I'm south of you, JM, but the soil is the same. I add grit - at least perlite, and often granite grit or construction grade sand, the chunky stuff. I prefer to not add more sand, tho.

My succulents are mostly on an elevated island. I have other areas that have a nice slope, so they have pretty good drainage. A friend in Fort Myers put in a succulent 'river' in his front yard. He has mostly large succulents - like aloes and agaves. He, too, added grit and planted on a slope.

In sprite of my efforts, there are a few plants that do not do well in the ground for me. Echeverias do much better in pots for me. And I have to bring Aeoniums inside for the summer. It's too hot and too humid for them.

Others may have different suggestions for you. Listen to them all and see what will work for you. I don't think there is a hard and fast recipe for us.

Good luck and let us see what you decide!

I actually made some today for an area that I had some sedum planted.

This morning I added 4-5" of new soil because the old soil was hard as a brick (plus I started to see fungus gnats). My original top soil settled way more than I thought it would but luckily the sedum came right up with little effort since it's relatively new.

The soil that I made today is more of an experiment than anything. I mixed potting soil (that I had leftover from my tomato and pepper transplants), turface (since I have a TON of it), granite grit (it's cheap), and my repti bark (the larger pieces that I never got around to throwing into the blender to make smaller).

The potting soil that I used isn't half bad. It's from Southern States CoOp and is their store brand. (it doesn't have peat). I used a little under half of a 2 cubic foot bag then added in buckets of turface. grit, and bark (the potting soil already had a little) I wanted to use perlite but then I wouldn't have any for other stuff

It was really light and airy when I finished.

You can see my sedum plugs in this pic: (ignore the Espoma, that was for something else)

Granted this is for sedum - and they grow like weeds - but the way I had them before, they weren't growing at all lol

I hope this works, especially since I used leftovers to make it!

Thank you all SOOOOO much for your words of wisdom. I've concluded I'm overthinking the soil. :) Happy Easter everyone!

Erin

Is that mix for a garden bed?

@rina yes a raised garden bed for my sedum, sempervivums, trailing ice plant etc

I grow many hardy sedums, semps and other hardy succulents in ground, in colder zone, but never considered bark.

@Rina oh I agree!! I just won't ever use it for anything else. I would never go out and buy it to use in a raised bed (no way Jose!) LOL

I'm in the foothills of North Carolina and we have huge boulders, rocks, and red clay, you can seriously make pottery out of the clay. As a matter of fact, I'm pretty sure they make bricks out of it. I would give anything to be able to dig into our soil and plant away but grass barely grows in it. Weeds yes, anything else, nope.

The reason I added it was because it was taking up space in a bucket that I wanted to use for something else so when I was looking for ingredients, I grabbed it and threw it in the mix.

Oh, and you know I quit using it in my gritty (for the most part except those haws that I was sent recently) so I wasn't planning on going thru the headache of processing the leftover big pieces in the blender.

Thanks for that money saving tip of not having to use it, I owe you one. :)

Erin

Unfortunately, I have clay soil too, very sticky. I had 18yards of soil brought in last year and need probably as much again to be able to garden. I try to find bark but use it only for non-succulent plants - have many of those in containers too -, and definitely not reptibark. I use only mix of grit, perlite and some turface for succulents, no bark or soil.

If you don't mind me asking - are tomatoes and peppers going in ground?

@Rina

Yikes, I totally feel you on that one. When it rains it's a sea of red - and that red gets on everything!

To answer your question, yes! Those plants on the table go into the ground. What you see there are some of the plants that I start early that don't get directly sewn.

The two big vegetable gardens are down near the bottom towards one of the creeks. We have to drive down to get to them - which sucks - but there's no other option. Our cabin is situated at the highest point on the farm so all the fertile, pretty soil, has washed towards the creeks naturally over time leaving everything up here totally barren.

(But then again, because of the years and years of natural erosion, the garden soil is amazingly gorgeous!)

At least you have good soil for veggies...I grow some in containers (not enough of raised beds yet) and some in ground.

I plant succulents into mounds to be higher up and use some rocks to give them better drainage. Putting just few inches of soil on top of dense/poorly draining clay could create 'bathtub effect'. But if the sides of beds are sloped, drainage could be ok.

I'd like to try container gardening, would be nice to have a couple of tomato plants up here near the house to grab one for a sandwich or dinner then have all the canning tomatoes in the back. Do you do it in a 5 gal bucket or?

That's a good idea about the mounds, might try that sometime. Right now I've got a dry river - sort of like was mentioned above - with the bed sloping towards the center from each side and then out. We essentially have the same thing under the water spouts so I just made a mini version of that.

Living in a log cabin, Every. Single. Thing. has to be sloped away from the house and this was no exception (this particular bed is off one of the front porches). We have to keep the moisture level below a certain percentage in the basement so that the logs above stay as dry as possible. This helps keep the powder post beetles and termites out.

Termites give me the heebie jeebies *shudders*

For all the bad things, the Blue Ridge mountains are magical, though.

palmsandsnow Oh, how true that is - it's a stunning place :)

Erin

That sounds very nice...you have views, pretty good climate (comparing to me, haha) and plenty of space - and since nothing is perfect, there are few minuses :)

Dry river will work I think, as long as you have some sloping. See sempervivums on and between the rocks (just waking up from winter sleep...):

That is absolutely GORGEOUS, Rina! OMG I love it! I can only imagine what it looks like once everything has had a chance to wake up a bit. It looks so natural (and is my preferred style too) I don't really care for the perfect borders made with fake rocks from the hardware store that are stacked in a perfectly straight line.

We got our rocks from the rock pile that they used to built the chimneys with so the bed near the house really flows with the landscape.

What is the name of the plant that's sort of tumbling over the rocks in your photo? It's the green one in the bottom center and top left area. I can't really tell from my phone. (Thanks!)

Oh, and thank you for the tips on the container plants, that's smart to do the indeterminate in the ground since they need SO freakin' much support. I can totally see them taking over a planter in no time.

Hope you have a nice weekend!

Thanks Erin. Warning: too many pics...these are from my previous garden - I am working on new garden from scratch.

That trailing one is Euphorbia myrsinites - hardy, blooms yellow, will re-seed but easy to get rid off seedlings:

1.

2.

And many different sedums:

3.

Holy cow Rina (picture me with my eyes popping out of my head) Seriously your plants are SO gorgeous. Usually when I've seen some of these varieties (and some I've never seen) they don't look ANYTHING like yours. Wow. Absolutely stunning!

Thank you so much for sharing your pics!! I loved looking at them - made my day (it was a rough one).

Erin, those are all hardy where I live. I have few more...(Sorry about your bad day, glad to lift your spirits just a bit :)

Thank you Rina, got in some garden therapy and feelin' much better. (: