How much Perlite do you use in your organic mix?

[Cool Moe]

grapeman, one alternative to making your own charcoal is Cowboy or Frontier brand 100% natural lump charcoal sold at Lowe's and Home Depot (if you have access to those stores). I soak a batch in kelp water for several days, drain the water off, place in an empty plastic soil bag, then crush with a large hammer. If I use 20 parts various soil components I then mix in 1/2 part crushed biochar. Crushed biochar under a scope shows an amazing amount of ridges and cubbys for the bacterial microbes to populate.

 

[mad librettist]

And my worms love it too!

But we were referring to screened charcoal for drainage.

And let's not forget, perlite is microbe habitat too.

 

[Matanuskan Flo]

if you don;t want the perlite to float up, water more slowly. simple. the perlite only will float up in the area where water is pooling faster than it is draining down. this only happens to the top 1/3 of the container;s medium. it is obvious why this happens, but is not sumthin to whine about IMO. if you top dress w/ str8 perlite as I used to do, you wont notice any more floating, at least haha.

anyhow, i now only supplement with vermiculite. it holds so much more water than perlite its not even comparable. i now top dress w/ the Vermy too. the one thing nobody has mentioned is that perlite tends to clump together in certain scattered areas of the container. this is what i do not like, the inconsistency & variations throughout the 3 months of use. Vermy stays where you put it & is consistent & uniform. the one thing i also must add, since V holds everything better than P, it can be less forgiving if you over feed or water. but, once you've got your isht down pat, V is my best friend in maintaining consistent food, drink, air, & support. i use about 20-30% V in addition to my normal FFOF/LW mix.

 

[Wooderson]

Wow 22 votes for 20% & 30%; that's funny "lol" cuz I been lately thinking that I will go with 25%.....

 

[guyhowdy]

Boiled Rice Hulls vs Perlite

Boiled Rice Hulls vs Perlite

I've been interested in creating a new mix with no perlite and thought this link is pretty beneficial to the topic.

http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=15667535

PBH vs Perlite

The results that I find are most significant are:

"Tomato plants grown in 10%, 15%, 25%, 30%, and 35% PFH had significantly higher dry root weights than those grown in equivalent perlite-containing substrates."

and

"Tomato plants grown in 20% to 40% perlite had significantly higher dry shoot weights than those grown in equivalent PFH-containing substrates. However, dry shoot weights of tomato grown in 10% to 15% perlite were not significantly different from those grown in equivalent PFH-containing substrates."

I only listed the tomato info because tomatoes are more similar to mj than marigolds or pansies(sorry to all the pansy gardners out there.)

Anyways, even if the PBH doesn't grow healthier or bigger plants, it does have a different texture which I think most people including myself are interested in. Perlite floating to the surface when watering bothers me, but the effort I have to make to get the perlite evenly distributed in my soil mix when planting drives me nuts. When I take a scoop of my mix and dump it into a pot, the perlite immediately separates into certain areas and I have to gently redistribute it evenly.

I have no experience with PBH, but I'm gonna:] From what I understand, per measurement it is actually lighter compared to perlite. That's not important to me, but if you have sciatica and have bad form when doing squats and lunges with your pots then it might be ;] I would assume that it would blend and mix better with a soil mix than perlite(at least the bigger pieces of perlite.) When I am making a mix I use touch and running my fingers and hands through the mix to feel the consistency I'm looking for. For some reason the bigger pieces of perlite just feel wrong.

I've seen pictures of certain plants(not tomato or mj) grow in perlite and pbh. In some pictures, the pbh is significantly bigger. In other pics, they look pretty much the same. So my question is to all the PBH users out there...have you noticed anything different?? Size, color, your mood?? Can anyone post pics of closeups of their pbh soil mixes? I dont even know what this stuff looks like or how you prepare it off the brick for the mix.

Any info helps

 

[Smiley Coyote]

If the soil has already been loosened with spaghum, does this affect the amount of perlite used?

 

[Castelvetro]

its important for any beginner to realize that a wet soil viod or without enough peat will not be able to made into the sweet spot of drainage (wet/dry) cycles with just perlite, unless u go with about 70 percent or upwards, im just simply saying that a good peat based medium with 30ish percent of perlite is spot on but in a very compost rich mix u may need to add some peat as well, i leaned the hard way once already.

theres also something to be said about things that incrase the downward piston of water and help draw in fresh oxygen without holding on to either water or air in the process, like sand, etc.

