What type soil do you use??

Hi everyone was wondering what type potting soil do you use for your semps??
Mine is my own mix i make up as i make several types potting mixes for all the diffrent types plants i grow..
For semps i use,

Dry Stall or Oil Dry
Perlite
African Voilet soil
Orchid soil, its NOT the solid bark for orchids
Grit and sand

Mix all together in proper portions, i also make sure to pick out/clean ALL fertalizer beads from the soils that the company loads into them, i dont want fertalizer in there when i use my own type fert.. This mix gives proper drainage and air to roots.
I then nuke it to kill all bugs/bacteria let cool then pot up..



List what type soil you use..

Naturen without peat with some added home made compost and perlit. Sofar this is the best I've tried!

Hey Renata, can you post a pic of how your soil looks, im gona take a pic of mine so you can see how mine looks...

I mess about with all sorts but generally use a mix of loam-based compost (John Innes compost), peat free multi-purpose compost, sharp sand and coarse grit. When it looks and feels right I start potting!

I use soil from my courtyard, it is ruddle with lots of stones in it, and remnants of the material for construction work like sand, bricks...

Renata you do not use peat, is it bad for sempervivums?

I often buy semp planted in pure peat and I always try to replant it as soon as possible.
But is a small part of peat, mixed in soil still bed for semps?

Peat is NO GOOD for anything except for acid loving plants like venus fly traps or so.

Peat is used in low budget nurseries instead of compost. Since peat has absolutely NO NUTRITIONS (beside making the substrat acid this is the second good reason NOT TO USE PEAT!), in nurseries they add various growh hormones and fertilizers. The result is a big unhealty plant ...



Sempervivums do not grow in peat in nature! So why adding peat in substrats you grow cultivated plants in? No reason for that! They also do not grow in sandy soil, they grow in small substrat "pockets" on rocks!

Jovibarba on Grmada is growing in almost pure sand, with some pine-needles for acidity ... I understand that this is a typical habitat for Jovibarba spp., so my guess would be that they do well in a peat-sand mixture. Also, the soil in which they grow in nature is nutrient-poor ...

I'm so glad we have a vivid discussion about soil here because soil is very important.
I also used all kinds of soil and last few years I thought that I found a good recipe.
 
I used garden centre mixture (that had a lot of peat), mixed with quartz sand, perlite and sometimes
garden soil. My plants weren't perfect, especially in second year after transplanting. Actually, they
looked good only in the year when they were transplanted. I assume the reason is that peat has no
nutrients, and most of them are added artificially. They are quickly absorbed and washed away after
which you have only nutrient poor soil. Not only it has low nutrients, but also has bad mechanical
features. Peat holds a lot of moisture, and that's maybe not so bad in the dry seasson but it's not
desirable during winter. It also should never gone bone dry because it shrivels and gets very hard and
I assume that in that condition can damage root system. Also, I have a problem with a lot of moss.
 
 
 Lately I've heard from more and more people that peat (and even quartz sand) is not good for
Sempervivums and similar plants. I decided to make experiment. There were no Sempervivums in it,
but I'm sure the same things can be apllied on this genus.
 
It was very simple experiment, but the results really amazed me.
Plants I used were:
A: Orostachys thyrsiflora (probably wrong label, but very common plant in culture with this label)
B: Prometheum chrysanthum
C: O. spinosa ex Altai (also probably wrong label)
D: O. spinosa var. minimus (cv. Minuta) / grauer Typ
E: O. 'Typ Graf' (form of spinosa)
F: O. fimbriatus (wrong label for sure, but interesting plant)
 
Soil was:
1. Pure garden centre mixture rich with peat.
2. Soil No1 mixed with quartz and perlite
3. Soil No4 mixed with perlite
4. Soil that was a couple years old horse barn waste (I suppose it used to be horse feces + straw)
 
Here are the results:

 
This horse manure soil (I'm sorry I don't know english term for this type of soil), turned out to be
perfect for my kind of plants. All of the plants were transplanted last year, they were all the same
size at this time. Soil has great mechanical features, water just slips trough it and obiously it has
enough nutrients. Plants love it!
Not sure if in larger pots this soil would have the same desirable mechanical features, but you can
always add some drainage materials.
Also I'm not sure if during a few years this soil wil decompose more and will hold more water.
 
What I'm sure is that in the future I will put all of my hardy succulents in this type of soil...that is if
the mealy bugs don't kill them before, but that's another problem.

Hi,
      Like most of you I agree that peat is not good for semps. In Lancashire England where we get much rain it is essential to use plenty of grit in the mix . I also top dress the plant around the collar with about  1 or 2 centimetres  of grit.
I use a loam based compost (John Innes No 2) in a proportion 70% to approx 30% grit.
The grit is about the size of a match head.
I have to use plastic half pots and this slows drying out . A clay pot certainly makes a difference if you wish to keep a plant slower growing and nice and tight , a good quality with some of the more choice Echeverias I grow .
In year 2 or 3 it is apparent the goodness has gone from the soil and in spring I like to give just one high nitrogenous liquid fertiliser watering , which seems to give everything a real boost .

I also think there is a difference if you wish to make a small offset grow quickly .
I buy plants from a nursery in England , grown in a peat based compost which are well coloured and a good size , but I always unpot them into my own mix .
If I take offsets to grow on , a peat based compost boosts them in size quickly , so they are a reasonable size to sell/swap but i would always repot in my usual mix prior to winter or certainly keep dry under cover .
If you use a peat compost , then a little washing up liquid added to your watering can , helps the water penetrate any dry rootball .

            Best wishes

                           John

Hi Renata, can you tell which type of Naturen you use? I noticed that there are different ones for vegetables, for balcony plants, for sowing seeds and for mediterranean plants and maybe more which I didn't see.

Growing in soil with peat (left) and horse manure soil (right). Plant is S.marmoreum from Mt. Zavelim (BiH)