Alternatives to Perlite for soil aeration?

[Rico Swazi]

climate change has me less worried about drainage than keeping the soil hydrated enough to keep the microbiology and worms happily doin their thing

I grow outdoors in 25gal containers and noticed the last few years of having to water a bit more often than years past.
No perlite in the mix, just lava rock but nowhere near 1/3 , perhaps 10% not much more


Lately I've been adding copious amounts of last years wood chip piles as mulch and noticed
an increase in worm activity over the usual grass or green manure/mulch used in the past.sorry N, carbon wins again bigtime.



Anyone else forgoing the usual 1/3 aeration paradigm ?

 

[Cvh]

Bump. Anyone else has some ideas?

 

[Guest]

Rice husks, for me way better option then dealing with + disposing of bright white perlite, and will break down over time into silica source

 

[Lyfespan]

what about coco

 

[Lyfespan]

worms

 

[Lyfespan]

Here are five key (and overlapping) benefits of gypsum highlighted at past symposiums:

1. Source of calcium and sulfur for plant nutrition. “Plants are becoming more deficient for sulfur and the soil is not supplying enough it,” said Warren Dick, soil scientist and professor, School of Environment and Natural Resources, The Ohio State University. “Gypsum is an excellent source of sulfur for plant nutrition and improving crop yield.”

Meanwhile, calcium is essential for most nutrients to be absorbed by plants roots. “Without adequate calcium, uptake mechanisms would fail,” Dick said. “Calcium helps stimulate root growth.”

2. Improves acid soils and treats aluminum toxicity. One of gypsum’s main advantages is its ability to reduce aluminum toxicity, which often accompanies soil acidity, particularly in subsoils. Gypsum can improve some acid soils even beyond what lime can do for them, which makes it possible to have deeper rooting with resulting benefits to the crops, Dick said. “Surface-applied gypsum leaches down to to the subsoil and results in increased root growth,” he said.

3. Improves soil structure. Flocculation, or aggregation, is needed to give favorable soil structure for root growth and air and water movement, said Jerry Bigham, Professor Emeritus, School of Environment and Natural Resources, The Ohio State University. “Clay dispersion and collapse of structure at the soil-air interface is a major contributor to crust formation,” he said. “Gypsum has been used for many years to improve aggregation and inhibit or overcome dispersion in sodic soils.”

Soluble calcium enhances soil aggregation and porosity to improve water infiltration (see below). “It’s important to manage the calcium status of the soil,” he said. “I would argue it’s every bit as important as managing NPK.”

In soils having unfavorable calcium-magnesium ratios, gypsum can create a more favorable ratio, Bigham added. “Addition of soluble calcium can overcome the dispersion effects of magnesium or sodium ions and help promote flocculation and structure development in dispersed soils,” he said.

4. Improves water infiltration. Gypsum also improves the ability of soil to drain and not become waterlogged due to a combination of high sodium, swelling clay and excess water, Dick said. “When we apply gypsum to soil it allows water to move into the soil and allow the crop to grow well,” he said.

Increased water-use efficiency of crops is extremely important during a drought, added Allen Torbert, research leader at the USDA-ARS National Soil Dynamics Lab, Auburn, AL. “The key to helping crops survive a drought is to capture all the water you can when it does rain,” he said. “Better soil structure allows all the positive benefits of soil-water relations to occur and gypsum helps to create and support good soil structure properties.”

5. Helps reduce runoff and erosion. Agriculture is considered to be one of the major contributors to water quality, with phosphorus runoff the biggest concern. Experts explained how gypsum helps to keep phosphorus and other nutrients from leaving farm fields. “Gypsum should be considered as a Best Management Practice for reducing soluble P losses,” said Torbert, who showed studies on how gypsum interacts with phosphorus.

Darrell Norton, retired soil scientist at the USDA-ARS National Soil Erosion Research Laboratory at Purdue University, added: “Using gypsum as a soil amendment is the most economical way to cut the non-point run-off pollution of phosphorus.”

 

[Guest]

climate change has me less worried about drainage than keeping the soil hydrated enough to keep the microbiology and worms happily doin their thing

I grow outdoors in 25gal containers and noticed the last few years of having to water a bit more often than years past.
No perlite in the mix, just lava rock but nowhere near 1/3 , perhaps 10% not much more


Lately I've been adding copious amounts of last years wood chip piles as mulch and noticed
an increase in worm activity over the usual grass or green manure/mulch used in the past.sorry N, carbon wins again bigtime.



Anyone else forgoing the usual 1/3 aeration paradigm ?

Or high N carbon like pea straw or lucerne.
Indoor and outdoor somewhat different beasts, in ground or container size are all factors that react differently.
With the breaking down of green mulch, it will steal nitrogen in the process, can get some yellowing.
Cover all bases and get the most diverse sources into your compost. Then further refine your compost through your worms. Top dress mulch, do whatever you like with that stuff.
Woodchips are great, for the spores and fungus, great big soil web party.