 

[theJointedOne]

0-5%

 

[time123]

I was reading this thread last night and I have to agree with some here when it comes to composting my used soil. I really don't want perlite getting into my outdoor garden. My friend many many years ago, when still living with his mum composted his perlite-soil mix and it slowly got added to the garden by his mum. By the time he left home his mums garden was starting to look like it had just hailed or snowed!...Really awfull, plus theres the security issues! I have always been an outdoor grower so I've used sharp sand and cocoa shells and what-not for aeration,but I'm getting set up for my first indoor I'm finding it hard to find a alternative here in the UK. Rice hulls look good but I can't find them here. Hydroton seems to big and bulky...maybe crushed up?.. or pumice maybe. One medium I have found here in the UK, (which I posted up in the perlite alternative thread) is called Alfa Greenlite,which is porous expanded clay like hydroton but smaller and looks a little more irregular. I really want to stay with soil and pure organic for my first indoor grow so any perlite free soil mixes that people use would be a huge help to me...Thanks.

 

[kingofqueen]

I really dont care if perlite floats . Can anyone produce info stating that perlite floating causes diminished crop size ? I bet u cannot. I could see if your roots concentrated at the top but this is not the case . I have searched this site and another one i have been on for a couple of months and have always seen that people with a good soil base containing peat and a perlite mix anywhere from 20 to 30% hands down ! I have also read that lump charcoal or any burned wood product is highly alkaline . I guess this might be why you want to soak it but everyone one knows wood floats I,ll go with where the majority of the results are I,m going with 25% This seems to be the average .And yes if u water slowly using a good diffuser it doesnt really float that bad.Common sense tells me and experiance that if u water in hard and fast it digs a hole thus churning everything up and this causes the lightest thing to float to the top !

 

[jaykush]

there's no option for 0%

 

[kingofqueen]

But in the old days perlite didnt exist . and option for 0 perlite wouldnt be useful for the reasoning behind the poll anyways .

 

[the gnome]

after 2-3 waterings all the loose perlite lends up on top of the soil,
I just empty it out of the the pot and recylce it in the next patch of soil
I like 25-33% in my mixes depending
and up to 50/50 for seedlings

 

[h.h.]

So it floats? That only serves to aerate the soil while leaving a void for new roots.

 

[pseudopod]

For now I'm happy with 20% perlite in my mix. The size matters, though. Get a big bag of #3 perlite instead of the crap they sell at home improvement stores in the smaller bags.

My only real misstep was using perlite on top of soil to keep fungus gnats at bay. It seemed like such a good idea at the time..

 

[captinknots]

For now I'm happy with 20% perlite in my mix. The size matters, though. Get a big bag of #3 perlite instead of the crap they sell at home improvement stores in the smaller bags.

My only real misstep was using perlite on top of soil to keep fungus gnats at bay. It seemed like such a good idea at the time..

I was just reading homies post stating he used perlite for his fungus gnats. I'm guessing that didnt work out for you? i was thinking of trying it.........

In my veg mix,im using no perlite right now and the girls are loving it. im just using dr earths potting soil, which has id say trace amounts of perlite. its mostly Screened Forest Humus
Fir Bark Fines
Canadian Sphagnum peat Moss and trace perlite.

my only concern is compaction later on in flower when i up to 3 gallon pots....i have not tried this soil only mix in flower. I just started this because i had serious problems when adding shit to my soil, so back to serious basics! i rotate crops every week or two so i can run experiments back to back. ill add some perlite next round and see how those do, then ill add some ewc and see how those do, then ill add dolomite and see how those do, and so on...........

 

[pseudopod]

It worked minimally I guess, but keeping your soil from being overly moist in the first place is better. I initially thought it might be nice to have white reflective material to reflect light up too, but it just seemed messy to me. That, and after using nutes for a while it ain't so white anymore.

 

[igrowone]

very good thread, i was considering posting something like this myself, except i was looking for perlite substitutes
the charcoal sounds interesting, a thread for charcoal + soil might be interesting, maybe one exists already
but the rice husks sound very interesting, finding a supply might be a bit tough

 

[NSPB]

Roughly 3 gallons to every 11 gallons of mix....so, that means 8 gallons of other stuff, 3 gallons of perlite, to make the 11 total.

Which would be roughly 30% of the total mix.



NSPB

 

[The Strain Man]

I use 30% to 40% It depends on the soil mix you use and the plant your growing Like if you use ffof anything less than 40% the soil turns into a brick I dont use that stuff no more.