Batch of Bad Soil
Posted: October 27th, 2009, 12:44 pm
I sent an email to the supplier concerning some bad soil I had purchased. It seems a strange thing to complain about soil but it was dirty. Not just dirty, but this batch would accept water almost normally but something would not be quite right and a scratch would reveal the undersoil was bone dry and had to be soaked. Within a week I had repotted 7 trees and threw the old soil from their pots into the garden [and god help the garden!!].
Three days ago I did my morning round of watering and I do 1/2/3/4/5 trees than back to the first and again and then move on to the next lot of 5 or 6. I watch each pot to be sure the water is going in as it should. I was stunned to see water pooling in the pot of my favourite trident. I finished watering and put the pot on the table and it was still holding water, the large drainage holes all over the bottom were dry. I removed the tree and washed most of the potting mixture off the roots while water still stood in the pot. Because the 6 cm deep plastic orchid pot has large holes all over it I had put a single sheet of newspaper over them to hold the soil in. I have done this anytime I have used this pot and by the time the soil stablises the newspaper is rotten and disintegrated. In this particular instance the excessive silt prominent in this dirty batch had coated the newspaper enough that overnight it blocked 95% of the water passage.
The pot was washed, I cut large plastic screening to fit the bottom and resettled the tree. That was Sunday morning. Sunday noon and on into Monday it teemed... 140mm of rain in my area. If the blockage had not occured when it did the maple would have been in danger of drowning as little water would have gotten through during the two monsoonal days. And I'm particularly fond of this maple having purchased the trunk several years ago and I've been working hard to develop branches and now foliage pads.
Three days ago I did my morning round of watering and I do 1/2/3/4/5 trees than back to the first and again and then move on to the next lot of 5 or 6. I watch each pot to be sure the water is going in as it should. I was stunned to see water pooling in the pot of my favourite trident. I finished watering and put the pot on the table and it was still holding water, the large drainage holes all over the bottom were dry. I removed the tree and washed most of the potting mixture off the roots while water still stood in the pot. Because the 6 cm deep plastic orchid pot has large holes all over it I had put a single sheet of newspaper over them to hold the soil in. I have done this anytime I have used this pot and by the time the soil stablises the newspaper is rotten and disintegrated. In this particular instance the excessive silt prominent in this dirty batch had coated the newspaper enough that overnight it blocked 95% of the water passage.
The pot was washed, I cut large plastic screening to fit the bottom and resettled the tree. That was Sunday morning. Sunday noon and on into Monday it teemed... 140mm of rain in my area. If the blockage had not occured when it did the maple would have been in danger of drowning as little water would have gotten through during the two monsoonal days. And I'm particularly fond of this maple having purchased the trunk several years ago and I've been working hard to develop branches and now foliage pads.