I've been trying to find the right ingredients to transplant my current bonsai. Unfortunately everywhere online talks about Turface or oil dry/cat litter as an alternative, chicken grit, pine bark fines, or some professional mix that cost way to much for my personal needs.

Here's the problem I can not purchase turface locally. Everything else should be easy to find. The site states a few places that 'should' carry it within Maine most of which are more than 100 miles away. I did however find turface being sold online for extremely marked up prices. Most people quote a 25# bag of turface at anywhere from $15-$25 and most online retailers are selling the stuff for $5-10 per QUART!!! Just ridiculous nonsense if you ask me they're over capitalizing on a vary small bonsai soil niche.

Anyways the point is I need to find some sort of affordable and hopefully locally available alternative to turface. My cat litter brand (tidy cat) will not work nor do I intend to test 20 different brands lol. As far as oil dry well the problem here is oil dry is not the brand it's the name of a product. Several different companies make an oil dry product. Most of which are not good for bonsai soil conditioning. So in order to get the right kind you have to know the brand of oil dry that doesn't disintegrate which is insanely difficult to do since everyone online just calls it oil dry from x store usually walmart/napa.

Hopefully someone here can help with this issue because I'm about ready to give up on bonsai.