Please tell me I didn't just do something horrible!
Last week my local Wm store got a beautiful shipment of succulents and I impulse bought a bunch of them. Figured the soil they came with had to go but I didn't have all the ingredients for some of the mixes I've seen. I did have a big bag of pea gravel and some DE oil-dry (like turface). Was worried about the pH being too alkaline so what I did was this: I rinsed the gravel, soaked it in vinegar for an hour-ish, and rinsed again really well. Added the oil-dry, about 1/3. Mixed a weak solution of Peter's 20-20-20 with slightly acidic tap water and used that to hydrate it all. It fizzed a little bit when I added the solution, looked like it was steaming for a few seconds. With the succulents, I gently poked at the root balls to loosen the soil and used a water hose for some of them. Didn't get all of the soil off, though. Planted two small echeverias and a tiny burro's tail together in a terracotta azalea pot. Also planted a sempervivum and a mini jade plant by themselves. With the mini jade I mixed in some of the sempervivum's soil, which wasn't too bad (from a different nursery). It looked like bark bits mostly. Topped them all with more pebbles and oil-dry.

Sorry about the length. Guess I just want to know if anyone thinks I should redo them quickly before they die. One more thing: My sister has a pachyveria that's super leggy and was never repotted from it's little 2" one. The leaves have been falling off and I think it's a goner. Any ideas of how to save it would be very much appreciated!

Edit: I actually added the solution to the oil-dry before adding pebbles. That's when it fizzed and made "steam," just a little. So the DE could be an alkaline reactant and I don't really know whether or not the pebbles contain limestone.

This post was edited by liligoat on Fri, Oct 18, 13 at 2:53