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?

Comments

Infinite Green Onion Hack? Growing Green Onion from the scraps

I'm sure many of you already know this but for those of you that don't, you can take the bottom of the green onions that you buy from the grocery stores and grow more green onion! Green onion is comprised of two basic parts - the stalk or the green portion and the bulb. The bulb is usually white and has some roots growing from the bottom. In order to grow your own green onion from this you don't even need to save the entire white portion. I recommend leaving at least an inch though. once you cut that off, you can use the remaining green onion for consumption. With that portion of the bulb that you saved give it a rinse and remove any peeling, dying skin, and dead roots. This will help prevent rot. There are a few ways you can grow your green onion. The easiest way is to put them in some water. Note that you do not want to submerge the bulb. You only want the bottom root portion to be exposed to water. Letting the entire bulb sit in water will encourage (not what we want in

Eating my Homegrown Radish - My Review

Back on day 35 or my radish growing fun, I harvested one of two radishes that I had growing on my apartment windowsill. You can view that post here if you're interested. I figured I'd give a review of how the radish tasted. The radish is also almost comically small as you can see here in these photos: Yep, it was tiny compared to my (what I think is a regular-sized) hand but I wasn't going to let that stop me from chowing down on it. Eating my first born.. er first grown. First I chopped off the radish greens or leaves. I decided I'd just eat the root raw which tends to be the most common way to eat radishes. That or pickling them. I have to say, the taste and texture of the radish were actually quite delightful. For the most part it had a very mild, crisp, and fresh taste. That leads me to the top of the radish or the part directly below the leaves. That part was spicy! That took me by surprise. compared to the majority of the root, the top was very spicy tasting. No

Growing Celery from my Refrigerator and Watching it Flower/Bloom

Have you ever had celery in the refrigerator so long to the point where it becomes link and bends from it's own weight? I had one of those recently. The celery itself still looked "good" in the sense it was green. It wasn't rotting or brown or disgusting. Perhaps some might find limp celery gross. I was determined not to just have to toss out the celery and attempt to revive it in a cup of water. I grabbed a mug, filled it with a little bit of water, and plunked the flimsy celery in. After a few days the celery had plumped up and became firm again. But of course after it had reached a point where it was edible, I wasn't in the mood for celery. I left the celery in the mug for a week or so while adding water. One day I removed the celery to rinse it off a bit under the faucet and surprisingly I observed some roots growing from the bottom of the stalks. Interested, I decided to let the plant grow as opposed to eating it. I eventually moved it to a sunny window from

The Capsule Garden

Search This Blog