I use the gritty for slow growing woody plants (japanese maples, japanese red pine, etc) and the 5-1-1 for fast growing annuals (Lantana, Cuphea, etc) and a modified 5-1-1 (for Salvia) which is 3-1-1 with the "1" pearlite replaced by Diatomaceous earth (OptiSorb from FastenAll) for increased water holding capacity. Although this year I'm going to do a pot with 3-1-1 and one with straight Miracle Grow for the Salvia. They are on my deck in full sun, I mean dawn to dusk FULL sun! and there is a bit of a wind tunnel effect. I have to water 2x a day in 90+ weather or they will start to wilt. They are dark green and lose a lot of water perspiring, and I like to put 2 plants in a 4 gallon (ish) pot so there are a ton of blooms for the hummingbirds!

1) For most houseplants, full repots which include bare-rooting and a soil change are best done in the month prior to the most robust growth. For you, that would be mid-Jun through Jul. If you have good indoor (supplemental) lighting, you can probably get away with repotting any time, but recovery time will be considerably slower if you do it in the short day months with plants under natural indoor light. 2) Key, are the size of the particles and their stability. If both are appropriate, it's fine. Particles in the 1/10 - 1/8" range are best. 3) There are lots of threads discussing where to find bark. I often find it at big box stores or nurseries. It's sold as mulch, soil conditioner, clay soil conditioner, aged pine bark fines, double grind pine bark, and other names. I recently found some for Linda in TX by calling nurseries and asking them if they had pine bark small enough to be suitable for use in container media. If 'NO', my next question would automatically be "Do you know who would, in the immediate area?" In this case it lead me to a bulk supplier of double grind. 4) You can usually buy hardware cloth by the foot at smaller hardware stores. Al

Hey Al, just wanted to make sure that 2 years later all this advice is current. Some of my gritty mix is now just about 2 years old also. It seems to be holding up but I got to thinking, like some of those in this thread, that it sure would be nice to have a permanent mixture for the long term plantings, by withholding the organic ingredient. Plus it's one less ingredient to have to buy and later screen. I see your main purpose for including it was to lessen the fears of potential gritty mix users that plants couldn't possibly grow in it. It's also used to average the particle size and water retention of the two other ingredients. I use FP to fertilize and look after my plants often enough that this isn't a fear of mine. I utilized a 1:1 ratio of Cherrystone:Turface for two basjoo banana trees planted in the ground here in zone 4. I have heavy clay and when I grew them the last time, they grew slow and their corms later rotted over the winter. I also don't think I properly watered/fertilized. So this year after reading your posts in the link below, I upped the FP by 4x to 1 tsp of FP per gal, rather than 1/4 tsp I used before, and brought the PH down to 5.5 with vinegar rather than the unacidified 7 of my tap water. I know you water with this dosage weekly with outdoor plants but I watered with it almost every day during the hot summer days with no apparent issues. I found that this amount of FP was too much for the indoor plants though... I also experimented with digging about a 4-5 gal hole where I planted the bananas and poured in the 1:1, so at least some of the soil near the corm and roots didn't have to deal with the heavy clay. The plants grew waaay faster this summer and hopefully it'll help the stems/corms survive this winter. I utilized the 1:1 before reading your post in this thread about using a higher ratio of granite/cherrystone to compensate for the small particle size of the turface. Even though the basjoo's did great in the 1:1, I'm guessing in a pot, a proper ratio (2:1 or 3:2 like you mentioned) would be a bit more important. Is this a safe assumption? Here is a link that might be useful: Fertilizing advice

Aslan...... The fact that you said..."there still MUST be plenty of moisture scares me" worries me..lol You can't take a chance with gardenia when it comes to moisture in your root zone, especially at a time like this. Do yourself and your tree a favor and get a wooden barbecue skewer or a wooden dowel and check for moisture in the root zone to make 'absolutely' certain there is until you get use to watering the mix. You can't afford to let the root zone go completely dry and you can't afford to over water either. You have to make sure that when you pull the stick out after checking the roots that it is not dry, nor still wet. With gardenia, you need to water before it gets completely dry, evenly moist they call it..Get it? :-) Newgen..How are you? The 5.1.1 mix is good for short term plantings and the gritty mix for long term plantings within the same pots for periods of time. Both are excellent though and it's up to you to choose onne that lasts longer than the other. Good luck:-)