The University of Missouri has a system called Missouri Gravel Beds that was designed to hold bareroot trees for all season planting. The gravel beds are pea gravel and turface which is quite close to gritty mix. Considering they use that system to hold 12 foot trees and gritty mix holds more water, I think gritty mix can work just fine for bareroot trees. It will definitely be easier than barerooting a cotainer plant.

I have no idea about the pics, though blog.com has a reputation for a lot of down-time. Thanks for letting me know! If you click again another time, hopefully it will work better. Hard to complain much about a free thingie, so I won't. Sorry it frustrated you! The pics here are of a diff plant, but the very same principle. " I am wondering if there's a way to have loose airy soil that that also have enough nutrients without frequent fertilizing." Generally yes, a bigger pot/more volume of soil mix. I would forego the styro & compost. The styro will just cause you to need to water (and repot) more often. Fertilizer is much more efficient at delivering nutrients in a pot which is not a large enough environment for the natural decomposition process to appropriately sustain/fortify plants. Also, as decomposition happens, the result is tiny, water-logged, airless particles (mud.) More about soil/watering. A Dracaena grows so slowly, an occasional dose of weak fertilizer should be more than enough even in the leanest (nutritionally) mix. The mix you described, or any with 30% compost would be too dense for my confidence. The goal of a coarser, grittier mix is to eliminate tiny particles of any type, peat, sand, clay, silt. Think moist particles that have some tiny air spaces between them so there is also oxygen, even when saturated to capacity. It's going way beyond my area of experience to give you a specific recipe since I break the rules I espouse but there are a glut of discussion here about this. I would follow the advice established in those. It gets perpetuated because it works well for so many people/plants. There is a pic of such a mix here, in post dated Wed, Oct 20, 10 at 9:45.

AM - ..... looks like you're new to Houzz - welcome! The link Nil left (above) goes into some considerable detail about maintaining woody material in pots over the long term. You should find it interesting. "How does 5:1:1 mix work?" I don't know if you're looking for something like good/ better/ best comparisons, but if you are, it's a very productive soil that's very forgiving. If you want to understand the nuts & bolts of what makes it work so well, you can find out by clicking this link. I honestly believe that understanding how water behaves in soils and what effect it's behavior has on your ability to keep your plant's root systems happy represents the largest step forward a container grower can take at any one time. Soo very often a grower's proficiency is limited more by his soil choice than any other factor. You can't realistically expect to have healthy plants unless the root system is happy. Anyway ............ rather than go into depth here, I routed you through the link. The discussion has been ongoing since 2005, so it's a popular topic. I doubt you'll get any edible fruit from avocados in Vermont w/o a greenhouse, but there's certainly no reason to stop growing them if you enjoy it. If you are growing your trees because you enjoy the nurturing part, there are a lot of trees you can grow indoors (if you have enough light & warmth) that you can keep small. You also get to enjoy the pruning sessions. I often laugh at myself when I'm involved in the almost surgical pruning of very small plants with a LOT of branch & leaf congestion because I think I must look like a monkey grooming a troop mate. You'll find a recipe toward the end of the OP I linked to above for the 5:1:1 mix. It will serve as good starting point. If you have questions ................... Are you taking any courses related to agriculture, horticulture, botany, .....? Al

Yep, checking soils is one of the basics that we've covered in training but testing the leachate from a pot of succulents growing in bark and chicken grit isn't basic. I love learning about that type of stuff so it is a shame it's not covered in the training! The Master Gardener volunteer program is run thru the county extension office and trains people to help out in the community. The curriculum is geared towards things we'll encounter like lawn care concerns of the average homeowner or identifying and removing invasive plants from public areas I'll share some background. I've read all of Tapla's stuff but it's been several years (before gardenweb merged with houzz) and I haven't kept up with the forums. When I started using his Gritty Mix recipe years ago I was also going by his recommendation for Epsom salt and Miracle Gro "weakly, weekly" (never got around to trying Foliage Pro) but everything was different - my zone, light conditions, the types of succulents that were common in stores, and availability of ingredients. I moved a few years ago and suddenly had an actual house with a yard so my collection of succulents in containers fell by the wayside. Since I recently started as a Master Gardener I realized it was a bit embarrassing that my succulents weren't thriving as they once were. The availability of ingredients is much better so I'm no longer substituting things but I also don't have a huge selection of neat succulents at big box stores. To illustrate why my situation is a problem, picture the sempervivum pot that mayo posted that started from one plant. In my case, that one plant might develop 5 pups and then growth slows to a crawl or worse, the plants start dying. I notice roots are coming out of the drainage hole so I unpot it to find the roots have filled the pot and started circling. This is fine if I've got a pot full of pups because I could divide and the plant would look good and recover. Since the pups aren't filling the pot I either have to move the whole thing to a bigger pot to accommodate all the roots which doesn't look great or trim the excess roots and repot in the same container. The plant is subjected to further stress so it has trouble recovering. I posted this question because I thought if someone had experienced this before they could share some insight. Something about my method needs to change but I can't afford to do a ton of experimenting due to lack of offsets. If I lose a plant I can't head to the store and pick up another of the same like I could where I lived previously. Plus, a hurricane hit here a couple of weeks ago and big box stores have more pressing needs than getting succulents back on the shelves. (I briefly considered buying a beekeeper suit that was in stock because I couldn't find any mosquito repellant!) Paul, I'm a Texan, born and bred. The username is a song we performed back in school choir. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zfdfGPNstj0 (here's a much better choir singing it) Keiki! What a nice word! Provided Zika virus doesn't prevent me from having kids someday, this could be a contender as a baby name. (Hmm...maybe I should reconsider the beekeeper suit.)