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TIL my grandpa's marigolds never got root rot because he grew them in straight sand, and my $40 potting mix grows mold instead
I used to buy every fancy soil blend at the nursery, the ones with perlite and peat and whatever, and my marigolds still got root rot every single July here in El Paso. Last spring I dug up a patch of his old bed behind the shed and it was like 80 percent sand, so I just planted straight into that. Nothing rotted, nothing molded, and now I feel dumb for dumping cash into bags for so long. Am I crazy for thinking most potting mixes are just overpriced dirt with a label, or does sand actually fix drainage better than all that stuff?
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parker_bell17d ago
That bit about "overpriced dirt with a label" made me laugh because my brother bought one of those $15 bags of cactus mix last year and the stuff came out looking like bark mulch. He potted a jade plant in it and the thing sat there in soggy sludge for a month until we dug it out. The roots looked like something you'd scrape off a shower drain. Meanwhile my neighbor grows hers in a coffee can full of gravel and hose water and that plant is the size of a beach ball. Sometimes the cheap stuff just works and the fancy bag is a scam with a nice photo on the front.
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