Gordon,

Good comments from Jim. If you plan to do larger volumes of soil then
homemade sifters are great because you can make them larger. I like about
12" x 18" by 3" deep (30 x 45 x 8 cm) since this is about as large as I can
handle without killing myself. If you make the wood frames tapered then
they can nest and you can capture the different grades in one pass. 1/2" is
a bit large (I use it to get rid of the big junk), the hard to find 3 wires
to inch hardware cloth is available from McMaster-Carr.

Aquarium gravel would make a good, although expensive, soil component as
long as it is not full of salt. Depending upon the size of pot and type of
tree it might even be a main component. However, you can probably find
lower cost components at the landscape supply yard - fine shredded bark,
crushed lava if they have it, turface, coarse sand, etc.

Marty

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