If pine shavings means shavings of sapwood (white, blonde, yellow inner wood of the tree), then no it will not be appropriate. Josh

The Agway Pine Bark Mulch is the best stuff I've come across. I wouldn't screen it at all. Just add the 1 part peat and 1 part perlite, and you are good to go. If it looks anything like this, you're in 511 heaven. If you feel you must screen it, anything that passes through a 1/2" screen is usable. http://www.agway.com/catalog/agway/home_and_garden/mulches/pine/10202313_agway_pine_bark_mulch_3_cuft.html

Searching both the Container Gardening forum and the Texas Gardening forums turned up these brand names: Scotchman's Landscapers Mix Calloway's Organic Compost Landscapers Pride Soil Conditioner (available at Sledd Nursery) Also Marble Falls Nursery apparently carries a reasonable facsimile of bark fines or mini bark nuggets in bulk. Or they did at one time :-) Otherwise, look at any product labeled as a 'soil conditioner', reptile bedding (sold in pet stores) or small orchid bark. Often these types of bark products are not commonly sold through the box stores but are available at better nurseries and garden centers. I would also ask if your better local garden center could order any Fafard products (SunGro Horticulture) for you. Their 3B professional growing mix is about ideal. Or Fox Farm's Ocean Forest potting soil. Whatever, I would not use that potting soil in the photo without serious modification.

To the OP: Apologies for diverting the topic but please do pipe in if are still in doubt. Westes: "I think when you talk about finer particles creating more space between particles, that is just a side effect of more surface area. Larger particles with less total surface area leave less space between those larger particles. This is just looking at the same issue from two different perspectives." It is the other way around. Capillary force depends on the space between surfaces. Consider a wick made of fine strands of fibers. If you loosely pack it then the spaces between strands are large and it will not wick as well. But if you tightly wind the same strands the spaces between strands decreases and it will wick up water much better. The surface area has not changed but the capillary force increases considerably. This is the principle that a mop uses to draw up the water from the floor. Another way to look at PWT is to think of a jigsaw puzzle vertically. The pieces themselves are big compared to the spaces in between them. Let us assume the pieces cannot absorb water. Let us say they are made of plastic and when they are put together there is still a tiny strand of space between them and is the same throughout. If the space is small enough water will wick up from the bottom through those spaces to quite a height. But the height achieved by wicking water is determined by the space between the pieces and not the size of the pieces themselves. And for this theoretical jigsaw puzzle, the height the water will reach be fairly fixed - no more no less. "If I take Turface fines and water them, I get a water-saturated mess that is very slow to dry. Are you saying that this means the perched water table actually goes the entire length of the container to the top of the soil? Let me try to grasp the physics of just that trivial case before we start to talk about 511 again." If you take your turface medium it will have a fixed PWT. Let us say that is 5 inches or 10 inches or whatever the medium supports. Below that height it will be 100% saturated. Above that height it will not be 100% saturated. And as you go higher it will be less so. When I say saturated, it means both the particles and the air spaces are filled with water. Above PWT the particles may be saturated but not the spaces in between. In fact, the spaces in between will be a mixture of air and water vapor making it very humid. The relative humidity in the spaces may be 100% but it is very different from saying that space is 100% water. Slow to dry does not mean there is a PWT. All it means is that turface is saturated with water. Does not mean that the spaces between them is. And turface is pretty reluctant to give up its water. The surface bond strength between water and the clay in turface is pretty strong. It takes a lot of energy to break that bond and it becomes increasingly (exponentially) harder as the turface becomes drier. Cactus like plants have an immense ability to exert phenomenal force to extract water. They have evolved to do that. Water loving plants lack that ability and need more freely available water not tightly bound to the medium. Without any roots to suck that water any medium will feel damp/wet for a long time. Temperature plays a role here too. Lower the temperature harder it is for the roots to extract water from a medium.