Specialty Gardening: Container Soils: Water Movement and Retention II, 0 by Campfiredan

Campfiredan wrote:
"Chopped celery has plenty of aeration at first ..."

Wow - I just chopped down all the celery stalks. Now I have a use for them. :-)

Great to hear that the peat is optional. I'll have to try a pine-bark-only mix and maybe up the watering frequency (most of my containers are on drip irrigation so I can change it to eight short waterings a day if I get a different timer). I might worry a bit about the CRF all sinking to the bottom of the container through the pores if the pine bark is too coarse. Might need to add a bit of fiberous stuff (like the cypress sawdust) to prevent that - or maybe not. Worth a test or two. When I add compost there is a tendency for the compost to sink to the bottom of the container and the pine bark to stay toward the top when the rains beat down but the compost particles are a lot finer than the CRF beads so that might not be an issue using just pine bark and CRF. It would sure make mixing even easier!

The local lumber mill also sells its pine bark composted with sand (they call it potting soil) at about the same price as pine bark alone. I've sort of ignored it in the past since it is a lot heavier to haul home and unload than the pure pine bark but maybe a load of that is worth experimenting with too. Some pots need a bit of weight to prevent them from blowing over.

Dan

Another type of "container"