Sorry, what is 'west' (or perhaps typo? :)

Preferably no peat and no wood fibre... so that doesn't sound good for what they sell as C&S soil/compost. If you have to use it, get some perlite (or pumice if you can). Sift it, use perhaps 40% perlite, 40% horticultural sand (that should be similar in size to sifted perlite) and rest C&S soil. I am assuming you are in UK - is it hot & humid where you live?

thanks x

i have no idea what west is, that's just hat they list in the ingredients? is there a better type of soil you would recommend mixing the pumice and sand with? i am in the uk, i try to give them the most sun possible but that's not always much.

thank you :) i'm not sure what the succulents are, i'm new to them and just bought them because they were dying!

i'll try without the soil and i just ordered a heat lamp so hopefully that will help.

You can post photos of your plants, we may be able to ID them for you and perhaps give better growing suggestions. It is usually more difficult to handle plants 'with problems' - as they sit in stores, they start declining (most often).

Post photos - clear if possible! :) - on this thread, and pls. number them if you have few.

Can you post some pics of your new plants so we can ID them for you a small that might help in giving you some more info on how best to care for them?

For my succs, I just use regular c/s mix sieved perlite, and horticultural grit or gravel all from B &Q, in equal amounts. If it looks a bit too soil based, I just throw in another hand full of gravel. Aquarium gravel or chicken grit could also be used instead of the hort gravel.

Must say I get extremely twitchy when reading the word SAND in any shape or form for c/s plants, the grittiest of hort sands contain a fair proportion of fine stuff, too much in my mind. Best get a bag of the hort/alpine gravel/grit ;-) Turface, scoria and pumice are fairly hard to locate in the U.K.....unless you know of a secret source that is?

Whether you need to use a heat lamp is debatable, depends on the ID.'s you get, where you keep them during winter, and where in the UK you live.....best add some location info after your user name like we do :-) You may in fact need a light source as opposed to a heat source as our light levels can be poor. Lots of c/s are winter dormant so I find mine can stay in the unheated g/h with no adverse efffects......if we don't get down to -17C during the Narnia winter of 2010-11........

oh, yes, maybe a snap of that mysterious ingredient list would be helpful too, what brand is it?

Gill

We must stop typing the same things simultaneously Rina!

Gill

What works for cacti, 'generally' works for succs as all cacti are succs, but not all succs are cacti as there are definitely exceptions to the rule.

Gill