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gtarman

Anyone used charcoal in potting mixes before?

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Was just looking through an older thread and saw somebody used some charcoal in their potting mix...was wondering if anybody else has tried this, what the results have been, how they did it, and would they recommend it?

Cheeeeers

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I have used it inadvertedly because there was some charcoal in my compost pile. I just mixed a wee bit of this charcoaly compost when i was desperate and mixed it in with pumice. Surprisingly it made quite a nice looking mix.

I dont think there was any noticible difference between the cactus that got the charcoal and the cacti that didnt, but it definately didnt seem to be harmed by it (not very scientific info from me lol)

I also used some in my salvia bed and the sally looked great! Grew very large.

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Yes Ive used it, I wanted to try 'sweetening' the mix for my cacti, all I can say is that it didnt harm them and they grew quite well.
I couldnt really compare them against anything though.

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yep ive done the same as andy, hard to tell if it helped much, certainly didnt hurt.

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Cool...I've heard some people hype it up as the shiznitz for plant growth but I'm always leery of glowing (usually unbalanced or under-informed) reviews.

How did you guys add it? What percentage of the mix roughly?

EDIT: the geezers on this page seem to think it can be used interchangeably with other drainage materials...although I guess you wouldn't want to overdo it in regards to the pH?

Although it seems it also significantly increases moisture-retention, so I don't think it would be quite as effective as regular drainage materials, and may be problematic for drier species? Couple more interesting info-sheets:

http://www.bioed.org/ECOS/pubs/Presentations/CartoonIllustrations.pdf

http://www.un.org/esa/sustdev/csd/csd15/PF/info/A_Alimasi.pdf

Edited by gtarman

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We use it it seems to help for the rot prone ones if you can get it cheap enough it can't hurt. Alot of the QLD cacti society people use a mix based around this and volcanic rock.

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I used to use charcoal alot when i lived in West Australia, id collect it from burnt out hollow trees after a bushfire .

Once I got bitten by three scorpians all at the same time on my hand scraping the charcoal out of a hollow burnt out tree once , fuggin hurt and looked to see what the hell it was bloody whole nest of em.

I reckon charcoal accelerates the growth something to do with the carbon it also neutralizes salts from chemical fertilizers and adds good drainage too ! Ooh and its free :)

I hear charcoal from animal bones is good for getting phosphorus.

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I've heard a fair bit of talk about bio-char - that it allows a huge surface area for those lovely microorganism colonies to thrive in, I've popped some charcoal into my pots before, but my gardening skills are still in the pre-school stage so I'm still just happy if I manage to keep my plants alive...

Charcoal is good at absorbing things, maybe the next time I clean the charcoal out of my fish tank canister filter I'll throw some in a few pots and see how it goes? I assume the charcoal in my fish filter has good bacteria in it or it wouldn't work so well at digesting the fish poo...

BlownG: Ergh... that is one of the most horrific stories I've ever heard - I think I would have sh*t myself on the spot.

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I mix it with sphagnum moss when planting succulents . I find it helps boost flowering in many orchids

and bromeliads . Just be careful when using to much of it try not to mix more than 20% .

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yeah I use it for special cactus.

you can buy charcoal from nurseries or prune your DMT acacias and have a sacred fire,smudge your neighborhood and get some fully grouse ash for your plants. Ash from burnt cow dung is good also.

But yeah, lots of "old timer"cactus growers use charcoal and ash.

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Charcoal has a high internal surface area available for nutrient and water exchange.

It is an ideal ingredient for any potting mix.

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thats encouraging...........My place is heavy clay loam.........so I have to buy sand/grit in..............I have a hedge of coppricing gums to keep the dry winds from the garden.............but I read the gum leaf has allochemical.........that repress benifical fungi for many trees.............Bio char is really good stuff (it would reverse global warming over night....the ancient amazon people built island gardens from it)....so I now take the gum leaf with small branchers...burn them in an open fire just enough to charcol them...then dose with water...... add more leaf ...burst of flame ....then hose ...etc.......so instead of ash I end up with a huge pile of charcol ........i now plant all my plants (cacti included and seedlings) in equal portions of loam/charcol/sand..............they love it.....

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