Maybe I'm not the best person to answer as I don't grow most of your plants, but what I do know is that growing herbs in gritty mix is a pain. They just need so much water that I got frustrated with watering daily.

You can always tweak your gritty to hold more water, but I'm not sure if you can get it right for where you are. Personally, I just got sick of growing a ton of herbs I never used, then having to water them so often, I ended up giving the entire batch of plants to my friends.

For succulents it will be perfect. Head over to the Cacti & Succulent forums to ask specifically about plants and there will be lots of great recommendations over there. =)

As for fertilizing, some people do use those hose-sprayer mix bottles. It's very important to get a good quality one as most are so variable with the dilution it's really bad. Even the good ones are not as good as mixing in a can and watering, but it's better than nothing.

I suppose it also comes down to 'what is the Arizona desert'. Having been to Arizona a few times, there are many microclimates and maybe a photo of what you are growing now and what your grow area looks like would be helpful for others to chime in.

I live on the North edge of central Phoenix, basically almost up to Carefree. Since I'm not in the middle of our pavement heat-island effect it gets a little bit cooler at night in the hottest part of summer than it would in the more fully developed areas but not by much. We have many consecutive days in the summer that exceed highs of 110 (quite a few in the 115-118 range but that lasts maybe a week), but otherwise we have the typical Arizona stretch of triple digit summer days without the substantial temperature drop at night you would experience if you lived in a very rural area or at slightly higher elevation such as Tucson. Winter is nice and mild. I don't think we had any nights dip to 32 degrees or below last year, and so far this year the coldest it has gotten is 35 or so. Daytime highs are in the 70s at the moment.

I just moved from a condo to a house last month and I'm still figuring out the best placement for stuff. At the condo I had all my plants in my gated patio which was nice for summer because of all the shade. It was problematic for winter since the plants received very little direct sunlight. At this house I have a lot more sun exposure variety to play with and a lot of areas that can get dappled shade from the Palo Verde tree in the backyard which will be helpful for surviving summer. I rent this place so all of my plants are in containers instead of the ground. As requested, here are some pictures of the current arrangement taken at about 8AM AZ time (sun hasn't really peeked around the side of the house yet).

Just a few notes about the pictures. The grass is artificial turf, otherwise I wouldn't have put the containers there. The pepper plants got hit really hard by the wind in a storm the other day which is why they are bent like that, I need to stake them. The plumeria have dropped their leaves in response to the cold spell a few days ago (at least I'm pretty sure that is normally why they do that).

As for seeding/propagation, I have a DIY growing rack indoors with T5 HO lights for each shelf.

Let me know if there is any other information I can provide that might be helpful. It's always hard to find that balance between providing enough detail without providing excess that generates a novel.

This is a panorama pic from the condo patio before the move when things were in a bit better shape.

Increase your turface ratio a lot to increase water retention. Watch out for the bark going too dry or else it will go hydrophobic (if it does just water, let is soak, then water again).

Might as well try and see how the airpots go? If it's too dry, then try a normal pot and you may be better off/cheaper too.

Since you have so many pots, maybe consider trying a couple mix variations all at once with plants you are familiar with. Then you can see the effects of your tweaks faster than if you have everything in the same stuff.

Lovely yard and garden you have! Might be able to take good advantage of the walls and tree for shade. =)

you might also want to swap out the bark for coconut husk chunks (chc). The chc holds more water and won't go hydrophobic.

Thank you everyone for the feedback. As a software developer I know that pretty much every system is full of trade-offs in terms of design decisions, and I'm sure that soil composition is no different. If I increase the water retention via an increased proportion of turface, what am I losing in return for that increased retention?

Obviously there will be less bark and granite which are in the mix for a reason, so I'm probably reducing the benefit that those 2 ingredients provide. Unfortunately I haven't fully sorted out the individual function of each component of the gritty mix, so I'm not entirely sure what I'd be giving up by increasing the amount of turface. I just want to go into it with an informed mindset is all, I'm not saying that it isn't a good trade-off to make.

Also in regards to the potential hydrophobic nature of the pine bark, I think I remember reading somewhere in Al's old posts that the water held by the turface raises the humidity near the pine bark surface and will overcome its hydrophobic state within a few minutes of watering the mix or something like that.

In your experience is it actually a big problem despite that? If so, are there any other trade-offs with the coconut husk chunks to keep in mind if it does make sense to use those instead? I know with some other coconut products like coir you have to be careful of salinity issues in regards to sourcing and how it was processed.

