Transcript:
Hi, guys! I am here with the promised. Gritty mix video finally. Gritty mix is a potting medium that you may have heard about. It’s been talked about blogged about Yada, Yada, a fair amount and there’s various forms. There’s various formulas, but this is more or less what it is. It looks like in most of its forms, and it is a mixture of surface clay, which helps hold moisture a little bit. It is a it has granite pine bark fines, which is these these little pine or the little bark pieces that you see and they are all the exact same size. They are sifted through multiple sifting. Strainers sorry. I just lost. I lost the words, There’s a name for them, But anyways, there it’s a strainer, a wire sifting thing and this, the ones that are too small are taken out and the ones that are too large are taken out, so they’re all just about the same size. I think a quarter of an inch is usually what they recommend a quarter-inch sieve. That’s what I was looking for him so weird, Sim, and if they’re not all uniform, it really throws the mixture off the kind of premise behind this. Is that having certain ratios of holding moisture of increasing airflow of certain qualities, etc, which I’m not going to go into all of those details in this video, I just it’s just too much to go into so you can just Google gritty mix and look at all of the pros and cons and why they’ve formulated it the way they have etc, but the the premise is that it needs to be the same size so that the balance is correct and so that it holds the right amount of moisture, but not too much etc for this particular gritty. Mix this gritty mix. I ordered off of Etsy. Little emerald thumb is the name, which I will put a link in the description box below for this particular gritty mix little embolism. The name of the seller on here and this is my friend. Aaron, who sells this? And she changed it up from the average recipe that you find which? I’m I can’t believe I’m blanking on the guy’s name That came up with this Al Al’s Gritty Mix is is what a lot of times it’s called. If you see that referenced, she changed it up a little bit and substituted part of the granite for pumice instead. And there’s a very, very tiny bit of perlite in it too, but very tiny. So this also has pumice that is the same size as a substitute for some of the granite. She found that in the hot summer months in her area in particular, which is warmer than where I live. It might not be problematic here, but it’s a good thing to pay attention to that, too much of the granite that the granite absorbs too much heat and the plant’s roots really didn’t like that in the heat of the summer. It just yeah, it just got too hot and can burn the roots and so pumice doesn’t have that same effect because of its really light, airy quality because it’s a glass of volcanic glass that has puffed like popcorn and kind of exploded. It just doesn’t hold the heat like actual rock does and granite, and so that’s a great substitute. If you’ve watched other of my videos, you know. I’m kind of a pumice addict. And so I’m a huge pumice fan so substituting. Some of the pumice is really exciting. I used some bark with some of my succulents, mostly epiphytes in in my potting mixes. But I haven’t used a lot with regular succulents, so I was really excited to try this. And since then I’ve tried it on several plans. If you saw the plant on this lovely little Crassula pyramid, Dallas plant it any any of my really new plants? I love putting them. In pure pumice because it’s almost impossible to overwater them. You can water them almost every other day, and it just has so much air that the roots can just thrive and it’s amazing so a lot of times before I get really acquainted with a plant. I will put it in pure pumice and water it a lot more until I kind of see what it likes, and then I will adjust and mix up a soil that is going to be something that it likes a bit more so instead of using pure pumice now with the most recent things that I have repotted or starts, etc like this little guy. I just showed you. I have been using this to just see what happens. I really really like using a light mix. Because when you go, which if if I felt like unplugging this, I I would totally do that. And if I had another one that I could unpack that. I didn’t feel bad about disturbing. I would totally do that on camera to show you, but when you repot with the mix, that is this loose. It just falls away from the roots. There’s no dirt stuck to the roots. There’s no clinging there’s. No, you know, hunks of dirt like this with with that aerostat attached to the stem. It just kind of falls away from the roots, and you get a really good look at your root system and it’s less likely to damage them. If you need to remove any of the soil, succulent roots really, really, really like air circulation and so, but at the same time, they a lot of them. Don’t like to be bone-dry for long periods of time, and this kind of a mix is ideal for that, because literally you can soak this and within which this pot? I soaked earlier today and it is dry. I mean, to the touch and to the look, but the plant got a great bath and a good drink. A lot of times for