Hello! Yes, oak seedlings have a strong desire to tap! But I've found that all of my plants - from veggies to cryptomeria - thrive in a 5-1-1 or similar mix. My #5 nursery containers are requiring water every 2 - 3 days in this California heat, but I certainly could have adjusted that by increasing the container size a gallon or two. Josh

coco does not disintegrate, it resist decomposition and last several years.. i have made a quick video showing how airy it is, and it's certainly not "dust" like it's mentioned in that 2 line sentence about the person in that link you posted say it is, and as i've said, coco can be purchased in coarser grade too. i'd imagine mixing the finer grade coco with the coarser coco would make one hell of a mix that will put the 5-1-1 mix to shame and keep so much money in your pocket.. but i think just the normal texture coco is fine, there are plenty of people who use it on thehotpepper forum by itself with amazing results. it does not compact at all despite how hard it is squeezed. very fibrous which is why it does not really need any additives such as perlite, bark, etc..which saves huge amounts of money. the amazing thing about is it has tremendous water holding capacity while still staying light and airy and not suffocating plant roots. there are so many other reasons why it's superior to just about every type of planting media out there. research and very much doubt you'll find many valid negative things about it.

Comparing the gritty mix or 5:1:1 against soils such as those packaged with the Miracle-Gro label is like comparing grilled fish with raw veggies, steamed, to a double bacon cheeseburger with onion rings. Many will favor the flavor of the burger/rings over the fish and plant matter, but there's little question about which is better for the body. Extended intervals between waterings are a convenience to the grower, but a limitation to plants whenever it's perched water providing the extension. There's no judgement to be made if someone chooses the convenience over what will provide a much better home for roots, but there is no way to deny that the excessive water retention that provides those long intervals requires the plant to pay a price in the form of unrealized potential. There's a considerable margin for error built into the dosage suggested on the packages of almost all fertilizers. When temperatures allow (65-75* range), I fertilize plants in both gritty mix and 5:1:1 at 2 tsp of 9-3-6 per gallon at weekly intervals, the result being very strong growth; and, so far I have observed no indications plants are having difficulty tolerating the more concentrated solution. During the winter when my trees are under lights, I had been fertilizing at every watering with 1/4 tsp/gallon of r/o water. I got a LOT of winter growth, but it was rank growth that had no place on trees that are being worked to increase ramification (more fine branching and smaller leaves). I decided to try fertilizing every other time I water at the 1/4 tsp/gal, and that seems to work well. I'm not getting as much growth, but my trees are packed so tight the shade produced by excessive rank growth is a major problem for me. If you're using a fast draining medium, you have lots of options and near total control over what your plants get and when they get it. If you are using a medium that precludes flushing the soil when you water, the job gets much tougher and the kind of control you might want to enjoy just won't be there. It's very important that you are able to flush the soil w/o the planting remaining saturated for extended intervals because the saturation affects root function/health. Al

I hear a lot of stories about how quickly the 5-1-1 mix dries out. I live in Phoenix. We have been over 100 degrees for almost the last month. It is dry and sunny basically all day every day. And I'm using unglazed terra cotta pots, which supposedly dry out super fast. I was watering every 1-3 days due to my certainty that the above environmental circumstances justified it and my faulty assumption that it was difficult to overwater the 5-1-1 mix. Well, I lost 1/2 of my lemon leaves due to overwatering before I figured out the problem. I have found that I need to water my young citrus trees about 1x per week. My trees get shade from my porch starting around noon (it's 100+ degrees by then), the pots are big, and I top with mulch (to help keep root temps down). I'm fairly certain the trees have halted growth because citrus don't really grow in temps above 100, but most of the water is used for cooling, so my water needs may be a little less than active plants, but probably not by much. If you don't provide shade, use smaller, porous pots, and don't mulch, water frequency will surely increase. All that to say, it's possible to get quite a bit of time out of the 5-1-1 mix and reading your mix is super important. A lot of people like to use a dowel but I actually prefer to just dig around with my fingers because I'm not good at using the dowel. Perhaps it's my mix which doesn't contain many fine particles, but I find the dowel comes out clean sooner than my trees need more water. I read somewhere that plants can extract water from the soil that our fingers can't detect. In other words, what feels dry may not actually be dry.