I rehydrate my CHC with water that has a good bit of dolomite in it. The Ca and Mg bond preferentially, instead of any residual Na, to the medium. I've never had any salinity problems. CHC is widely used in SoCal for orchids. Na is pretty mobile with watering or washing and I'm don't know how prevalent salinity problems are these days.

With bark, you will definitely need to water once, wait, and water again. The turface helps but the bark would just be pulling water from the Turface.

The trade off with turface is that it can hold a LOT of water. So if you are in for some very cool weather or a long streak of rains, there may be risk of over watering.

Turface particles are also smaller so you don't get as much aeration for the roots. As long as the process of watering/drying of the pots is happening that is okay. But if you get something like the above you may have to cover your plants or watch how you water.

I suppose you could put WAY more turface than you need because it can be deceptive and then your mix just would hold far too much water. For that I recommend watching how your plants do and how the soil mix is behaving a day or couple days after watering.

Thanks again for the feedback!

So it turns out that I'm having a very difficult time finding local suppliers for the pine/fir bark and the granite. The turface turned out to be the easiest component to locate which I wasn't expecting to be the case.

Other than repti-bark which isn't really ideally sized and seems to be somewhat un-economical for large quantities, I haven't found any suitable bark yet. I'm starting to think that I should go with the CHC simply because there seems to be more options for buying it locally or online, though it also seems to have other advantages that you mention which are admittedly appealing.

Do you have any recommendations for coconut husk chips? Most of the products I've found seem to be compressed bricks that you are supposed to re-hydrate and they will expand in volume. Are these compressed products suitable or do I need to find uncompressed media? It's a bit of a drive since they closed the location I live near, but Sea of Green (a local hydroponics shop) carries Roots Organics Coco Chips by Aurora Innovations in a 4.5 kg brick. It supposedly expands into approximately 2.1 cubic feet of media. Does anyone know if this product has appropriate particle dimensions and a reasonable ratio of usable material vs material I need to discard via sifting?

Another product that seems easy to get here (I think the company is based in nearby Chandler Arizona) is Botanicare Coco-Gro, but I think it's Coir/Fiber and not actually chips? I assume that would not be as ideal as the coconut husk chips.

Also...any tips on the granite or other alternative for grit? I've looked at the only feed shops I know of that aren't super far away and they have poultry grit / health grit for birds but it's not just stone. It has all sorts of weird stuff in it that is unsuitable for this purpose. I'm getting pretty close at this point to paying $6 for a big bag online and paying $25 to ship it.

In my climate could I just do a 50/50 mix of CHC and Turface and leave out the grit entirely? I assume that's kind of a bad idea, but I'm not sure. The ingredients search is certainly becoming frustrating though, but I don't want my plants to suffer on account of that.

You don't need bark, it's supposed to be cheap filler. Reptibark is ridiculously expensive here too.

What other soil components do you have access to? Lava rock, pumice, other types of rock, perlite, river gravel, other local grits, etc.

You can also try posting here: Cacti & Succulents. Might be other forum members there who are in the Arizona area.

I ended up picking up some coconut husk chips in one of those compressed bricks to see how it works out as the bark component. If it seems terrible then I'll opt for something else in its place, especially since it is only supposed to be filler.

Would lava rock / pumice / perlite be considered more of a substitute for the turface than for the granite? I thought they were able to hold quite a bit of water.

I've seen lava rock at some of the big box stores though it seemed like it was probably too large. Pumice I can get from one of the nurseries in a tiny bag for $$$ so it probably isn't viable from that particular source.

If I want to get serious about pumice my best bet would be to join the local cacti/succulent society. I've heard that they order it by the truck load from California and sell it to their members at reasonable cost, I'm just not sure if there are other strings attached in order to utilize that particular membership benefit. I also wouldn't want to feel like I'm using their organization solely for cheap access to pumice, so if I do eventually go that route I need to make sure it's something I can be actively involved in.

As for other materials, I think I remember seeing something called pea gravel when I was shopping around this weekend. Is that a suitable granite substitute? I don't recall if it was expensive or not, I just remember seeing it and thinking hmmm would this work?

I've been doing some more research and some people mention coarse silica sand? Is that actually available in large enough particles (> 0.1")? I might be able to find that somewhere. Up until now I've been ignoring anything labelled as sand because I figure it is too fine.

There are a ton of gravel companies in Arizona but based on their websites it seems like they mostly deliver at a 1 ton minimum which is a no-go. It's certainly cheap enough that way, but I have nowhere to store a literal ton of gravel. I might have to start calling some of them and see if they will sell to me in smaller quantity and without requiring delivery.