succulents, kind of a bath for their roots is more what they need than sitting in wet soil and soaking it up. They just need a little bit of moisture, a little bit of refreshment, and then they want Aragon. And so this kind of a mix is ideal for that and will really really encourage healthy root growth on a lot of them. There are some there is some debate about how well most mess seems doing this. Mix the bark being a little bit, not quite what they’re used to. They like a little bit more Rocky Sandy type soil and generally have very little organic matter in it, and some people say that it really doesn’t do very well with most succulents. Other people say they’ve had good success with it, so that’s kind of up in the air. I have some live ups that I planted up in another video that I put in this to just see how they did up until I need to repot them because they’re all Riru Ting, and so we’ll see how they do, and if I end up leaving some, but I’m gonna try and experiment with this with some other machines as well and just see how they do for kicks and giggles, lets. See what else can I tell you about most of this? Yeah, it’s just this like. The pumice is almost impossible to overwater. So if you are in over water. I really really really encourage you to get something like pumice or a gritty mix type of a thing you can mix up and make your own as well. If you have, you can just order the ingredients and sift it yourself, but if you don’t want to bother with that like. I don’t want to bother with that. I just ordered this and I’m giving it a try, but I’m just gonna throw in here. That pumice, which here’s this is just the plain pumice that I use a lot. My, I buy it in really big bags. It’s not sifted. It has all the way from quite large chunks all the way down to really really fine stuff, and I kind of just sift it out and use larger or finer based on what I’m doing, But pumice and mixes like gritty mix have a lot of really really porous qualities to them that you really don’t see with the naked eye and a lot of people have asked, what can. I substitute aquarium gravel or regular gravel or lava rocks. Coria, you know, etc. Instead of pumice or gritty mix and the answer is no, the longer more complicated answer. Is you can use it, but are they comparable? No, absolutely, not they the only air circulation. Your plants are going to have if you use an aquarium gravel as their potting medium is just the air around each. Rock and with pumice and other things, they’re actually holding air themselves, and so this piece of rock is actually filled with pockets of air, and it just lightens up the mix a whole lot. I’ve discussed in my video on the difference between pumice and Scoria specifically how rocks, including aquarium gravel courts, etc, gets really heavy and can damage the root system, Unlike pumice, which is really really light. And so you can definitely use aquarium gravel. If that’s all you have in certain situations and mixed into certain mixes, it can be tolerable, but it isn’t definitely not a substitute when someone’s talking about using pumice or a gritty mix to go. We’ll just use it aquarium gravel. Instead, it’s not going to be a good substitute. Pumice holds a lot of nutrients, a lot of water, a lot of air etc. The aquarium gravel will just repel all water. And so when you water it, there won’t be any remnants of moisture retained so that your roots have something to grow towards. It will just be gone and there will be a solid rock left in its place, which really doesn’t encourage the kind of root growth that we’re talking about, usually when we’re referring to pumice and other things and nutrient wise, especially if you’re using predominantly lava rock, aquarium gravel, etc. It just doesn’t hold any nutrients. It’s not porous at all, and it just won’t hold nutrients, whereas pumice or a gritty mix like this that has pumice and other. Barket cetera In it, it will hold the nutrients, and that’s one of the reasons they formulated this one. The way they did is to have a really good balance of some of the granite, which a lot of the succulents really like, and are naturally growing in quartz and granite fields, and but along with that the bark and a little bit of pumice in this case, which will absorb and hold nutrients and the clay also absorbs moisture and holds nutrients as well. So when you fertilize or water with something like a kelp or a vitamin b1 etcetera, it’s going to actually stay there and your plant can actually utilize it later on. And when you water again, it will release more of those nutrients, which is which have been held in the mixture, whereas with aquarium gravel. When you water with the first mixture, whatever are with a fertilizer, whatever the plant is able to absorb. Right then it will, but the next time you water it will. The new water will just wash off the any fertilizer that happened to be left on the outside of the rock and wash it right down your drain. So it won’t be available for the plant in the future, Alrighty. I should not be rambling so long about things other than what I’m supposed to be talking about. Which is the gritty mix. But I do think it is worth mentioning that aquarium