Quick update- I have spent all day/night (literally for the past 13 hrs and it is now almost 1am) fretting over the possible death of my guys; reading and reading and becoming more and more confused between the various websites' info. One thing that has not confused me is the confidence everyone on THIS site has in Al's GM [Al, how r u not mass producing this already?! ;-) ] The current status of my guys are that they r not sitting in water but have received 2 very hot and steamy treatments in my bathroom over the course of the night- i am hoping this will mAke due by supplying SOME semblance of water w/o drowning them.... one website I read mentioned letting the roots dry out??? Again- lil Miss Confused over here :-/ All is (hopefully) not lost bc thru my trusty google search and Turface's website, I've located a dealer who is less than 5 miles from me! :-D I'm emailing the unsuspecting manager tomorrow and hopefully will be able to move forward w/ what seems to be one of the hardest of the materials to find. *fingers crossed* I will admit that altho I have pics, I am simply too embarrassed to post them :( and also have further confused myself by reading mentions of the 5:1:1 mix but out of pure exhaustion have not fully read up on-yet. It sounds like Al's GM works for all of my guys including all of the succulents I have managed to NOT kill (yaaaay me!). From the fellow forum members' posts, sounds like I can find the proper bark and granite supplies at my local Home Depot. Al - I know you are out there somewhere and I thank you for sharing this knowledge with the rest of us newbies!!! Will post again RE: the process!

I truly and honestly believe there is a general confusion about soil. Much information has been traded and repeated and taken as truth. Things you want from your soil: 1 - Drainage. Doesn't have to flush like your toilet, just drain well. 2 - Aeration. How well does it air out? 3 - Comfort of Roots... Are you torturing your plant? 4 - Nutrition... Is there anything your plant can consume? Ingredients I use: -Pre-mixed Potting Soil. -All-Purpose Sand - not play sand, not beach sand -Fine Vermiculite -Perlite -Volcanic Pumice AKA Dry Stall Step 1: REMOVE BARK. I begin by sifting my potting soil through a 3/16" sized grate. The main purpose of the sifting is to remove as much of the bark as possible. I watch for twigs and small bark bits that make it through and remove those as I go. Some of the small bits make it into the mix and that's okay because they'll decay pretty quickly. The second purpose of the sifting is that all the chunks of peat (and possibly some clay soil) will get smashed up and your mix will be incredibly fluffy. Also, any foreign objects will be found; nails, bits of wire, human fingers, etc. I use MiracleGro Moisture control mix because of its particular blend and low bark ratio. Step 2: Add sand. I use about 1/3 the volume of the potting soil. 3 scoops soil - 1 scoop sand Step 3: Add vermiculite. The vermiculite is about 1/3 the volume of the sand, maybe a little more. Step 4: Stir it up. Turn all those fines into one blend before you add the grit. Step 5: Add desired amount of Perlite and Pumice. I use about 3 times more Perlite than pumice. For mesembs and greenhouse plants, I use about 40% grit (perlite, pumice, or your substitutes). For outdoor plants, I use more grit, maybe 60% at most. I watched all my plants begin to suffer months after employing a very gritty, very sifted mix that included bark. The plants were becoming too dry between waterings and the roots looked tortured and burned. Some of the pots showed evidence that the roots were actively avoiding the bark chunks. Mesemb Mix - Seed Sowing Mix - Greenhouse Mix

