[grumpy-de-sre]

As someone who's done a fair bit of indoor gardening, including hydroponics I have to vouch for the video. Oxygen in the root zone is absolutely critical. Common potting mixes are almost universal terrible. Far too much rotting organic matter.

These days I do all my gardening in a 50/50% volumetric mixture of perlite and coco coir (buffered with calcium and magnesium). With a small amount of pH adjusted hydroponic nutrient and a watering can, the results you can achieve are just incredible, absolutely no comparison. Plus it's completely pest free so you aren't dragging in mite eggs, and fungus gnats.

Never using potting soil again, and anybody still using it should really reconsider. It's insanely counter-intuitive just how well plants can grow in something as inorganic as perlite. It just doesn't look like it should work.

[thomasfromcdnjs]

Thanks for this. I'm going to do this with all my new indoor plants. I sort of gave up on em because they constantly have issues with the supplied "soil"

[grumpy-de-sre]

Just remember that coir and perlite are non-nutritious which means you have to fertigate (water with a weak fertilizer solution).

A generic one/two part hydroponic fertilizer is sufficient for house plants. There's some coco coir specific ones but I usually water with a standard hydroponic mix at something like 50-70% of the manufacturer recommended concentration and every few waterings I'll do a flush with plain water (this stops fertilizer salts from building up).

I also recommend having calmag nutrient on hand, you can use it to buffer raw coco coir: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQi8AMMIyyA and deficiencies are rather common.

It sounds complicated but it's super forgiving, zero mess, zero bugs, and plants absolutely thrive it in it. Oh and coco coir comes as pressed bricks which makes it convenient to store.