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antiguamarie

Newbie: Gritty mix w/o bark? Unscreened turface in layers?

7 years ago

I am proud to announce that I rounded up 100 lbs of turface and grit (made my son buy it in Charlottesville and her brought it when he drove to NYC). Also ordered reptibark (the large bag) online.

I thought I was ready to roll BUT: the bark is huge compared to the turface; the layer size grit looks huge next to the screened turface; and the screening of so much turface might just be too much for me to manage in my small apartment.

Plus Ive read and reread hundreds of posts and threads and I do understand the principle but still have questions and uncertainties galore.

My main challenges are a. The screening - the mess without having the outdoors or a big space plus not being able to figure out the right size of screen to get the right size particle b. The bark I have seems too big and putting it in a blender or hand cutting it isnt an option for me.

I saw and copied this (below) from Al about using unscreened turface during my many hours of reading up on the gritty mix and my questions are

1 what is the downside of doing this barkless version without any screening,

2 can I still add the bark to this if it's a bigger size?

3 is there any other solution for me to use unscreened turface, grit and bark - maybe in some other proportions? Or adding a wick?

i realize everyone must be tired of gritty mix questions but it's actually very intimidating for someone doing it for the first time! Thanks for your patience


"I've actually been thinking about writing a thread about growing in mostly unscreened Turface. What you can do if the container is deep enough is layer your soil. Water won't perch above another layer unless the particles in the lower layer are more than 2.1X the size of the particles in the layer above. If you start with a 2-3" layer of grower size grit, #2 cherrystone, or equal, then add a layer of unscreened Turface and grit at 1:1, topped with just unscreened Turface, you'll have plenty of water retention, great aeration, and no perched water. You'd have to stay right on top of fertilizing, but your plants should really love it. Plus, there is no waste and no real need to screen, though I'd still screen the dust out of the grit. Bark would be optional.




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