Gary,

i think you should read through this thread.

http://forums2.gardenweb.com/discussions/2842847/container-soils-water-movement-and-retention-xxii

It'll have all of your answers in there.

Yes, the water comes out a few seconds after I start watering also. I make sure to water evenly over the surface of the mix and I give the plant more water than if it were in some other mix (just to make sure it gets enough at each watering).

Dave(Vermont - z5a). I searched for the word "water" in that thread and it occurs 460 times!!

That's way too much to read so I'll wait for someone to provide the answer to my question here.

Water thoroughly until the water runs freely from the drainage holes and all the surface looks full saturated. Depending on the size of the container, that could take somewhere between 30 seconds and a couple of minutes. Then I usually come back and do it all over again to make sure the media is completely hydrated.

It's pretty hard to overwater a plant in gritty mix...........just saying :-)

gary, it's like pi. your social security number, telephone number and street address is in there, IF you look for it. You should read Al, it's less frustrating than pi:

3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197169399375105820974944592307816406286208998628034825342117067982148086513282306647093844609550582231725359408128481117450284102701938521105559644622948954930381964428810975665933446128475648233786783165271201909145648566923460348610454326648213393607260249141273724587006606315588174881520920962829254091715364367892590360011330530548820466521384146951941511609433057270365759591953092186117381932611793105118548074462379962749567351885752724891227938183011949129833673362440656643086021394946395224737190702179860943702770539217176293176752384674818467669405132000568127145263560827785771342757789609173637178721468440901224953430146549585371050792279689258923542019956112129021960864034418159813629774771309960518707211349999998372978049951059731732816096318595024459455346908302642522308253344685035261931188171010003137838752886587533208381420617177669147303598253490428755468731159562863882353787593751957781857780532171226806613001927876611195909216420198938095257201065485863278865936153381827968230301952035301852968995773622599413891249721775283479131515574857242454150695950829533116861727855889075098381754637464939319255060400927

bragu - haha...I don't think you finished it! (supposedly 2.7trillion digits???-not sure if that is current...)

in 2011, Alexander Yee and Shigeru Kondo calculated that pi has 10+ trillion digits

actually, pi is infinite …mmmmm pi …. if what they taught in school 40 years ago was correct … the revisionists hadn't struck yet ...

Garry - and in 2013, same guys: We didn't go for 20 trillion digits because of the massive space requirements. Instead we went for a "small and fast" computation of only 12.1 trillion digits.

http://www.numberworld.org/misc_runs/pi-12t/

(also: see here )

As a novice houseplant gardener I also had trouble with watering when I first tried gritty in 2015. There aren't specific instructions for watering plants in gritty in tapla's post referenced above. I read through that thread as well as others, but had a hard time getting a very good practical, hands-on sense of how to go about watering or knowing when to water. The fact that water almost immediately ran out at the bottom confused me. Had the gritty mix become hydrophobic perhaps? The top so many inches of the mix always seemed to dry out so quickly.

When repotting season came around this year everything went into 5-1-1, partly due to the confusion about watering. I also knew that other responsibilities were going to prevent me from spending as much time with my plants and I figured they might be safer in 5-1-1.

I would still like to go back and try gritty, perhaps next year with just one or two plants. I think that I'll need to water more frequently, and maybe do an initial watering with unfertilized water before using water+Dyna-Gro so I'm not wasting so much.

WT

That post is discussing soil and also explains how water behaves in the soils, it is not meant to be instructions on watering. It even says that in title: Container soils-Water movement and retention. (It doesn't say: How often to water plants...How much to water plants...) If one understands how water behaves in the soil, it is much easier to figure out how to water.

It would be very difficult to give precise instructions as to how much to water plants (in any mix) and how often (in any mix). It depends on so many variables: exact plant, exact climate person is in, exact amount of light and so on. Should anyone tell you: water this plant every xxx(day of the week) with xxx(amount) of water, they are not doing you any favour. If your 'soil' is water retaining, it will stay wet for too long. If you keep plants in quite low temps, it will take longer for any soil to dry out - and I can go on and on.

I am not chastising you here, and understand the confusion. I experienced some of it too. The post above is quite long and lots of it didn't make sense since all I knew was to put plant into soil sold in the store, and water x-times a week(or month). I had to read it few times, think about what I read and slowly I started to understand. Understanding why to use 'well draining potting mix' is the first step, be it gritty or 5.1.1 (both of them are well draining). And they both can be adjusted for water retention if necessary, without destroying their good drainage. And they can be made with some different ingredients too.

My original question was whether the gritty mix absorbs water within seconds or minutes. (Not about the science of water-retention, pi or anything else).

Garry

Sorry for participating in side tracking...I wonder if anybody here bothered to measure seconds or minutes it takes to absorb water in gritty mix? (wouldn't that fall under science of water retention?).

