Seven months late, but thanks, @the_yard_guy! ;-) Gritty mix is wonderful. Thanks to Al and his generous sharing of this mix and 5:1:1, I have become a better gardener overall. It's not just about having things in these particular mixes -- it's that even in the worst of soils, I understand plants a little better. Even when my brain is YELLING that something needs to be watered and that it's drying up --- my experience with these two mixes and how little water plants actually can live off of made me a much better plant mother! This Pachira was one of the pots shown in the original "migration" to gritty mix. It's not enormous but it's never had a single issue or problem since, and it grows ever so steadily and healthily. I could bet that I'd have killed it about ~~~ 10 months ago if I hadn't switched to gritty mix. :) All it gets is some tap water whenever I remember, and a dose of Foliage Pro if and when I feel like it, which is usually no more than once a month. This gorgeous plant really needs for nothing more, apparently. These days, I have quite a few things in 5:1:1 and almost all of my succulents that I still have are in gritty mix. Not having any more pebbles or bark on hand anymore (which must be replenished!), I've also potted in ProMix HP for a lot of my newer plants. But how I treat plant has changed drastically since learning more about roots and what they need, and what they usually go through to survive because of my torture, haha. Especially over the last half year, there were many times I had to leave town for an extended amount of time, and it always intrigued me to see which stayed alive for 10 days without a drop of water -- and which, despite having been soaked before leaving, decided to sulk and/or die. Due to these absences, I gave a bunch of my plants away and kept mostly succulents and a few houseplants only, but it was a learning experience overall. Anyway - -just wanted to give Al yet another kudos, thanks and a big high five for all the information he shares! Grace

PP - your need to disagree or refute anything I offer is becoming so obviously overworked across the forums that no one should be surprised if after I suggested to someone that a 100 ft deep crack in the earth should be leaped in a single bound, you would campaign vigorously that it should only be attempted in 2. The gritty mix is so widely variable for water retention that it is difficult to make the claim it holds either too much water or too little, and at the same time suggest that you understand how to implement the concept behind the soil. They are mutually exclusive. If you don't understand that, you really shouldn't be using it because soil choice isn't going to compensate for that lack of understanding. Using the ingredients you used, it can be made very water retentive by increasing the volume of screened Turface and commensurately decreasing the volume of grit. It can be made less water retentive by increasing the amount of grit and decreasing the amount of screened Turface. If your soil had too little or too much water retention, it's not the soil's fault that you lack an understanding of how to implement the concept that inspired it. That's on the grower. If you don't want to go through the effort or expense of making it, I get that. A good grower with an understanding of how soil choice impacts what happens in the rhizosphere can grow in almost anything, with some reasonable attention to detail. You have had a great deal of trouble getting things to grow under conventional container culture - your posts are full of reports of the plant casualties in your recent past (pre gritty mix), yet you're an overnight expert on the gritty mix, pronouncing the soil a failure after a brief trial. The fact is, even if the gritty mix did happen to be a poor soil, it's still the grower who bears responsibility for the health of the plant - not the soil. It's not the recipe or even the ingredients that are important, and you missed that point by a wide margin. From your posts, it's easy to see you want something foolproof to grow in, that takes no effort to make, and doesn't require any sort of understanding of the science that governs both the successful and the failed growing experience. Those are very high expectations, but I do hope you find what you're looking for. BTW - Soil temperatures are determined by a LOT of variables. Growing in black cans in z9 is going to kill roots if you can't shade them - period. What drives soil temperatures is sun load on the container, area of container surface exposed to direct sun, the container's color/light transmittance (degree of opacity/translucence), the color of the soil at the surface (dark soils absorb more heat than light soils), and how well the soil exchanges gases. The two characteristic of the soil that actually matter most are soil color and rate of gas exchange. The lighter the soil, the less heat it absorbs at its surface. The greater its gas exchange, the greater the effect of evaporative cooling. The gritty mix is lighter in color than most other soils and has better gas exchange than anything you've grown in, so with all other things being equal, there isn't anything you're apt to grow in that wouldn't find you dealing with much warmer soil temps than the gritty mix. It runs 10-15* cooler on hot days than even the 5:1:1 mix, which is another well aerated soil. Best luck in the upcoming growth cycle. I hope you fare well. Al

Sure! I can certainly post back once I have some results to report. I have a tendency to dive much deeper than necessary into details of any hobby I take on...in the end I'm sure a lot of these details aren't critical. I'm in a detail-oriented profession so I think it's just a natural mindset for me to fall into. In this case though, the more I think about the whole coco media buffering, the more I realize that most people who have to worry about it are growing in 100% coco-based media or are utilizing hydroponics. Any of the negative effects I would experience from unbuffered coco (if there would actually be any such negative effect in practice) should be largely offset by the fact that the coco is only 1/3 of my mix. Also I'm applying a fertilizer with every watering that has calcium and magnesium in it so the cation exchange issue should theoretically only be temporary as the media should balance over time. Some of the research I've read indicates that it is more important for the coco to be properly washed to a low electrical conductivity than it is for the cation exchange complex to be buffered. This is because seedlings and young plants are substantially more sensitive to the negative effects of high sodium exposure than they are to a temporary deficient quantity of available calcium/magnesium. The good news is that most of the high quality sources of coco products are washed to a very low electrical conductivity, it's just hit or miss whether a particular manufacturer buffers or not. Since I'm going to be growing a few plants each of some of my aji limon peppers and purple jalapenos, I think I might try buffering some coco and not buffering the other coco and see if there is a noticeable performance difference between the two if the rest of the mix is the same. It would obviously only be anecdotal, but it would still be an interesting thing to see!

In a container situation, pH is of minimal concern :-) You are supplying all the nutrients the plants require via routine fertilization so there is really no issue about nutrients being 'bound' or unavailable as would be the case with a pH imbalance in regular garden soil. Having said that, you do not want to the pH to swing too far in either direction and on the slightly acidic side of the scale is preferred......5.0 is not too acidic for most plants and the less acidic (not more alkaline!!) tap water is helping to moderate that. If you think that is still too low, you can modify slightly with some dolomitic lime - just a couple of tablespoons is all that is necessary for a 5G container of soil mix. btw, succs prefer an acidic soil so you are good in that regard.