Between dogs and coir blocks you won't be able to walk in your house. I hope those blocks don't make good chew toys.

Karen

even funnier!!!

Those blocks are WAY too hard to make good chew toys.....except for Jake who can chew through anything.

Are you really going to do a coop, