Specialty Gardening: Tapla: Questions about your gritty mix, 0 by tapla

tapla wrote:
Ahhh - a skeptic turned believer then. ;o)

I first started growing in highly aerated soils about 20 years ago. I wanted to share with others how easy it made growing ..... I mean "a monkey could do it" easy. I first joined Garden Web and, on the Container Gardening Forum, started talking about what everyone now calls the 5:1:1 mix now. I was met with unbelievable skepticism. There were at least a dozen entrenched container gardeners that were growing in soils having the primary component as peat or compost. I was actually/literally afraid of the firestorm I would have run into if I'd dared to suggest that you could grow perfectly healthy plants in something as weird looking to the common grower as the gritty mix. Gradually, I won over a few people to the 5:1:1 mix, but it wasn't until a couple of years later. after the 5:1:1 mix had gained such wide support that I could even START to suggest the gritty mix. Now, there are probably thousands of people using the 5:1:1 mix, and the use of the gritty mix is growing so rapidly I can hardly keep up with my email.

No, I don't sell anything, and I'm not speaking in a boastful way. It took a long time before I could simply say these soils work great and stand head & shoulders above almost ALL the prepared soils you buy in a bag or bale, because I was worried that it might be taken as prideful, but it's not that way at all. It was only after so many others started sharing their results and offering tremendous positive feedback that I felt I had permission to speak in a matter of fact way in superlative terms.

I have no stake in what anyone but my closer associates grow in, but I can offer information that will improve the success of a fair fraction of houseplant growers, which is what I've been doing for quite a long while now. ;o) Whether (the collective) 'you' use or ignore the information doesn't matter much I guess, but I always hope that you will find something useful in it so I can take my own satisfaction from the thought that my efforts have been of value to another.

I hope I didn't stray too far off topic in my musings, Gilraen. If so - I beg a pardon.

Al