Unfortunately, shaved wood is NOT the same as fir or pine bark in a potting soil. It is very likely the particle size will be too small, it will tie up nitrogen as it breaks down and it will break down quite rapidly, defeating the purpose that the bark is intended to provide (durability).

Bark fines should be relatively easy to locate - they are often sold as a fine mulch or soil conditioner and should be partially decomposed and around 3/8" to 1/2" in size. Fine orchid bark or reptile bedding can substitute but is more expensive.

The 5-1-1 mix is very easy to assemble and is highly recommended for most houseplants. It is 5 parts bark fines to one part each of perlite/pumice and peat or coir. No sand, no garden soil, no compost.

I got small pretty even round balls perlite. Is that the coarse?

also perlite goes up every time i water it, messes up all the soil and creates like a foam..

I manage to find just bark for gorund coverage and its more like 1", that is too big..

I've added cedar shavings (the kind found in the pet supplies for about $2-3) to many of my plants when I repotted them and never encountered any problems. I never added much, just a generous handful or two, depending on the size of whichever pot I'm using. I'm not saying that it's the best choice, just that I've never had any problems from using it.

Back when I still used perlite in my mixes, I only added it to the lower half, to two-thirds of the soil, where it stayed buried and out of sight. I never added it to the top third of the soil because it always floated to the surface whenever I'd go to water my plants. But now I refrain from using perlite at all; the only exception being my orchids. There's nothing wrong with using it. I just got tired of it being in my soil mixes.

I would recommend using Miracle Gro Orchid Mix (coarse blend), it's pretty cheap and works great. Ironically, I don't use this for any of my orchids. For them, they get much better quality materials. But for my other plants, it works wonderfully.

It depends on a lot of things, especially what you're going to grow. I got a bag of Black Gold Succulent mix from Ace Hardware that I like. If you're doing big plants or a lot of them its probably too expensive, but Reptibark from Petco is good stuff.

It can be used and work almost similar to rice husk or bark. It's stable, hard to degrade because it's lignin content can't easily digest by bacteria. The problem maybe termite or ants. Not like rice husk or bark, sugar content on wood will invite them to come.

S - the 1" ground cover is much too big.

Are you sure the round balls you think are perlite aren't polystyrene foam beads?

What Photosynthesis said about layering the soil so the fraction with perlite/ extra perlite/ ballast occupies only the bottom 1/3-1/2 of the soil column can be a very effective strategy, if implemented appropriately; and, how it's implemented can have a notable impact on how effective it is.

Al

AI I opened a new topic, I found shredded pinecones what do you think?

It is perlite, here in mix with soil

Nay to the pine cones.

That's perlite alright. When you said the pieces were uniform and round, I envisioned something more so.

Take care.

Al