Tomatoville® Gardening Forums - View Single Post - Perlite vs Vermiculite for Starting Mixes?

Greatgardens · March 18, 2018

I bought a bag of DE oil absorbent today ($6.59/15 lb bag) at Autozone. Perfect sizing, I think. So I'm going to make three small batches of Burpee (bagged) coir seed starting mix + vermiculite or DE or perlite. We'll see how they do for seed starting. What started this whole quest was trying a peat pre-mix that stayed too wet and ended up nearly killing several varieties. Of course plenty of the blame was mine, not recognizing the "wet distress" that was happening until some pretty serious damage was done. But as a result, back to coir -- plus some additional drainage material.
-GG

March 18, 2018	#14
Greatgardens Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Feb 2010 Location: Indiana Posts: 1,124	I bought a bag of DE oil absorbent today ($6.59/15 lb bag) at Autozone. Perfect sizing, I think. So I'm going to make three small batches of Burpee (bagged) coir seed starting mix + vermiculite or DE or perlite. We'll see how they do for seed starting. What started this whole quest was trying a peat pre-mix that stayed too wet and ended up nearly killing several varieties. Of course plenty of the blame was mine, not recognizing the "wet distress" that was happening until some pretty serious damage was done. But as a result, back to coir -- plus some additional drainage material. -GG Last edited by Greatgardens; March 18, 2018 at 08:15 PM.