Do you think you could post up how you do these please? Do you just buy the organic top soil and cap it with sand?
I was doing some searching on the Google machine and came across a bunch of different ways. I was just curious how you do yours.
I use because it looks better to me but if you want to use gravel go with a small grain size. I use organic soil because it has all the natural ingredients that you need for growing plants in general, plus a lot of the other stuff isn't aquarium safe. I place a 1"-1.5" of organic soil in the tank and I spread it out evenly, I then take a water bottle and spray water on the soil to get it presoaked. Next I cap with pool filtered sand but you can use gravel, the best way to cap your dirt is to start but capping the sides and then work your way to the middle. In other words just cap the perimeter of the tank then you cap the middle, this way there is no chance the your dirt will come up. I then fill the tank up with water and let it seat for a day, I do 90% water changes everyday 4 days straight to get the very heavy tannins out of the water. After this is done I plant my tank and I add my old filter media, bottled bacteria, and a guppy or danio to cycle the tank. After that your done and your tank should fully cycle in a day or so, you can also plant your tank right after you cap you the dirt and do your 4 90% water changes while planted I just chose not to. And a side note, some plants melt in a newly dirted tank such as crypts, dwarf sage, and ludwigia. They will return but it better to add those plants when the tank establish its self, good luck guys and I hope this was helpful. I help anyone that is interested.