I also ordered from John last year. He ran out of some of the items I ordered, however, he did not quickly refund me. He told me he would come back the following weekend with the balance of my order (some 15 bags of pine bark, and various bags turface and grit if I remember properly) and then promptly vanished from the face of the earth. No reply to my phone messages, e-mails, etc. Eventually I had to fight the charges through my credit card. It is no surprise to me that his website went down. This year I got my pine bark from Agway and it is pretty good, though I find myself spending a bit more time than I'd like picking out sapwood. Alex

Virtually all clays are made of aluminum phyllosilicates - the aluminum is locked into insoluble layered crystals. In fact, turface is calcined montmorillonite / illite, both of which are aluminum phyllosilicate clay minerals. It's only soluble aluminum ions that cause phytotoxicity, the form in clay is essentially inert. Attapulgite as a turface substitute is discussed by Al in the link below. Its not clear if the product you bought is calcined - perhaps you could call and ask. Or just do the water test - soak it in water for a couple days and see if it stays hard, intact, and stable. If you have freezing temperatures, you may want to try freezing/thawing as well. Calcining converts the clay to a hard, stable, inert ceramic - making it useful as a growing media. The upshot of the linked thread is that surface area, porosity, and nitrate retention of attapulgite are inferior.

If shopping, Turface MVP can be bought at Horizon Landscaping and irrigation, Dublin; Close Feed has Dry Stall (crushed pumice) NOT TO BE confused with Stall-dry. There is also a stone yard out in Dublin with small (3/8") lava rock in bulk; sorry, forgot the name....google can help with that,

Often, searching for the right ingredients in the right sizes with which to build a decent gritty medium can be difficult, but if you think of it more in terms of a treasure hunt, you can actually have a little fun with it! You'd be surprised at the different places our ingredients can hide... I located the fir bark I needed at PetsMart, as a reptile bedding product. It's called ReptiBark, packaged by ZooMed. Other places to locate pine/fir bark fines can include orchid growers, mulch companies, garden centers, home improvement stores... and you might find other ingredients, such as granite chips, at farm oriented stores, or gravel companies. Some ingredients can be located at hydroponic stores, stores catering to bonsai growers, or online suppliers of various materials. Or... perhaps someone over at the Container Gardening Forum can help you locate the items you need. I've included a link to a thread that might contain pertinent information for you... I'm not entirely sure, but it's worth looking at... link below. Here's another link to a website on bonsai which might help... copy/paste the web address into your browser... http://www.bonsai4me.com/Basics/Basicscatlitter.htm Good luck... and if we can help further, we'll certainly try! :-) Here is a link that might be useful: Ingredients by State/Region...