Percentage recommendations for my attempt at a gritty mix.

3 years ago

Hey everyone,

New here and I'm sure succulent soil has been discussed round and round and round. I realize it's preference, what you're growing, and where you're growing. I got in a little over my head with the number of succulents and size of the large planter I am trying to put together having never grown succulents before. I researched and researched all I could find about "best practices" and ended up buying several different soils.

The first two were off of Etsy. I believe they are quality soils. One is Premium: pumice, crushed clay, perlite, medium bark fines, small bark fines, worm castings, azomite. The other was from Arizona taken from natural succulent habitat and screen and sterilized. It seems both sellers care about the quality of the soil.

I underestimated how much soil and large planter needs so I needed to get more. More research led to finding out about gritty mix and therefore Bonsai Jack. Ordered the largest size and figured I will combine all of them and have this wonderful combination of three peoples idea of the best soil.

Wrong. When mixing I discovered the Etsy soil had many small fines and a lot of sand. I think mixing and mixing made this worse as the material was getting broken down even smaller. I discovered the smaller fines would always work their way down to the bottom as well. I read about how mixing particle sized is just worse than one or the other but it was too late.

I made my arrangement with box store succulents and ones from nurseries and didn't know it at the time but they were sitting in sopping peat and rotting. I wasn't watering them but I had been accumulating them as I was waiting for the planter and soils to arrive. When I finally went to plant the arrangement many of the roots were suffering from rot. I washed as much of the peat mess off as I could, did a diluted hydrogen peroxide bath, trimmed them and let them dry out for a couple days.

I had a strong wind tip the arrangement over and discovered only half of the plants showed any new root growth. Many of them showed just dead roots, no new white ones, but no rot either. I had only watered them once after a week. Two weeks had passed as I was checking for the soil to dry and the leaves to be less plump.

Down about 2.5 inches was the sandy loam that was still quite damp, compacted and hard. I knew I had to sift this stuff out and needed to get this right. I was not about to order more Bonsai Jack as it is just to expensive and it already took $120 worth of soil to fill this thing. I sourced the products and was able to find Turface MVP, Chicken grit for the crushed granite, Repti bark and am waiting on a bag of Pumice. I have a Sifter and am ready to go.

Als gritty mix says 1:1:1 but I am adding pumice. I was just wondering anyones thought on percentages with the pumice. This is a long winded disaster I know. Region is Northeast (Buffalo).

Also this gritty mix is terrible to plant things in. You can barely get the short roots to in and stay covered up, and the plants tip over constantly.

Pictures will include the etsy soils and the arrangement attempt.