 

[Guest]

what about coco

I tried coco as a subtitute to peat in LCs mix, don't believe I had good results, but memory is hazy, id have to try it again

 

[Lyfespan]

I tried coco as a subtitute to peat in LCs mix, don't believe I had good results, but memory is hazy, id have to try it again

if you do use it remember coco's CEC, hence the addition of gypsum

 

[Lyfespan]

I tried coco as a subtitute to peat in LCs mix, don't believe I had good results, but memory is hazy, id have to try it again

also enzymes, coco becomes food fast in living soil mixes

 

['Boogieman']

I going to try 20% biochar 30% coco 30% peatmoss 20% compost and castings on one plant outdoors. I want to replace perlite myself and created five gallons of this mix and it drains very well.

 

[Rico Swazi]

Or high N carbon like pea straw or lucerne.
Indoor and outdoor somewhat different beasts, in ground or container size are all factors that react differently.
With the breaking down of green mulch, it will steal nitrogen in the process, can get some yellowing.
Cover all bases and get the most diverse sources into your compost. Then further refine your compost through your worms. Top dress mulch, do whatever you like with that stuff.
Woodchips are great, for the spores and fungus, great big soil web party.

took a pic today to show what I meant by carbon winning


2 living soil containers with overwintered peas onions and grasses

the container with woodchips has much better tilth than the one relying on roots to breakup the soil


never had a problem with chop and drop stealing N though
same with the woodchips as long as they are top dressed and not tilled in

 

[risasdemaria]

2 living soil containers

same here. "Trap culture" rules

 

[CrushnYuba]

Ricoswazi: i think one off the main reasons you have noticed better results with less then 30% drainage is because your pots are so small. For outdoor that's a tiny pot. If your pot was 10x bigger, it would probably suffer with that amount of drainage.
Today i swore off perlite for good. It doesn't do much if it all floats away. I could not stop the perlite from floating the matter how slowly i watered. I'm getting a few yards of starter mix made up with lava rock instead.

 

[Rico Swazi]

Hey Crushnyuba, Sounds like as good a hypothesis as any on the drainage and what may suffer. The tiny pots as you call them are not so tiny to me) and are as big as they can be and still be moved around the garden and under cover when needs be.

I also plant in the ground so no need for 10x bigger container , never used perlite myself mainly because it looks so unnatural to me (outdoors especially).

I attribute better tilth to the increased worm activity in the woodchip container. More food is my guess at this moment



gonna do a side by side in these two containers with some headband clones and see what there is to see

 

[Lyfespan]

Ricoswazi: i think one off the main reasons you have noticed better results with less then 30% drainage is because your pots are so small. For outdoor that's a tiny pot. If your pot was 10x bigger, it would probably suffer with that amount of drainage.
Today i swore off perlite for good. It doesn't do much if it all floats away. I could not stop the perlite from floating the matter how slowly i watered. I'm getting a few yards of starter mix made up with lava rock instead.

welcome to the club fuck perlite and that gnatnix shit and growstones all are fucking garbage

 

[Microbeman]

I use about 15% 'hard' drainage material. Always have. I like to have the moisture stick around longer.

 

[mrghost]

I've noticed that perlite mostly floats to the top or breaks down and sinks to the bottom (over time). So if you're running no-till beds or want to reuse your soil for years perlite is your worst enemy (for aeration or to hold moisture)
The main advantage in perlite (AFAIK) is that the pores are too small to hold nutrients. Perlite holds water and air, so if you add a lot of liquid nutrients perlite can help (therefore this does not apply for no-till).

I try to have different organic materials, especially lava rock and clay pebbles to store air and water with nutrients that break down over time. Additionally rice hulls or similar organic material (that breaks down over time) adds some diversity and promotes air distribution in the soil. As mentioned before, seashells (not shell meal) can create air pockets.

 

[Lyfespan]

https://www.teraganix.com/


organics workshops and explanations here. these guys hook up everyone btw

 

[Rico Swazi]

I use about 15% 'hard' drainage material. Always have. I like to have the moisture stick around longer.

I do too- Makes flushing so much easier! LOL. kidding, joking, going for the funny

Bad Jokes aside, In my garden, the plants dictate the watering schedule . To me, the whole idea of fast draining soil comes from the chem/organic bottle crowd who feel a need to force feed the plants. The need to water less leaves time for other endeavors

My bad, I screwed up by adding your inputs of your earlier post to 25% instead of the total 15%. Answered my question earlier on who is forgoing the one third drainage . Thanks MM

I plan to use around 10% maybe 12% sand in my current upcoming mix. My impervious drainage mix (rock) is usually 15% quite different from everyone's 33%. In addition to this I use some slowly degrading forms of drainage, such as you are doing with biochar.