and not enough air to support the kind of root health most growers would like to see; and, a healthy root system is a prerequisite to a healthy plant. Watering in small sips in order to avoid over-watering leads to a residual build-up of dissolved solids (salts) in the soil from tapwater and fertilizer solutions - which limits a plant's ability to absorb water – so watering in sips simply moves us to the other horn of a dilemma and creates another problem that requires resolution. Better, would be to simply adopt a soil that drains well enough to allow watering to beyond the saturation point, so we're flushing the soil of accumulating dissolved solids whenever we water; this, w/o the plant being forced to pay a tax in the form of reduced vitality, due to prolong periods of soil saturation. Sometimes, though, that's not a course we can immediately steer, which makes controlling how often we water a very important factor. In many cases, we can judge whether or not a planting needs watering by hefting the pot. This is especially true if the pot is made from light material, like plastic, but doesn't work (as) well when the pot is made from heavier material, like clay, or when the size/weight of the pot precludes grabbing it with one hand to judge its weight and gauge the need for water. Fingers stuck an inch or two into the soil work ok for shallow pots, but not for deep pots. Deep pots might have 3 or more inches of soil that feels totally dry, while the lower several inches of the soil is 100% saturated. Obviously, the lack of oxygen in the root zone situation can wreak havoc with root health and cause the loss of a very notable measure of your plant's potential. Inexpensive watering meters don't even measure moisture levels, they measure electrical conductivity. Clean the tip and insert it into a cup of distilled water and witness the fact it reads 'DRY'. One of the most reliable methods of checking a planting's need for water is using a 'tell' (more reliable than a 'moisture meter'. You can use a bamboo skewer in a pinch, but a wooden dowel rod of about 5/16” (75-85mm) works better. They usually come 48” (120cm) long and can usually be cut in half or in several pieces, depending on how deep your pots are. Sharpen both ends of each tell in a pencil sharpener and slightly blunt the tip so it's about the diameter of the head on a straight pin. Push the wooden tell deep into the soil. Don't worry, it won't harm the root system. If the plant is quite root-bound, you might need to try several places until you find one where you can push it all the way to the pot's bottom. Leave it a few seconds, then withdraw it and inspect the tip for moisture. For most plantings, withhold water until the tell's tip comes out nearly dry. If you see signs of wilting, adjust the interval between waterings so drought stress isn't a recurring issue. Al