A new Soil Mix – Bonsai facere est

I’ve recently purchased a few new ingredients for soil mixes.

First: Clay Pebbles. Lightweight, porous for water retention. Big bags are easily available from hydroponic shops. And you don’t have to grow weed in them.

Also, the actual Pebbles are a nice size (up to 20mm) that’s big enough to not stop drainage and matches other materials.

Next: Pumice, 7 to 20 mm grade. This is actually annoying… the only place I can find this size is Enfield Produce in Sydney, and this is heavy-ish, so this means I pay as much again in shipping. 🙁

That’s a lot of fine print for a bag of rocks.

Here’s what the size actually means:

…which turns out to be about the same as the Clay Pebbles.

And finally, some bark for bacteria, which also turned out to be nicely sized to match the others. This is a potential replacement for the charcoal I’ve been using. I assume I can find something like this locally.

This lot are all of a similar size (and match my scoria). I plan to mix it together, in maybe 1 part Orchiata, 4 parts everything else. Now I just need to grow something in it.