Raybo, That is the same stuff I tried to grow in and make the 511 mix with last year. When I bought the stuff I asked for the oldest bags they had. Plus I let it age for another month or two. I think that this stuff has too much 'sap wood' in it if you will to be effective as a main ingredient in the 511. I called Earth Gro a few days ago and they couldn't tell me exactly what was in the Earth Grow bark fines stuff. However I'm pretty excited about some stuff that I found at Summer Winds thats called bark mulch made by Redi Grow who is out of Sacra-tomato. They were able to confirm when I talked to them a few days ago that it is 100% fir bark which is as good as pine bark. The only set back about this product is that it is 1/4"+ in size. I opened a couple bags yesterday and it seems to be very close to the size of the stuff from Earth Gro. Anyway I'm gonna give a few bags of this stuff a go in some pots and go from there. Wish me luck! Damon

Irene, I'd like to send you a personal message, but your settings don't allow. Maybe you'd consider sending me your email addy in a Houzz message? Sometimes explanations get lost in the back and forth between people with different viewpoints, but the fact is, soils with a large % of fine particles are always going to pose limitations that result from too much water retention. Even though that fact is carved in stone and can't be argued (because it's governed by predictable laws of physics), there are those very few that insist on arguing the point over and over. Any roots existing within the perched water column will be deprived of O2 for the duration of the saturation. I made that last period bold, but you probably didn't even notice. ;-) The question isn't whether geography or hot dry hurricane windy conditions lift the limitation imposed by the saturation, they don't; the only question is, "How long will the limitations last". In many cases, the answer is measured in weeks, in some cases, in days. A good guess about how a soil like Mg amended with some bark & perlite (let's say 5 parts soil, 1 part perlite, and 1 part pine bark) performs might go like this: Day 1, grower waters established houseplants heavily, to beyond saturation, so water exits the drain. At that point, limitations are most severe. Day 2-5, the degree of limitation gradually decreases until day 5 when the soil is reasonably well aerated and the plant is pouring energy into replacing the fine roots killed by the soggy conditions. Day 5-6, The plant has grown at it's best these 2 days because the soil is moist and about as well aerated as it can be. Almost all the roots killed by saturation have been replaced at a considerable cost in terms of energy outlay. The plant is pretty happy, but the soil is now becoming too dry for the plant to efficiently take up water and the nutrients dissolved in water. It's on the verge of suffering drought stress. Day 7, the grower waters, cycle begins anew. That isn't an exaggeration. It describes a soil that needs weekly watering. Now, a soil in a soil that holds little perched water. The soil is based on a very high % of coarse material (pine bark, perlite, peat or a water retentive bagged soil). NOTE that the ingredients are the very same ingredients as the soil discussed immediately above. The ONLY difference is the ratio of ingredients used. Day 1, grower waters established houseplants heavily, to beyond saturation, so water exits the drain. At that point, limitations are most severe, but still minimal because the soil is designed so the ht of the perched water column and saturation is minimal. Day 2, Perched water is gone, the plant is enjoying a well-aerated soil from top to bottom. Fungus gnats on notice to find more favorable accommodations. This continues until day 4 or 5. Day 4 or 5, fungus gnats have sent out scouts. Other's making preparations to leave this God forsaken place. Plant still happy, but need to water growing imminent. Day 5, grower waters & cycle begins anew. The only price paid for the second scenario is the need to water more often. The first soil was 'amended' with pine bark and perlite, so those would have been on hand anyway. Some might say I'm not going to water 100 plants every 4th, third, every other, or even every day. That's fine, but that convenience demands a soil with enough water retention to get you through whatever interval is desired by the grower. The grower might like the respite from frequent watering, but the plant won't. Convenience very often comes at a price to the plant. That's not judgmental, it's simply how things work. The gritty mix you mentioned holds no perched water if made correctly, so plants are happy from watering time until such time they need another watering. Again, because we've moved away from a perched water table entirely, the need to water the gritty mix comes more frequently than say the 5:1:1 mix, and much more frequently than a soil like you're using. It's also sometimes a challenge to find the exact ingredients, but because the gritty mix recipe I offer as a starting point is nothing more than 1 way to embody a concept, it can be worked around fairly easily. I'll watch for a message with your address. Al

The best medium to plant newly rooted figs in is one that provides the greatest amount of aeration and ensures that aeration for the expected interval between repots but is still something you can deal with as far as the intervals between watering. IOW, you'll get the best growth from a soil you need to water daily or even twice a day, but if that is too inconvenient, you'll need to adjust to something more tolerable. How much vitality you sacrifice for convenience depends almost entirely on how far you go in the other direction and how fast air returns to the soil after a thorough watering. E.g., if you were using a soil/plant combination that required daily watering and could magically change the soil to one that only required watering every two days, there would be some degree of sacrifice in potential growth and vitality. If though, you could magically change to a soil that required watering only every 5 days, there would be a considerable sacrifice in growth potential and vitality. Soils that remain waterlogged for extended periods kill roots, and the plant pays to regenerate those roots by spending energy it would normally have put toward increasing mass, more blooms or fruit, extending branches ...... You may be referring to something I wrote about roots: While fig cuttings may root readily in water, the roots produced this way are quite different from those produced in a solid, soil-like or highly aerated medium (perlite, screened Turface, very coarse sand, e.g.). Physiologically, you will find these roots to be much more brittle than normal roots due to a much higher % of aerenchyma (a tissue with a greater percentage of inter-cellular air spaces than normal parenchyma). If you want to eventually plant your rooted cuttings in soil, it is probably not best to root them in water because of the frequent difficulty in transplanting them to soil. The "water roots" often break during transplanting & those that don't break are very poor at water absorption and often die. The practical effect is nearly equivalent to starting the cutting process over again with a cutting having diminished energy reserves. If you do a side by side comparison of cuttings rooted in water & cuttings rooted in a solid well-aerated medium, the cuttings in a solid well-aerated medium will always (for an extremely high % of plants) have a leg up in development on those moved from water to a solid medium for the reasons outlined above. Al

Tom, Where the farm is the ISP is dialup at 22k on a good day, mostly 14.4, no cable because the state says it cannot cross a power line above ground and it would cost too much to bury it for only one customer, no cell phones work reliably because the tower is on a different mountain top. The mountains cut off everything including satellite TV. The city is a ten mile drive around to the other side. Regular TV was 3 channels when I was there and I'm not sure it still runs with the new digital TV signals now. The kids enjoy the ATV's, snowmobiles & mountain bikes... lots of walking & hiking trails to use them on and the trails go right on up into Canada. They enjoy living there because each kid now has their own bedroom. There's a brook fed pond at the bottom where they can fish, gig frogs, etc. I left my aluminum row boat there and they use it, they ice skate on the pond in winter. When they came to visit I asked how they liked living there and they all excitedly related tales of doing this and that and how cool it was. Lou