BCSS - Forum

There is Hypertufa -made out of cement, sand and peat. Of course you'd might have to swap the peat for something similar.
I remember making containers out of this years ago- over time the cement component settles down and does not leach too much.

Paul in Essex wrote: ↑Sat Apr 06, 2024 3:34 pm It's been a while since I looked for any but last time it was all but impossible to get tufa anywhere and, secondhand, it was staggeringly expensive.

It doesn’t surprise me, last time I bought a large chunk of tufa to make a tufa garden was around 1980 from Ingwersens nursery…

SimonT wrote: ↑Sat Apr 06, 2024 3:42 pm There is Hypertufa -made out of cement, sand and peat. Of course you'd might have to swap the peat for something similar.
I remember making containers out of this years ago- over time the cement component settles down and does not leach too much.

I’ve got a couple of home made troughs made from hypertufa. Good for troughs but not much good for a naturalistic planting

Ali Baba wrote: ↑Sat Apr 06, 2024 2:14 pm

edds wrote: ↑Sat Apr 06, 2024 2:07 pm

Ali Baba wrote: ↑Sat Apr 06, 2024 8:52 am Tufa is good for growing plants in directly as it allows water to percolate through. It’s used a lot in alpine gardening. There are some nice examples at Kew. If you can find some it would be worth experimenting with

Tufa is very soft and alkaline though - not sure some of my plants would like that. An Agave utahensis eborispina in one might look good though!

You can grow lime hating alpines in it if I recall correctly, I don’t think it releases much calcium.

If you're watering enough you would wash a lot of any dissolved carbonates out but I'd be wary with things that get less water at times.
It would also depend on your planting medium and fertiliser choice as there's plenty of carbonates in the rock. I have a few smaller pieces around from an old reef tank and it is very soft stuff, certainly would be easy to chisel out a planting pocket.

I'm using Yorkstone simply because I have an abundance of it in my garden. Rock is expensive!

Here's another staging I did today. A tiny ariocarpus retusus robustus that I bought from Tina.

greatnorthernexotic wrote: ↑Sun Apr 07, 2024 3:51 pm I'm using Yorkstone simply because I have an abundance of it in my garden. [...]

I wish someone would be selling less than a tonne of it... Maybe it's time for a join order of Yorkstone?

Find a local stone merchants - you can usually pop along and pick your own rocks.

edds wrote: ↑Sun Apr 07, 2024 7:17 pm Find a local stone merchants - you can usually pop along and pick your own rocks.

That might actually work, I have already found one stating they supply Yorkstone.

What other rock types available in the UK might be worth trying? I'd really like to plant an aztekium vertically in some gypsum.

greatnorthernexotic wrote: ↑Sun Apr 07, 2024 7:41 pm What other rock types available in the UK might be worth trying? I'd really like to plant an aztekium vertically in some gypsum.

Don't just worry about UK types - you can even get some fantastic stuff that's been imported.
My local stone merchants (https://www.cedstone.co.uk/) once had some massive pieces of this holey rock, https://hugokamishi.com/shop/brown-holey-rock/.