I'll need to start probing the other more specific forums on here as you suggest to see if anyone in my region has had luck with some of these specific materials.

Thank you!

Wait...how different are crushed granite and decomposed granite? I just saw on Lowe's website that the location by me has half cubic foot bags of "Deco-Rock Decomposed Granite" for ~$3.50. I have no idea on the particle size yet, hopefully I can see the bag contents at the store. If not I might just pick one up since it is cheap enough for exploratory reasons.

Is decomposed granite not a good choice for containers or is it a suitable substitute for the crushed granite?

They also have pea gravel from the same "Deco-Rock" company for about $3 per half cubic foot. The Q&A on the product says the particle size is near 1/4" so this might be a good bet if decomposed granite isn't a good idea.

I went to Lowe's on my lunch break and the Decomposed Granite they have looked pretty terrible for this particular use-case. I think I'd be lucky if I could use even 30% of the bag after sifting, so much of it was like fine sand.

I was also mistaken in my previous post regarding the Pea Gravel. Instead they have Pea Pebbles which I assume are slightly larger than the gravel would be.

They happened to be having a sale on the Pea Pebbles if you bought 3 bags of it so I rolled the dice on it. Some of the pebbles seem bigger than is ideal (nearly half an inch or so?) but so far this seems to be the best option I've come across at a local store so I'm going to try it out. Also it looked like pretty much 100% of the bag would be usable unless I reject particles for being too large. I'd rather be rejecting a small portion of large particles than rejecting over half the bag for being too fine like I would be with the decomposed granite.

So in the end it looks like my gritty mix will end up being a combination of turface, coconut husk chips, and pea pebbles. If my understanding regarding tuning is correct, I should keep the CHC at 1/3 of the mix and then have a higher ratio between the last 2/3 of media of turface to pea pebbles. Perhaps 3:2:1 turface:chc:pebble? Or maybe 4:3:2 so it isn't as drastic? I suppose I could always try the original 1:1:1 first and see how it does, I'm just not sure if I'll end up watering constantly in my climate.

The CHC I get is in a compressed block. I get it from a supplier that buys in huge bricks and cuts them down to sell. The also have sifted products that have been uncompressed and graded for orchids. You might find that you need to do a little sifting of the chc to get rid of coir dust. However for mixes like the 511 the coir dust is great.

You should join the club. They may have leads on soil components. =)

To buy pumice just go here for very high quality 3/16" pumice with low dust: General Pumice Products . VERY good reviews and I have many bags in my garage. Easily one of the best pumice suppliers out there. Hopefully it is affordable enough for you.

Personally I don't think pea pebbles are very good - they are kind of large and have a bag sitting unused in my garage. At least it's cheap so you won't be out much money.

Probably Turface, pumice, and maybe coco chips may work? You definitely need to try it out to get the ratio down.

Decomposed granite works very well, but depends on the size and quality. Lava rock is really good, but you need smaller sized rocks not big chunks.

What is the approximate volume for a 15 pound bag of the 3/16" ? Given that the granite / pea pebbles / turface all come in bags weighing in the neighborhood of 50 pounds, a 15 pound bag sounds pretty small. Then again I know that the pumice is much less dense and is more similar in weight to perlite than it is to granite.

Yea the pea pebbles were dirt cheap (hah...pun semi unintended). 3 bags for $9 total, 1.5 cubic feet, ~120-140 pounds or so for the 3 bags.

The coco chips were ~$16 for a 4.5kg brick which supposedly expands to 2.1 cubic feet. I currently have an email out to the manufacturer to get more details on their buffering process to see if it's worthwhile to rehydrate utilizing a calcium and magnesium source as you had mentioned. Their marketing material seemed to imply that they might already swap the N and K cations for Ca and Mg but it wasn't specific enough for me to be sure.

The turface was like... $15 I think. For a 50 pound bag. I'm not sure what the approximate volume is but it seems like a pretty decent amount.

So $22.50 for a 15 pound bag of pumice sounds more on the expensive side at first glimpse unless it is far lighter weight than I'm imagining. But hey...it might be worth it still if it is really that effective. I know it is a favorite material of the succulent collections manager at the Desert Botanical Garden here in Phoenix so that says something. I spend a lot of time playing around with my garden and I want to be as successful as possible. Also it is likely that I'll be starting with a 4:3:2 ratio or something like that so in that case the pumice would be the material I use the least of. That helps offset its cost a little bit.