gravel isn’t comparable. Because when you see something like this, it’s very, very easy to think well. I don’t have that, but man. Aquarium rubble looks a lot like that, and it’s about the same size. I’ll try it instead. Aquarium gravel can be a fine topdressing and, like I said In some situations, it can be okay Mixed in as well, but it’s still not even ideal as a top dressing compared to pumice, but it can be a totally fine top dressing for sure. Let’s see holding moisture. What, what else? Oh, other advantages it doesn’t break down which normal potting soil, as you know decomposes. It shrinks it compacts. You have to add more to your pots, etc, and that does not happen with this. When you there’s no reason to ever change the soil, you can use the exact same soil if you repot into a larger pot because the porous nature, you can just add nutrients to it, and it will absorb them and be rip-roarin and ready to go again, which is the same as is true with pumice. You can just reuse it and reuse it and reuse it, and it will reabsorb whatever nutrients you add to it and make them available to the plant, whereas soil slowly decomposes. And you really have to add other stuff to it to make it ideal again. We’ll, just say, so the fact that this doesn’t settle and decompose and the fact that it can just be constantly replenished with nutrients is exciting and fun and one. The things that makes people who grow a lot of succulents really cling on to stuff like this or pumice and go. No, this is amazing! This is white gold or whatever we say. All of the crazy stuff that we say, but that’s one of the reasons is because there really are a lot of advantages to it versus especially verses like a succulent, potting soil that you would find in the store. There’s absolutely no comparison to a mixture like this and a any succulent soil that you are going to buy in a store. There’s just no comparison. This is so so far superior for most succulents, now that being said epiphytes some of the tropical succulents, etc. They’re not gonna do great in this. They want more humidity and they want more moisture and so a pure gritty mix like this is not going to be ideal for them, but for a huge population of the desert cacti. This is a really really great choice. Um, what else do? I need to tell you like. I said I will put a link for this particular. Mix which I am using and loving in the link below. You can find it many places, of course, but a lot of them use the pure granite instead of partial pumice. So if you are in a really hot environment and these pots or plants are going to be outside for the summer, it might be worth looking up this mix or using a mix that has partial pumice. So that your roots don’t get too hot and I think that’s it for today. I encourage you guys to try it. It’s not cheap, but keep in mind that it’s not like a bag of potting soil. This is something that you can really use over and over and over and you can even throw it in your oven and kind of sterilize it, if need be in between if you get any kind of a bug or fungus or something, it can. You can even do that. And so this isn’t comparable to buying a bag of potting soil. I’m blanking out on exactly how much it is. It comes in to court on from this particular friend. She said two quarts at a time, which is kind of a gallon bag, Nice and full and I lost my thought, and I’m blanking on the price. The shipping is is like with shipping pumice. The shipping is the a fairly substantial part. But it is something that if you have a really really special plant that you’re struggling with or that, you just really want to give some. TLC to try a little bit of this. And I’m not using on all of my plants. I have hundreds of plants that would be far far too expensive, of course, and many of them thrive just fine in a cheaper, more ordinary mixture that I mix up myself, But for those special plants or plants that you tend to kill or are really worried about over watering or plants that are just struggling. I’m planting plants in this that I don’t intend to keep in it, so I’m gonna be reusing it, but I plant them in it for a while until they get established. And then I put them in something else, and then I’ll use it to do something else, so you don’t have to worry about. Yeah, it’s it’s just not like buying a bag of potting soil. That’s just gonna get tossed out, and then ya forgotten about, so don’t be too too alarmed about the price. I want to say it was $15 for the for the two quarts, but then you have shipping too, But I have been delighted with it and really excited to see as the months. Go on what it does. And eventually I hope to do a nun potting of a plant that I planted in this and show you the root system as compared to, you know, a plant and pumice and a plant in some other soil. I am so excited to do some experiments like that, but those things take time and they have to root and grow for a while before I can actually show you the results. So for now, it’s just me me and my little description, but hopefully, eventually I will show you some actual comparisons. All righty, you guys. I will talk to you soon. I hope you’re all having a fantastic day and happy growing.