Use a quality potting soils. Maybe even a cactus soils. Add more perlite or grit or sands to those. They like a fast drainage...no doubt about that. Fast drainage will help when you feed it too. Lowers any chance of burn. Mangoes dont like peat much. Dilute for sure.

I've added cedar shavings (the kind found in the pet supplies for about $2-3) to many of my plants when I repotted them and never encountered any problems. I never added much, just a generous handful or two, depending on the size of whichever pot I'm using. I'm not saying that it's the best choice, just that I've never had any problems from using it. Back when I still used perlite in my mixes, I only added it to the lower half, to two-thirds of the soil, where it stayed buried and out of sight. I never added it to the top third of the soil because it always floated to the surface whenever I'd go to water my plants. But now I refrain from using perlite at all; the only exception being my orchids. There's nothing wrong with using it. I just got tired of it being in my soil mixes. I would recommend using Miracle Gro Orchid Mix (coarse blend), it's pretty cheap and works great. Ironically, I don't use this for any of my orchids. For them, they get much better quality materials. But for my other plants, it works wonderfully.

My "marbles" are made up of glass (perlite) AND absorbent pieces of sponge (MG soil). Now I do know that perlite doesn't absorb water but it does hold on to it on the surface. Imagine you spray water on a mirror. It won't become part of the mirror, but will stay there until it evaporates from room temperature. Now my pieces of sponge (MG soil) DO absorb water and then they slowly dry as room temperature draws it out of the top of the pot. This action makes the sponges in the pot shrink or contract. But if there is a wick touching the sponges and marbles, the wick will keep bringing water up to them from the bottom reservoir to continually supply small amounts of water. This keeps the sponges damp and dampness on the marbles somewhat. All of these actions work together to keep air moving in and out of the soil. It is a continual push and shove. Add growing roots to the mix and their movement further "pushes" the sponges and marbles hither and yon. Continual movement necessary to have all important air in the root ball. Now, that is the way it happens in my head. And this is why, to me, plain perlite would not be a good thing to use. Or plain vermiculite. Although I have had success with barely damp plain vermiculite (and I mean BARELY damp!) with Christmas Cactus cuts and a few other things. Not wicking. But for wicking violets, I prefer the 1/2 soil 1/2 perlite (a very generous 1/2 perlite). I don't use charcoal or vermiculite. Don't know why. I suppose a little bit,,,,maybe just a scattering worked in real well might be helpful. For these reasons, I don't understand why a wick will go dry. Especially when there is water in the reservoir. The continuous action worked well for the longest time. Is it the fault of the wick? Do they just fail after a while? Mind you it doesn't happen often at all. But every now and then,,,,, And I do have a very absorbent wick. I also let the potted plant sit in water until the entire root ball is wet. Then I set it on the reservoir. Seems to me the chain has no reason to be broken! And yet it does. And I don't know why. Rosie

Hey Russ - yes, I like not only the outcome of the turface, but the simplicity! I can order a 50 pound bag and it will be enough for a couple years I think. I do filter using a mesh strainer - I know some folks get really technical and use bonsai sifters, but I haven't felt the need thus far. I separate coarse material for relatively mature plants and the fines are used for cuttings. Some cuttings, I use unsifted turface, such as jades: I figured they need the fines to start rooting, but need more drainage than the average cutting. I haven't lost a single jade cutting using this approach. I have some azalea cuttings, euonymous, and bougainvillea that are all doing well in turface fines, simply sitting on my front porch (no extra cover for humidity, getting dappled morning sun). My Fernwood (or japonica) sans put out a lot of new growth including a flower when I switched to turface from Gritty Mix, but I haven't tried my trifasciata or cylindrical in turface yet. Al (Tapla) talks about gritty mix on other threads; I'm going to try to paraphrase, and hope I don't misinterpret anything. Bark is the organic that holds a lot of water, but is slow to abosrb, which is why we often soak bark before using it: otherwise all the water runs right over it and out the bottom. I believe one of his stated reasons for granite, beyond drainage without holding water for longer periods, is that it does hold drops of water on it's exterior after watering which can be absorbed more slowly by bark. AKA, it helps bark absorb/retain water. However, when I've repotted plants in gritty mix, I've found the top to be dry and sometimes more moisture (not humidity) in the lower parts of the pot, presumably because of water sitting on granite. Conversely with turface, it gets absorbed quickly, it doesn't sit in drops or pools, and it gets released slowly/consistently as humidity, which is what roots want: a combination of H20 and O2. That being said, Al is many fold more knowledgeable than me - these are just my musings as I spend way too much time watching my plants ;) Regarding "improve other aspects of care," I think your right, people have more access to ideas and information, this thread being a great example. I look back on the way I approached my plants a few years ago while I was just starting to absorb information from this site and other sources, and I've made great improvements (with a long way to go still). So while I learned here that no amount of perlite will fix miracle grow (at some point, the plants simply fall out of the pot because the perlite is so light!), I also learned a lot of other things, so it is hard to compare the results I had with soil to the results I'm getting with turface.