On 18 Jul 04 at 18:41, Floral Architecture wrote: > ...with my watering practice, seedlings don't make it too far, they > get washed out of the pots. Cultivation trick: top dress all your seed pots with about 1/2" of fine water-worn gravel (aka coarse sand) after sowing. Here in British Columbia, we can get such fine gravel in bags with very uniform mesh size. It's been labelled at various times "industrial coarse sand" or "forestry sand" -- used, I understand, for sandblasting tanks in pulp mills, also for striking cuttings of conifers. (Don't quote me.) For some mysterious reason, this stuff has always been easier to find in Victoria than in Vancouver, even though it comes from a Vancouver company. Even in Victoria, it's always been tricky to find a source; some of the bigger hardware stores (not Home Depot to my knowledge) have carried it among the gardening supplies from time to time. It's a very clean water-washed sand or gravel that's been screened to be very uniform in size. Individual grains are 1/8" in diameter on average, but of course vary somewhat from that size. Possibly the manufacturer has a source of natural gravel or sand so uniform that minimal screening is necessary, but that's only a guess. The individual grains are not completely rounded; rather, somewhat rounded from sharp edged particles, so they have some flat faces. I doubt the stuff is available elsewhere, so I suggest that everyone stay in their chairs instead of jumping up and running off a will'o'th'wisp. Industrial coarse sand works very well as a topdressing for seed pots because it doesn't jump out of the pot when you water; it seems to consolidate, instead. Yet it's coarse and loose enough that seedlings have no trouble emerging through it. Crushed-granite poultry grits do not work at all as well; the grains tend to jump around and not consolidate when you flood a pot with water. I've used "industrial coarse sand" for over 20 years and swear by it. Those of you who can't buy this product or one similar to it can probably homebrew something similar. You need two screens, one with mesh slightly coarser than the other, and a source of fairly fine gravel as a raw material. I do not know where you can find wire mesh in suitable sizes, but if you look around I'm sure you can find some, if only because one manufacturer's 1/16" mesh is a slightly different size from another manufacturer's. Coarse kitchen sieves and screens would also do if the holes are the right size. Highly recommended. -- Rodger Whitlock Victoria, British Columbia, Canada Maritime Zone 8, a cool Mediterranean climate on beautiful Vancouver Island