Both soils were born of my own failures at container gardening - of my inability to generate any forward progress toward my ultimate goal, which was to become proficient at bonsai. Everything I've learned about soils and how plants work, has come as a by-product of that endeavor
How many times have you tried to create this 5.1.1 and 1.1.1? I've been making it every year for the last 20+ years. I can't even guess at how much I've made, but in 20 years I'd guess conservatively at maybe 30-40 yards of 5:1:1 (that's 2-3 very large dump trucks full. I usually use about 10 bags of Turface and grit each year for my own soils, plus a similar volume of fir bark, so I'd say I make between 25-30 cu ft of gritty mix each year. That's >200 gallons.
The 5:1:1 mix is just a knock-off of what a nursery owner friend was using for his plant material, and the gritty mix is a knock-off of what someone (I forget who) was using as a bonsai soil.
I failed at bonsai when I first made the attempt, due to the fact I couldn't keep my trees alive. I put the trees away, but kept reading. Gradually, it became clear that the soils was using were my adversaries. I knew I needed something with more aeration, so I started to use the soil my nursery friend was using, with mixed results. Still, I knew I was on the right track.
In a Master Gardeners class, a geologist was giving a talk on how water behaves in the earth. He mentioned Perched Water Tables, and suddenly I understood. From that moment forward, I had an objective - to reduce the PWT as much as possible, or eliminate it entirely, w/o having to suffer watering intervals shortened to the point that plants demanded too much of my attention.
The 5:1:1 mix, made like I make it, has an insignificant PWT height - usually considerably less than 1". For comparison, soils like MG Moisture Control might have a PWT 6" tall, or even greater. The gritty mix, properly made, should have almost NO water in the spaces between soil pores.
Getting you to follow the soil recipes isn't the object of my offerings re soils. My goal is to make sure you understand the concept, and to understand how you can manipulate your soils' water retention so they work FOR you, instead of against you. The 5:1:1 mix is something you do more by feel, because you often use a bark product right from the bag w/o screening - it didn't have the technical thought put into it that the gritty mix did. still, because it embraces the concept that bigger particles = more porosity, fast drainage, and a short PWT, it stands well above soils based on fine particles when it comes to offering plants the opportunity to grow as close to their genetic potential as possible.
Along the way, I found out things like: the PWT disappears as particle size increases to >.100 inch, and drainage layers don't work unless the drainage layer is Al
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Ballast to reduce PWT volume
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