add styrofoam to mix?

[cirillonb]

a quick test (but not at all absolute) for biodegradable packing peanuts is the smell. The often smell like popcorn since a lot are derived from cornstarch.
Nick

[littlefrog]

I don't like it much, myself. Mainly because it makes a non-biodegradable mess. I recycle my old mix into my flowerbeds and garden. I don't mind a little diatomite or lava rock, but that styrofoam.... well, I don't like it.

If you want to chop styrofoam, try this. Put a bunch of styrofoam into a metal trash can (you can use big pieces of packing material too). Insert weed-whacker. Whack! Repeat as necessary to get the grade you want.

I have a friend who grows a lot of plants in a mix of sphagnum and large sponge-rock. Styrofoam would be the same, but I like the sponge-rock a bit better.

[(..._...)]

I like the trash can method

I can only find small "perlite" where I live, and rather than spending tons on shipping a bag of large diatomite, it would be 100x easier to simply use styrofoam.

I put only bark in the garden also, but since I would be using it with sphag, I wouldn't use it in the garden afterwards anyways

Thanks!

Originally Posted by littlefrog

I don't like it much, myself. Mainly because it makes a non-biodegradable mess. I recycle my old mix into my flowerbeds and garden. I don't mind a little diatomite or lava rock, but that styrofoam.... well, I don't like it.

If you want to chop styrofoam, try this. Put a bunch of styrofoam into a metal trash can (you can use big pieces of packing material too). Insert weed-whacker. Whack! Repeat as necessary to get the grade you want.

I have a friend who grows a lot of plants in a mix of sphagnum and large sponge-rock. Styrofoam would be the same, but I like the sponge-rock a bit better.

[maitaman]

At Chadam we did a good bit of experimentation with styrofoam. It works very well on many orchids while in the seedling phase. We had some problems with blooming plants with certain types in that they release ethylene gas in trace amounts while decomposing (caused by light action) and can cause blooms to be short-lived and quite a bit of bud blasting, so be careful.