TerraForums Venus Flytrap, Nepenthes, Drosera and more talk
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Do any of you have opinions on super absorbent polymers to be used inside of CP soil mixtures? would these eventually break down into fertilizer over time and kill the plants? any ideas or experances are welcome!
what type of super absorbent polymers? polymers come in all sorts of shapes, sizes. and compositions....and what are they good at super absorbing? water? are they decent for limited water retention or will they absorb to the point where they lose structural integrity? if you want something that retains water decently, there's turface, LFS, and sponges.
I recall someone here attempting to grow some CPs in it as the sole media but I don't know how their experiment turned out. Hopefully they'll notice this thread and post their experience.
I have bought "aquatic" plants (most were actually terrarium plants) from Petsmart that are sold in a clear plastic tube with soil moist as the media they are growing in. I left one fern alone growing in it until it got too large for the tube so it seems to do fine for things like ferns and so on.
the product is quite amazing and absorbs roughly 200 times its weight in water, they grow from a grain of sand into the size of small crushed rocks and are jello like in form and feel once saturated. the point of the product is to slowly release water into drying out soil prolonging the need for watering, especially when added to the soil at the listed mixing ratios because the plants roots find the crystals and pentrate them, and now the plant has a nice source of "Dry water" like some orchids or cactus have thier own water holds.....
so anyways im asking for using it in a soil mix, as part of the mixes, not soley as the media.
it says on the bag that it contains 99.7% Crosslinked Polycrylamide and 0.3% inert ingredients.
they sure are cool and the idea is good for long vacations from your plantz.....as long as when they start breaking down they dont become a fertilizer and kill the plantz off!
maybe someone has scientific knowlegde about this kind of thing
I can't seem to find the bottle of product i tried, but anyways, it never worked out for me, on its own. I tried growing a couple capensis' binata's... no dice. Alone, it is too wet I assume. Maybe a mix of perlite and vermiculite to lighten it up and get some air in there might work... But on its own, it's a killer. My gallon jar I have it in is still in the same state it was a year ago, as it seems to even resist against evaporation!
Good luck!
Bloke
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