I had a rose bush coming from Edmund's Roses that ended up arriving yesterday, so I had to put together a small impromptu batch of media since I haven't received my coco-chips yet. I ran out to the store and bought some repti-bark and made a 4:3:2 turface:bark:pea pebble mix. For the pea pebbles I sifted out anything larger than 9/32" which was basically 2/3 of the bag. Ugh. I didn't realize until I opened the bag how large most of the pebbles are in that thing.

Anyways, I completely saturated the mix in a bucket for a good 20 minutes before draining it and putting it in the container and planting the bare root rose. I then immediately inserted a soil moisture probe and it read exactly in the middle of the moisture sweet spot. I'm super impressed on first impression. I have some other pots that haven't been watered in days and the probe still maxes out on moisture reading in the "wet" range. So long as this container doesn't read bone dry by the time I get home from work I think I'm going to be extremely happy with it.

I ordered some of the pumice you suggested as well to have on hand. Hopefully that and the coconut husk chips will arrive prior to my hibiscus shipment so I can make a more ideal mixture for those plants.

I'm in Tucson and recently learned that mesquite valley growers has pumice in bags. They also have bark fines, which I have never seen anywhere. I grabbed a bag last weekend and my life has become significantly easier.

I got my pumice in the form of dry stall, which I ordered from a local feed store. They were kind enough to break a thirty pound bag into ten pound bags for me because I just didn't have anywhere to store the big bag. I also got my chicken grit from there.

So, if you feel like taking the hike to Tucson, you can get all you need for a gritty mix and a 511 mix. Also, I got my coarse grade perlite from a hydroponics store here called Growers House.

eta: I recently found a way to increase the water retention in pumice only mixes. I add a small amount of coir to the mix, which I guess makes it not a pumice only mix now. The ratio is about 10 to 1. It helps a great deal. It made turface unnecessary, though I do have some about the house if necessary.

It's funny that you mention Grower's House, I just placed an order with them yesterday for some Coco Chip bricks since Sea of Green in Tempe doesn't have any and their supplier is on backorder for at least another month. They have a great selection of stuff. What is the name of the local feed store that has DryStall? I reached out to that company via email to ask about places that carry their product in Arizona and they haven't gotten back to me after 3 weeks. As far as I can tell none of the Phoenix feed shops have it or granite chicken grit either. It would be worth it for me to take a trip down to Tucson if I could stock up on a bunch of aggregates all at once from different local suppliers.

Out of curiosity, approximately what does a 30 pound bag of dry stall run over there? What is your approximate yield after screening? It costs $25 per 15 pound bag to get the pre-screened stuff from General Pumice directly. So $50 for 30 pounds, but almost 100% of that is usable. It's basically only 1 cubic foot in volume though, so it's still not a lot depending on how much mix you are making.

Switching gears a little, have you happened to try any "Growstone" from the hydro shops? I'm picking some up from Sea of Green here this weekend. I'm curious to see how comparable it will be to pumice. It looks very promising and it seems to run about $18 per 1.5 cubic foot bag or so. Not sure yet how much the yield will be after screening out the small stuff though.

Thanks for the leads Lauren!

I think the whole bag would be about 25. They charged me only 7.00 for the ten pound bag. It doesn't have to be screened before use. The particles are the same size. That's a huge plus to me because the pumice I saw at mesquite valley would need screening.

if I may suggest something: you might do better just buying the coco coir in the bag at growers. I bought a HUGE bag for about 14.00 and it pretreated, ph balanced, and glorious to,use straight out of the bag. I'm surprised they had to order it because every time I'm in there, I see those bricks as soon as I walk in the door.

The other option to check your local pet smart. I got some coco coir from there, but it comes in smushed pellets. It yeilds about a buckets worth when wet. But maybe you need more?

i just found that the bagged coir was so much easier.

The feed store is tucson feed, or something like that. I will double check. They are located on 6th st, I think.

I was thinking about growstones, but the growers house folks said that they really are for hydroponic setups. Still thinking about it though.

There is one other place that I ran across in Tucson that sells a load of hydroponic stuff. It's a pet store, but the owner is into hydroponics, so he stocks the store with the hydro stuff like bark and gravel and growstones. I will look at my gps to see where it is. I literally ran into by mistake when I was on that side of town for an appointment.

I hope this helps.

Oh, there is a pet store here that sells chicken grit in a ridiculously huge bag. I think it's called pet co op. I'm sorry I'm so bad with the names....

