Throwing my paph. a lifeline

[cnycharles]

Good link. Interesting that they list rice hulls. We use them in the mix that our company (www.northerncompositeproducts.com) uses in the production of composite deck boards. Rice hulls normally get sent to landfill so it is good to see them being put to good use besides being tossed. :clap: I'll have to grab a bucketfull next time I go up there.

our greenhouse parent company buys rice hulls by the boatload and uses it often instead of perlite, or at least part of the perlite. it is nice to use a natural product, but it is a pain to get the stuff wet if it dries out, and if things are planted dry you can drip water on one side of a six inch pot and it will take forever for the water to wick over to the other side (water will drain out the bottom long before it will move over to the other side)

 

[swamprad]

Marc, are you saying that with this method of root recovery you don't water at all and the water is pulled up from the bottom?

Yes, that is essentially correct. I pot up the plants in sponge rock and sit them all together in a plastic container (from Target, holds a dozen or so pots) in a couple or inches or so of a water/KLN mixture. I mist them every morning and change the water/KLN mixture every week or two. I put about 20 plants into this regimen last December. Not all were rootless wonders, but they all had markedly suboptimal root systems, imho. (Many of these were fairly recent purchases that, in retrospect, I should have repotted as soon as I received them.) After 3 months most (though not all) had multiple new fat roots and were looking great. There were a few that did not respond, so I potted them back into sponge rock, and I'm giving them another 2-3 months. The article stated that they had much better results with this method when used during spring/summer, rather than winter. And I will add that none of the brachy crosses that I tried put out any new roots (so far).

 

[Wendy]

our greenhouse parent company buys rice hulls by the boatload and uses it often instead of perlite, or at least part of the perlite. it is nice to use a natural product, but it is a pain to get the stuff wet if it dries out, and if things are planted dry you can drip water on one side of a six inch pot and it will take forever for the water to wick over to the other side (water will drain out the bottom long before it will move over to the other side)

Interesting. With our company we experience the opposite as the hulls need to be as close to 0% water content as they are used in the mix. It's a pain in the butt to keep the moisture so low. But then again getting it that low is just not natural as everything has some moisture content.

I will bring a bucket home though and try it in my mix. Thanks for the tip on keeping it moist. :clap:

 

[cnycharles]

well, they do have twin personalities. when the media containing the hulls is dry, it is hard to wet or wet fully, quickly. once the media is soaked, it can be sort of stifling as there isn't as much air in the media. i'm sure that hulls by themselves could be tough to dry properly, and especially to 0%

 

[Eric Muehlbauer]

I can't say that my method works well....but it seems marginally better than sphagnum or perlite. Just a mix of cocopeat and perlite, roughly 50:50. Plants don't really put out much root growth, but they get more turgid. If I'm lucky, after a few months to a year I'll have enough small root growth to repot in a regular mix. Take care, Eric