Hi, Tom After I scanned your article, the first thing I did was follow the link to the OSU research you cited. As I read through it, I didn't see anything different than what is contained in an article I wrote back in '94. The wording and discussion is actually so close to what I wrote, that I tried to find out whether that article was written after mine. I think that initially, adding a small fraction of perlite pumice, Turface, things that you usually consider as drainage material to a large fraction of peat, increases drainage, but only until the peat compacts/nests around the 'drainage' material. Perlite is normally included in commercially packaged soils at less than 10% of the whole. Doubling its presence isn't going to increase drainage or reduce the ht of the PWT, though it will reduce the total volume of water the medium is capable of holding. Illustration: start with 10 parts of fine sand that supports a 4" PWT. Add 1 part of BBs. Does the flow through rate change? How about the ht of the PWT or volume of air in the medium? Technically, on a per volume basis, there is a decrease in the % of air in the sand/BB mix compared to only the sand w/o BBs. All that changes is the 'volume' of water in the PWT. Peat may be slightly different because it's interlocking fibers may not compact to the degree that sand will, but remember that the fiberosity exhibits the same properties whether or not there is drainage material present. If peat compacts when there is no drainage material, it will still compact when there is. In order for drainage material to improve flow-through rates, it has to affect gravitational flow potential. In order to do that, it must great pockets where water molecules can adhere to themselves, increasing their collective mass. These large droplets then depend on cohesion to keep them together as gravity acts to move them down and out of the container. If drainage material can't create 'puddles and channels' within the media, it's not going to be effective. I want to comment on some of the things you mentioned as though we're conversing, so I'll make your offerings bold and my reply will be in default type: Drainage though is a bit of a false goal, or a goal based on an assumption. What we really want is to partially dry out the core of the mix at intervals between watering, which prevents that sour core-rot where roots won't live. My focus has always been on aeration, though I recognize the direct/converse relationship between drainage and aeration. The soils I build and suggest are based on the assurance that they will retain ample volumes of air for extended periods - that they are structurally sound. Of course, drainage automatically comes along for the ride. I don't think I would say "What we really want is to partially dry out the core of the mix at intervals between watering". My view is that there is no 'core' to speak of, because water that is not tightly bound to or in media particles moves down to occupy the PWT, which is actually the bane of most commercially prepared container media. Moisture locked in and on soil particles situated above water in the PWT moves quite freely through media by diffusion, so there is never a saturated 'core', only the PWT if the medium supports one. What we really want, is for the PWT to disappear as fast as possible, so a favorable volume of air can return to the soil ASAP. Roots in soggy media begin to die very quickly, often within a few hours or less at temperatures above 60-65*, so PWTs are a decidedly bad thing. Remember please, that here we are looking at media from the plant's perspective. I acknowledge that a PWT can be a necessity to accommodate our ability or our prioritization in terms of how often we can water, but that doesn't change the fact that media that do not support a PWT and need more frequent watering offer greater opportunity, within the limits of other cultural factors, for plants to grow to their genetic potential. That's an important consideration, because if we knowingly use a soil that supports a PWT because it's more convenient, we are sacrificing some degree of growth and vitality on the altar of that convenience. I try to build my soils to maximize water retention and still have no (or very little) perched water. The cyclic death and regeneration of fine rootage exposed to the anaerobic conditions of media that support PWTs is very expensive from the perspective of energy outlay. Energy that might have gone into blooms, fruit, foliage, or just increasing biomass, must be directed to root regeneration subsequent to each time we dare allow our planting to be irrigated to container capacity. Surely drainage helps and is good generally, but you are assuming it is the only way. I think you can see from my offerings that how I approach container media is more complex than only a single narrow perspective would allow. Al I've seen in your other posts where you refer to capillary action of soils as a negative. I couldn't disagree more. Capillary action is the savior of a soil mix; it's the vehicle that brings wet core water & water from the perched water table you described up to the drying surface, and balances moisture throughout the pot. It eliminates the perched water table. Peat has it and bark doesn't. I've never referred to capillary action as a negative. It just is what it is - the product of adhesion + cohesion - no more friend or foe than gravity or diffusion, which is something you didn't consider. Plants absorb water a molecule at a time, and water readily diffuses in media of large particles due to superior gas exchange. Here again, it's kind of a personal choice. You may prefer a soil with good wicking capabilities, but along with that comes the fact that the better they wick the more perched water they support. I, on the other hand, prefer a soil with good gas exchange (diffusion) and no PWT. The price I'm willing to pay is a strengthened watering can arm. ;o) Bark and peat feel dry to the touch when they reach about 40% moisture content, but plants can still extract water from media particles down to about 30-25%, so 'feels dry' isn't necessarily dry. There's a cush there. I understand what's required for wicking SWCs and how water retention in wick-irrigated media varies from media watered from the top, so we can save that talk for another time. Water starts to perch in containers when the soil particles are something just a little larger than .1". As particle size decreases, the ht of the PWT increases inversely. Whether or not bark holds perched water depends on it's size. Obviously, bark the size of Sugar Pops will hold no perched water, but bark ground to the consistency of peat will. Peat may initially hold more air and water than composted bark, but we all know that compaction is a considerable issue for peat; and conifer bark breaks down at roughly 1/4-1/5 the rate of peat, all cultural influences equal. I point to the fact that I always suggest partially composted or uncomposted bark in the soils I use, in sizes up to 3/8" to ensure no or minimal perched water. The grower can then add finer particulates as he/she sees fit to adjust the water retention of the media. When you start with fine particulates, it's very difficult to amend them to increase drainage/aeration, though as noted above, you CAN add materials like perlite that decrease the volume of water the soil can hold. It just makes more sense to me to approach this from the perspective of building a soil that holds no perched water, but is capable of holding an adequate volume of water in micro-pores, leaving macro-pores largely open, than it is to adopt a soil that, at container capacity, always has a significant fraction of available macroporosity clogged with water. Again, it has much to do with trade offs and what we are willing to do insofar as watering frequency (convenience), but the more highly aerated soil with better gas exchange, which occurs partially because we need to irrigate more frequently, offers better potential. I've grown extensively in both, and if the results weren't significantly better, I'd probably still be growing in a peat or compost-based soil. As always, YMMV. Good talking to you Tom. Al

macbettz, yes, I do have access to plenty of camel dung when we go driving in the desert..especially the areas with the trees :) We see it all the time! If the dung is completely dried up does that mean it is aged enough? I will take some gloves for the next trip out to the desert :) tumblingtomatoes, I will keep an update as my tomatoes grow in the containers :) unfortunately, I am not a huge fan of cherry tomatoes. It might just have been the variety...but earilier this year my husband received a cherry tomato plant that we kept and my brother-in-law grew a TON of cherry tomatoes but they were just waaaaay too sweet for me. ok... I just did a google search for the Matt's Cherry & Spoon and found this blog post: http://www.thisgardenisillegal.com/2008/10/matts-wild-cherry-tomato-hannas-tomato-tastings-2008.html I think I might be ordering these now! I think my MIL will like this one. :D