Haha no worries, I appreciate the help even if the names aren't right on. Gives me a starting place to google around.

Growers House had the coco-chips in stock, I just ordered it online because I don't have time to drive down from Phoenix for a while. I ordered like 3 bricks and the shipping was only $15 for all 3. Each additional brick added about $2 to the shipping cost which started at $11 for the first brick. Much better than uncompressed media which is typically $15-20 shipping per bag...ugh.

As for the bags....coir isn't the same as chips. Will the coir work in a gritty mix? I thought it was more like long strands/fibers rather than the more bark-like consistency of the chips? I have never used either before so I could be mistaken. If Coir is a suitable option I have lots of places nearby where I can get it. It's the darn chips that are much harder to track down.

The dry-stall sounds like a really good deal at ~$25 per bag. 30 pounds of pumice should be roughly 1 cubic foot I'd estimate based on the 15 pound bags I've ordered in the mail.

Well, I don't know that people use coir in a gritty mix at all. are people using the chips to substitute for bark? I've not heard of that....I'm not sure that I understand completely what you mean.

I recently added a bit of the regular coir, which is fine like bagged peat, to a gritty mix to see if it would help with water retention. It actually did. And the coir tends to stay in between the particles without washing out like peat does. It retains but also aerates. It has a super fine consistency. It feels like very soft peat.

Did you check pet smart for the chips?

The coir I am talking about is this: https://www.planetnatural.com/product/coco-grow/

But, you could save yourself a lot of work by just using bark fines, which you can get at the Mesquite Valley Nursery here in Tucson.

The drystall doesn't require sifting, so what you get is pretty much what you get. That's a huge plus.

I haven't used the chips in a gritty mix before but I'm about to try. One of the other comments earlier in this thread a person mentioned using it instead of bark so I figured I would try it since I struck out on getting bark (other than repti-bark). I haven't checked PetSmart for Coco-chips, at the time I looked at PetSmart I was still on the hunt for bark. I recall seeing a lot of Coir bricks but I'm not sure if I saw any chips.

I think as long as I buffer it so that it doesn't steal calcium and magnesium from my water and emit sodium and potassium back out it should work fairly well. If it fails miserably then it'll definitely be worth the trip to Mesquite Valley Nursery for some bark fines. Summer Winds nursery here in Phoenix says that they sell fir bark at certain times of year, so there's always that possibility as well. I haven't seen it yet to determine if it is the right size or not or how expensive it is. I just happened to be looking at a time that they don't carry any, but I'll be keeping my eyes open for it.

That's excellent to hear about drystall and the sifting. Before I had actually assembled any mixes I figured the sifting wouldn't be a big deal, but then I quickly realized how much work and time it takes. Any ingredients that can be used without sifting or with minimal sifting are a huge bonus at this point.

Thanks again for all of the leads on material sources, I appreciate it!

Lauren - I'm glad I linked you to this thread. Yay soil mix component sources! =)

Ewwmayo: I am so glad you did as well. I really wanted to tell people about the resources I've found here in Tucson, but I figured that Phoenix would have tons more stuff than we do!

robot: if I may, it seems that you are complicating this mix in a way that won't necessarily have been worth it in the end. There are so many ways to increase water retention in gritty mix--with materials that you actually can get to easily. It just seems that you could make this a lot easier for yourself and still get great results without the coco chips. You actually have to increase the number of things you put into the mix when you use coco chips instead of bark.

just my two cents.

What extra things do I need to put into the mix if I'm using coco chips in place of bark? I was planning on just using it as a straight one to one substitution in place of the bark. Will that backfire on me in some way?

Well, you mentioned needing to buffer the ph. You will have to add calcium and something else you mentioned above. I believe that coco chips throw off the balance of the ph.

But I was mainly thinking in terms of ease. You have access to reptibark, and now, you know where to get bark fines, which don't even need sifting. I just don't think the coco chips would make such a difference....

Oh gotcha. Yea the buffering doesn't have as much to do with pH balance as it does preventing calcium/magnesium cations in the fertilizer from exchanging for sodium and potassium cations in the coco media for the first few weeks/months of use. This article does a really good job of explaining it, I found it pretty fascinating: Adjusting CEC In Coco Media .

It should be as simple as adding some gypsum and epsom salt to the water I use to rehydrate the coco brick, but to your point that is an extra step and extra ingredients I need available that I wouldn't need if I used bark. It's also a step I wouldn't need to take if the Roots Organics Coco-Chips weren't on backorder with the manufacturer right now since they do that buffering step for you.

