Importance of Soil

Lately I've been thinking about ways to improve my plants' health. I have had some plants that seemingly are growing very well and suddenly they become weak and look sickly. Some of them also have pests. I was reading stuff online as well as watching videos which had an emphasis on the soil used to grow plants. Thinking about the growing conditions of my plants, I began to think that perhaps this is my issue. I mostly used the prepared soils from companies such as Miracle Grow. While this seems convenient, this might not be the best thing for my plants.

While going down my rabbit hole, I learned about other important components for soil such as coconut coir, peat moss, perlite, vermiculite, and pumice to name a few. Many of these are considered soil amendments. Amendments in the sense that you are amending the soil with components that it might otherwise be lacking. So while Miracle Grow soil is useful and convenient, their cactus soil is lacking grit, such as gravel or pumice, that cactus and succulents really need to thrive and for healthy roots. So it turns out that the soil you buy from a store is a great starting point. I purchased a large (3 gallons!) of pumice from Amazon and created a 50-50 mix of the Miracle Grow cactus soil and pumice. This creates a soil that drains so much better which is very important for the root systems of cactus and succulents. I've purchased a few other items such as coconut coir and perlite and have started making other mixes for my house plants. It's early, so I can't preach about the benefits of making my own soil mixtures yet but I have my fingers crossed. I'll share them online if they turn out to work well.

One last material I want to mention that I recently discovered is Earthworm castings. This is basically organic material that has been processed by worms - or worm poop. It sounds disgusting but plants apparently love this stuff. It provides great organic material and nutrients that are essential to healthy plants. I picked up an 8 quart bag from Home Depot and to my surprise it just looks like dirt and smells just like dirt. Maybe dirt is just worm poop in the end? But I'm starting to experiment with worm castings in my plants and hoping for some positive results to report on later.

Earthworm Castings... worm poop!

Is worm poop just dirt?

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Windowsill Radishes - Day 31 - Death of the Cotyledons

The radishes have been growing for 31 days at this point from the day I plopped the seeds into the dirt. As of day 31, I've noticed that the cotyledons, or embryonic leaves, for both plants have finally started to yellow and die. I was curious how long these would last. They've grown very large throughout the life of the plants thus far too. The radish bulbs do seem to be plumping up nicely too. I'm excited to see what they look like on the day I decide to pluck them from the dirt. I'm really curious to see if there's much more to them than meets the eyes (above the dirt in this case). Day 31 Side View Day 31 Top View Radish Close-up Good-bye Cotyledons

Radish Season is Over - I think...

Much like shell art is over in Portlandia, I think it's safe to say that radish season is over in my neck of the woods. The weather has just warmed up too significantly as of late. If you saw my post from yesterday, I ended up harvesting some of those radishes as they didn't appear to be growing any more. I will post something about that in a few days or so. Upon sampling, they were much too spicy to my taste. I think the window of growth opportunity is over. I probably should have started in early spring or late winter but this was more of a fun experiment stemming from the shelter in place orders. Anyhow, I'll probably be plucking most of my radish plants in the coming days except for a few that are or might be bolting. They'll serve to make a nice dish of radish greens. Some strange looking radishes

Windowsill Radishes - Day 35 - The Radish (singular) Harvest

So day 35 rolled around and I was still committed to harvesting a radish - curious to see how it's grown. I decided to pull the radish that was already more exposed above the soil first. I had no idea how much of the radish was actually below the soil. Have a scroll through the images below to see the harvest. I suppose I should really be putting harvest in quotations. "Harvest." But after plucking the radish from the dirt, my first observation was, "wow, this radish is pretty small." But upon closer inspection and after cleaning off the dirt and stray roots, I got a sense that the radish was plumping up below the dirt. I think I probably should have let it grow longer but hey, my curiosity got the better of me and plus the seed packet said matures in 29 days. I'll be writing up another post to talk about the taste of the radish and the radish greens. But after plucking the radish, I have committed to leaving the other radish growing for at least another fiv...

The Capsule Garden

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