In some other thread awhile back, Julia recommended I use native soil instead of coconut coir and/or potting soil (which was what I had been using) for inside plants. So I decided to try it.
A few weeks ago, I sowed some pinto beans into some pots under my grow light, mainly to see what would happen and see what worked better. They had outgrown the depth of the pots and were becoming rootbound, so I decided to transplant them under my mini greenhouse today.
That sounds promising. I have been doing this sometimes with soil blocks. I have used a modified Grow Biointensive recipe. It’s like 1/3rd compost, 1/3rd fertile garden soil, 1/3rd coarse sand. This worked well for me last year until I ran out of compost.
Half coconut coir + half water crystals
versus
native soil with nothing else added.
(Wry grin.)
My native soil is pure sand, plus a lot of organic material because I’ve been working on improving it. It probably has a fair amount of nitrogen during the summer. But during the winter, when it’s been rained and snowed on for months, it probably has very little nitrogen.
I’m wondering if collecting it during a non-frozen-solid day in winter is a great idea in terms of bug eggs, too – I saw two bugs hatch out and killed them both, but no gnats, and nothing else. I’m wondering if collecting the soil during the winter means there aren’t a lot of living bug eggs in it, whereas in summer there might have been. My hypothesis is that collecting native soil for growing things may be best done in midwinter rather than midsummer. But that I’m not sure about!
Some earthworms snuck in with the native soil. I’m not sure if they lived.
Oh, also, I just used clear tupperware containers. I didn’t put holes in the bottom. I just waited to water them until I could see it was dry all the way to the bottom. I figure that’s less bother for me, and I don’t have to worry about root rot, just overly dry roots. And if my plants can handle overly dry roots for a day or two, that means they’re learning how to live in my summer climate.
Some sow bugs snuck into a different pot (a.k.a. tupperware with no holes in the bottom) that has basil growing in it now. The basil looks great. The sow bugs are often wandering around the top. None of them have escaped, so I don’t mind them being in there! That’s the pot I added some sawdust to, so they’re probably eating it. Sure, whatever, I don’t care!
I love this recipe, pretty same for my soil blocks. If you have an oak forest nearby, you could try adding sifted oak leaf mold. (esp when you run out of compost) Besides the fungal awesomeness, I read that there’s some kind of natural growth hormone in oak. My tomatoes sown in pure oak leaf mold popped up and grew like crazy compared to everything else. It’s just so time consuming except as an additive/inoculant.
Ok! Interesting, sounds like a baby contributed issue … Might be a data point for @Justin who is using something similar for indoor growing just not attached to water crystals
Nope, no baby involved. Those water crystals came from a bag of water crystals (Miracle Grow brand), not from diapers. I bought those bags of water crystals before I found out you could easily get them free from diapers. I decided I would use the water crystals from the bag for indoors growing, since I don’t really want to use diaper fluff indoors.
Huh! That Grow Biointensive recipe sounds pretty much like what my garden soil is!
My guess would be the lack of nitrogen nodules wasn’t too much nitrogen in the coconut coir; it was probably a lack of beneficial bacteria in the coconut coir to form those nodules!
OFF TOPIC ALERT esp. since we already knew this mix is not ideal but I’m a nerd.
I’m still a little mystified, but my cursory review of polyacrylamide left me thinking there might be reason for concern for adding it to soil, because of the way it breaks down.
I didn’t want to read scientific papers, so I asked chat gpt, and though it could be causing the excess N symptoms you mentioned, it just seems unlikely it would happen so quickly: “the breakdown of polyacrylamide can also release small amounts of nitrogen and other nutrients that could potentially contribute to over-fertilization.”
Oh, interesting! Well, if it breaks down and releases small amounts of nutrients that may potentially contribute to over-fertilization, I’m not super worried about that. I’m putting loads of organic material into the soil that will definitely break down and provide lots of nutrients that may contribute to over-fertilization. (Laugh.)
I would be worried about adding water crystals to my soil if they broke down into long-term toxic compounds that would make the plants (or, worse, the humans eating the plants) sick, but I haven’t seen any evidence of that, and I’ve looked. What I have seen, when I’ve added them outdoors, is an increase of happy plants that seem to need to be watered less frequently. Woot!
I have used native soil (unamended) for years. My soil at my old house was almost straight sand. It ate compost for breakfast and remained sand.
Now I have clay loam and I plan to use it the same way. It’s probably telling that many seeds are germinating within two days.
Calendula, marshmallow, licorice. parsley, chives, thyme, sweet potato seeds, angelica and cucumbers all germinated within two days. Some of these require cold stratification or chitting. Some should take weeks or months to germinate.
Instead they’re germinating quickly without any treatment. Maybe they’re just catching my own excitement.
Hey, that’s great! Have you been using the exact same soil? I’ve seen gardening YouTubers say something like, “You have to buy new soil for your potted plants every year,” and I’ve kind of looked askance at that. I don’t need to buy new soil for my outdoor plants, so why would I need to do it for my indoor plants? That seems silly.
I believe one of the challenges with coconut coir is the high salt content. I think, if you use it, it’s recommended that you rinse it a bunch to try to reduce the salt content.
I stopped watching at least 1 yt channel because of that. I gave him 3 strikes, but that was one of them. Another was his obsession with ph, because “not even pine trees” will grow in alkaline soil. Really? ID10T error.