The bark is unquestionably less work, I just didn't have it available to me in a quantity I needed for a reasonable enough price at the time I had ordered the coco chips. The fact I don't need to rehydrate a compressed brick of it already makes it simpler than coco. Now that I know of that source in Tucson you mentioned for large quantities of bark fines I intend to use that once this set of coco-chips runs out and I have time to make a trip down to Tucson for some potting media ingredient shopping :-)

You have to buffer pine bark with dolomite to raise the pH. I have used dolomite to rinse the CHC but the professional orchid people would probably use calcium nitrate and epsom salts because it has a better pH profile than dolomite. I give the chc a good wash when I'm done though and haven't seen any pH problems.

Out of curiosity since I've seen calcium nitrate + epsom salts mentioned a few times when researching, any idea what the tradeoff is of using calcium nitrate vs gypsum (calcium sulfate dihydrate) for the calcium component of buffering? I've heard of people using both ingredients for the calcium component whereas they typically stick to epsom salt for the magnesium component. Then as you mention I've heard of dolomite being used as both the calcium and magnesium component since it has both in addition to carbonate.

calcium nitrate and epsom salts are both readily soluble in water. Gypsum not so much.

That was a good link. After reading that, I would say the reason for using calcium nitrate and epsom salts is to be able to create a highly concentrated Ca/Mg solution so that as many CEC sites as possible can be flooded with as many Ca/Mg ions as possible very quickly.

I only have a surface level understanding of chemistry so I'm sure I don't have the full picture here, but when I look up the solubility of gypsum and calcium nitrate, gypsum appears to have a higher solubility than calcium nitrate? Is it just that more gypsum can ultimately be dissolved in a given volume of water than calcium nitrate, but it takes the gypsum a longer time to dissolve or something like that? I don't have personal experience with either, I'm just raising the question based on a numeric physical property comparison which probably doesn't tell the whole story.

Also in regards to dolomite, it looks like that material has substantially worse solubility than either of the other substances we've been discussing so I assume it is a worse choice than calcium nitrate or calcium sulfate + magnesium sulfate despite the simplicity of being a single ingredient?

dolomite is a crap choice imo but I have a bunch of it.

Man...as I keep digging into the calcium nitrate / gypsum / magnesium sulfate thing there's so much conflicting information. Or at least it seems to conflict based on my surface-level understanding.

A lot of people that do hydro stuff do mention that gypsum isn't water soluble, so I'm not sure why it's listed as being readily soluble. Maybe it depends on the specific form of it?

Apparently if you mix concentrated calcium nitrate with concentrated magnesium sulfate (epsom salt), you will end up precipitating calcium sulfate (gypsum), so I guess I have to make sure that I dilute each component separately before combining into the same container if I do go that route. Thanks for prompting such interesting discussion on this subject! I'm learning a lot.

You might want to look at those solubility tables again. Gypsum is like 2.5g/L and calcium nitrate is like 2000g/L

gypsum precipitation is a common fertigation problem.

That makes sense! I read it as 2000 mg/L, not 2000 g/L. D'oh! Thank you for bringing clarity on that, it was driving me nuts trying to reconcile the information I was reading.

To prevent gypsum precipitation can I dissolve epsom salt in water and then dissolve calcium nitrate in that same water directly? Or do I need to dissolve them in separate vessels and then combine the two diluted solutions?

Now I'm realizing that it might be hard to find calcium nitrate locally, at least as a standalone ingredient. Can I just buy some Botanicare Cal-Mag and mix some of that in water as my buffering solution?

I believe the common way is to mix the calcium nitrate in first, bring the tank up to 1/3 full and then add the epsom salt while filling the rest of the way.

I haven't used botanicare so idk.

These recommendations are for a few ounces of each in a 32gal container for conditioning.

https://www.google.com/url?q=http://www.orchidclubofsouthaustraliainc.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/use_of_coconut_husk_chips_for_potting_medium.pdf&sa=U&ved=0ahUKEwii052HvqfSAhUW22MKHU9zAcAQFggPMAI&usg=AFQjCNHUXGCBgph3zUNVJgokxKYVuUXTwg

Good lord, this is getting complicated! I am pretty lazy, so I would probably just add a good time release fertilizer and take my chances:). Of course, I'd add the epsom salt periodically to the water, but I do that anyway. I mean, there must be people in this world using coco chips successfully who have no idea about all of these additional things.

robot, would you please report back on your results? You seem really intent on getting this right, and I am totally rooting for you!!

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!

Nil13, great article you linked to!