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captiveroots

Made a big mistake with 5-1-1 and need some help/advice!

captiveroots
10 years ago

I think I made a mistake yesterday while playing with my potting soil (bet you don't hear that often!)

I decided to amend my soil from last year at a 50/50 ratio with new. Then I thought "why not try the 5-1-1 mix?" for the new 50%. I found a nice bag of perlite at home depot, a nice bale of spagnum, and what I thought was some good pine mulch. I spent a couple of hours mixing everything up at a roughly 50/50 ratio.

The problem is the pine mulch. I couldn't find exactly what is called for (the fines) so I got the smallest shreds I could find. I thought I had done my research (I certainly read the long thread on here) but I apparently had not done enough, because it turns out the stuff I got has a lot of sapwood in it (see the picture).

After reading about N being tied up by sapwood chunks, I am now worried that I ruined all of my potting mix with this pine mulch. Is there anything I can do so salvage it, or should I just find some way to get rid of a good 100 gallons of mix and start over?

I was thinking of running the mix through a screen to take out all of the pulp chunks over 1/2 inch, but that would still leave some behind. Could I get away with fertilizing a bit more and just top the containers off with a bagged potting soil? I'm hoping a saving grace is that the containers are filled with 50% old potting soil from last year.

Any tips would be appreciated! Sometimes mistakes are the best education!

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