There will never be agreement on what soil/ grow medium is best, so let's go for 'good'. Any grow medium that allows you to water to beyond the point of complete soil saturation, w/o the medium holding too much water for a period so long it significantly interferes with root function, or worse, wrecks root health by setting the stage for any of a number of potential fungal infections, is a "good" medium. When your medium stays wet for too long, roots die. This causes the plant's chemical messengers to 'tell' the top of the plant to stop growing so the plant can focus almost its entire energy allocation on regrowth of the roots that were killed. Continued over-watering sets up a cycle of death and regeneration of roots that can rob the plant of huge %s of energy that otherwise would have been put toward growth and defense against insects/ diseases.

BTW - getting to a place where you can water correctly w/o your plant paying an "over-watering tax" is a real game changer insofar as the ability to keep plants healthy and attractive, so it's worth making an effort to get there.

The 2 approaches to 'getting there': 1) By making your own media and starting with a very large fraction of coarse materials and adding only enough fine material to bring water retention up to a point you can live with. 2) Use tricks to limit the volume of excess (perched) water your media can hold.

Al

if you want uniformity of watering.. then your media should be uniform across all your pots ... so no matter what you choose .. make sure it close or the same with all the rest..

on key here.. is all the pots of the same size.. basically dry.. or need water at the same time.. it really reduces the amount of guessing on when everything needs water ....

and buy enough.. so that eventually.. as you repot .. all the plants end up in the same media...

there are very few plants.. that need special media ... e.g. cactus family ... or the ones that hang in trees that like big bark chunks.. lol.. theres some science ID for you.. lol ...

but when you get past those.. all houseplants are water lovers who prefer a good drink ... and then well draining media... and Al tell you all the rest you need to know ...

i hope the water roots you grew are not excessively long.. sometimes they have a hard time adapting to being buried in a pot ... and if the plant wilts.. cut off the roots.. put it back in the water.. and as soon as you see nay root nub.. plant it in pre moistened media ... and it will work better ...

in fact.. ALWAYS pre moisten your media ...

ken

..... if you want uniformity of watering, then your media should be uniform across all your pots ... so no matter what you choose .. make sure it close or the same with all the rest. Nah! There is a significant difference in how much water a plant uses, by plant size, weather, pot size/volume, pot material, how established the plant is in the pot ...... more. If anyone has a lot of plants of various species and size, hoping for uniformity in a watering regimen will pretty much be relegated to the pile of 'out-of-reach dreams'.

Al