As more and more people respond to posts, the farther afield (aka "side tracking") the discussions get.

It's minutes, not seconds. I've tested it.

Depends greatly on what components you use.

Tis true, Gary, tis true.

I won't have anything in gritty mix until June, but Al has described how he waters his plants several times, though it can be hard to find.

Anyhow, he describes slowly watering with a water dam (a device attached to the house that provides a gentle flow of water), wetting the whole surface, wetting the whole surface of the pot, going on to water the rest of his plants, then going back to water each gritty pot again. That makes sense if your think about it: the water drains through the pot too fast to get the turface and bark thoroughly wet in one shot, so it would have to take a few rounds of watering to do the job.

I actually do the same thing with all of my plants just to be sure that all parts of the pot get uniformly we, even though most of them are still in MG though one desperate specimen is in 5-1-1.

I hope that helps a little.

My gritty mix is composed of equal proportions (1:1:1) of:

• Turface MVP
• GreenAll micro-bark
• Granite No. 5

I couldn't locate the "official" pine fines and grit

Turface wets easily and fairly quickly, has a distinctive crackling sound as you water. Bark takes much longer and is harder to wet.

Top watering once, waiting, and watering again maximizes absorption. It makes a huge difference on the required watering interval.

Bottom watering works similarly, except in terms of soak duration instead.

Try watering a transparent plastic cup of gritty mix - it's easy to miss spots and under water.

Rina -- I get what you are saying about tapla's CS-WMaR post. I'm not
criticizing it for not being a how-to guide. Mainly I was responding to
Dave's comment above:

It'll have all of your answers in there.

I
have several times pointed people in this forum to that post. It and
this forum have made a huge difference for me and today I have thriving
houseplants instead of slowly dying ones. My point is just that gritty
is tricky for a lot of people, especially watering. There are answers
scattered around this forum, but not really any one good source that I
know of.

When I repotted out of gritty I found pockets of
completely dry mix in places. Why wasn't water getting to those spots?
Was I not watering the top evenly enough? Had I failed to sufficiently
wet the mix before potting? Did I just need to water more heavily, or
more frequently?
It'd be nice to have some videos of how to
work with gritty mix. Perhaps if no one else has done so I will make
some when I try it again in 2017.

WT

You are right. I understand that it takes a while for ppl to really 'get it'. First, such unusual mix...than water just runs out...And some of the ingredients that many of us didn't even know that existed, and never knew that they will do such good job as a potting medium. And some re difficult to source!

That is the reason, IMO, that posts like it should be read few times. At first, I thought it was completely different post since reading it 2nd time, I found many 'new' things there - yet there were there all the time. It is the concept to understand, and that may - or may not - take time. Also understand what the properties of each ingredient are, how they hold/retain any water and how much, how it is gradually released to the plant. ewwmayo mentioned experiment with turface: ..."Try watering a transparent plastic cup of gritty mix - it's easy to miss spots and under water"...He did lots of research, lots of measurements (that most likely won't do - I don't, just read his results he generously shared). He is using gritty mix, and his plants are really great. Unless one can see it, it may be difficult to understand. I didn't - I was overwatering succulents in first gritty mix I made: didn't know then that turface could hold lots of water (as much as it could have dry patches). So I read Al's post again (and probably asked some 'annoying' questions :), until I got it.

I think that litterbuggy summarized it very well here (about watering): ..."wetting the whole surface, wetting the whole surface of the pot, going on to water the rest of his plants, then going back to water each gritty pot again. That makes sense if your think about it: the water drains through the pot too fast to get the turface and bark thoroughly wet in one shot, so it would have to take a few rounds of watering to do the job"... (that is written in Al's posts, and it is kind of a guide to watering).

It is very frustrating not to be able to get results we expect, after going thru the steps of making the mix. One of the important things to remember may be that 'receipt' for making either of the mixes could be and should be, if necessary, adjusted to suit the particular situation. That could be done if one understands the concept.

my 'aha moment' came after more than a few passes through al's thread … and i do mean several [squared] (as in well more than few). one … couple … trio … pi … several … few … several/squared … *an example of how I count*

I'm glad to know that others have had to reread posts more than once (or twice, or thrice...) before being able to take in all the information in them. And here I've been thinking the problem was my ADHD! Anyway, it seems like every time I read a post I have a different level of knowledge and a slightly different ficus, which naturally brings out different parts of posts I thought I'd already digested.

One plant that I repotted out of gritty mix into 5-1-1 this summer had a fantastic root system (or so it seemed to me) after just a year in the gritty. It made me regret having pulled it out, but I was determined to go with all 5-1-1 for the coming year to simplify and focus on that one medium. I definitely want to try gritty again though and hope to eventually have most of my current plants in it, with perhaps the peace lily as an exception.