After all the repotting in the spring I gave many liters of soil that came off the trees. Last year I spent the winter sifting the previous year's degraded akadama and the organic mix out and all of the clipped off roots to get a mix of pumice and lava rock. There must be an easier way.

What do others do?

I sift as well. Don't know any other method. But if you think it is too time consuming you can always build a bigger sifter. Or even get a professional motorized sifter.

I do the same if my point is to retrieve the inorganic part of the mix...
You can either dry sift, or wet sift (which consist in putting all the material on a net, net bag or a sift and wash it)...

I sift. A few hours once a year in spring after hot-drying the old stuff, maybe half a cubic metre of the stuff.

Leatherback,

do you use to sift?

My sifter is the usual sifter from some bonsai online store, about 25-30 cm across. I sift once on fine screen to get rid of the fines and again on coarse to get rid of the roots and weeds. It takes forever. I looked on Amazon for something bigger but couldn't find anything with changing screens.

I have about the same amount.

to remove the dryed weeds etc. I use a paint stripper gun to just blown away the major parts before start sifting.

Ivan Mann wrote:

Leatherback,

do you use to sift?

My sifter is the usual sifter from some bonsai online store, about 25-30 cm across. I sift once on fine screen to get rid of the fines and again on coarse to get rid of the roots and weeds. It takes forever. I looked on Amazon for something bigger but couldn't find anything with changing screens.

I have about the same amount.

It is what I use too.

I have 3 sizes BUT.. I start with the coarse grating AND I do not worry about getting all perfectly sized. So if 95% of the smaller grains er through I call it ok!

A local club member gave me the answer.

In Amazon, there are things to order called Prospector's Sieves. I got two with fine mesh and coarse mesh, about a foot/third of a meter diameter . They came in today.

They stack together so I put the coarse on top and fine underneath, put several large cups worth in, shook for a couple of minutes, took out all last year's roots, and had the left over soil nicely sorted out.

Very good way for the day to proceed after the game this morning.