Soil Wars-Turface

Chris....I'm interested and way on the south side of the east coast. I assume waiting till spring would be best....? I leaving the office now headed home....I'll send a PM sometime over the holidays....

Happy Thanksgiving Ya'll.....
Brian
 
I was there at Michaels last week, when this discussion came up. Yenling was exactly correct, with Michael saying with having such strong interior root system, that when it comes to repotting, only the ext. has to be worked so you get a stronger tree quicker.

I also visited a few other places incl Randy Knights place and can confirm, pure larger sized pumice with trees were extremely healthy. He even was able to pull one tree out of it's pot as the root ball was very tight, and all white healthy vibrant roots. I cannot say the same using turface/lava, turface/lava/grit, turface/lava and even 30% but smaller sized pumice. My healthiest yamadori was planted in 100% of that smaller sized pumice, and it's def. one of my healthiest trees I have. I'm sold on it. I just shipped my clothes back and brought back over 200# of it lol

Again, to agree with Yenling, we here in the midwest can easily order per pallet and split it up. I'll cont. to bring more back as possible.

Chris
 
I have one tree (collected spruce) growing in pure pumice and the root system is extremely vigorous and seems about to burst from the container. I will be repotting in the spring.

I posted this photo previously, it's an example of roots that had penetrated and grown through/around a piece of lava. The lava was part of a soil mix and the roots seemed to have a particular affinity for the lava. Very interesting.

My goal moving forward is to experiment more with pumice/lava/akadama mixtures and phase out the turface/haydite if the results support that. I can get the akadama and lava locally but am still working on pumice.

Chris
 

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Brian, I have some photos of Michaels place, but not one from Randy's or Neils'. We had limited time, and the day went dark very early. I had barely enough time to see just Randy's trees. Made it to Ryans at dusk, plus, all the trees were on the ground, and I left my camera at Randy's place. I wasn't too worried about photos as I know I'll be back. Sorry guys ;)

Chris, lava's not bad. But it too holds too much moisture per Michael and Randy. Michael gave me a good talking about that Turface lol I've got a source for the same pumice they use from OR. Get enough people and we could get it to us here. I thought my trees were healthy, but the roots I've had bad problems with staying wet and gross brown but alive roots in Turface and Turface mixes. Seeing what really healthy trees looks like, and the beautiful roots I saw puts for me, everything into perspective. We can't work a tree, develop a tree more quickly with crap roots.
 
I am moving away from 100% turface because I've found similar issues with dry spots (became very apparent to me when I was using turface for material in pond baskets. No matter how much I watered, those dry spots remained. It was particularly an issue when I used organic cakes. Much less of an issue when mixed with other components.

I won't use turface on conifers, and collected yamadori (though, I know that folks like Larry Jackel are using it on recently collected conifers). I have used it with great success on collected deciduous material, where the root systems from using it in the first year are phenomenal. It might be that it helps pull moisture from areas of the rootball that still have native soil (clay in my area) - essentially, it is doing what it is supposed to be doing.

Now I mostly use pumice and lava, with some grit thrown in. For seedlings and deciduous that I'm growing out, as well as collected landscape trees, I'll use turface mixed with pumice and grit. It's inexpensive, and seems to work very well.
 
fore said:
Brian, I have some photos of Michaels place, but not one from Randy's or Neils'. We had limited time, and the day went dark very early. I had barely enough time to see just Randy's trees. Made it to Ryans at dusk, plus, all the trees were on the ground, and I left my camera at Randy's place. I wasn't too worried about photos as I know I'll be back. Sorry guys ;)

Chris, lava's not bad. But it too holds too much moisture per Michael and Randy. Michael gave me a good talking about that Turface lol I've got a source for the same pumice they use from OR. Get enough people and we could get it to us here. I thought my trees were healthy, but the roots I've had bad problems with staying wet and gross brown but alive roots in Turface and Turface mixes. Seeing what really healthy trees looks like, and the beautiful roots I saw puts for me, everything into perspective. We can't work a tree, develop a tree more quickly with crap roots.
Click to expand...

Pumice varies a lot depending where you get it--So what OR. pumice source do Randy and Michael use???
 
crust said:
Pumice varies a lot depending where you get it--So what OR. pumice source do Randy and Michael use???
Click to expand...


Gee, not subtle. I didn't ask Randy if I could say or not. I respect him, and I will not post the info until I know it's cool.
 
coh said:
My goal moving forward is to experiment more with pumice/lava/akadama mixtures and phase out the turface/haydite if the results support that. I can get the akadama and lava locally but am still working on pumice.

Chris
Click to expand...

Just throw in a little charcoal and you have your basic Boon mix. No need to experiment, it works well.
 
for me I find if you are willing to dunk the plant every now and then you don't get the dry spots in the turface.
 
We've been hauling pumice back from Oregon after our classes. And we've discussed trucking larger amounts out to begin distributing further east. I'll let you guy know if we are able to make anything happen.
 
I guess its a possibility... but everything is planted in the same stuff and so far it has worked for me.


none of my trees weigh 100lbs dry so I guess I don't have any help for that.
 
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