Specialty Gardening: Container Soils - Water Movement and Retention III , 1 by tapla

tapla wrote:
Fafard makes a couple of good mixes if you can find a dealer that will get them for you. Their #51L and #3 mixes are good, with the #51L getting the nod over #3 because it is slightly more porous. I know it's sometimes difficult to locate the right size bark, but once you get a supplier located, making your own is very easy. I dump a bag (2 cu ft) of bark and about 3-4 gallons each of peat & perlite on a tarp, along with the lime & anything else I might be adding. I then mix with the flat side of a garden rake (so I don't tear the tarp) before I pull on the corners of the corners of the tarp so the ingredients are all thoroughly folded/mixed together. If you don't count the 5 minutes it takes to screen the peat to break up any clumps & get the big sticks out, I can have a 3-4 cu ft batch made in 15 minutes. Clean-up is easy because everything stays on the tarp. I use a plastic dust pan to scoop the soil back into sturdy bags I keep (like 50 lb dog food bags) for that purpose, or scoop it back into the pine bark bags for future use.

I put the bark down first & moisten, then pour the peat on top, then the perlite and moisten the perlite. After it's folded together & sits for a few minutes, the hydrophobic tendency of the peat is eliminated as moisture from the bark & perlite diffuses into the peat particles.

Al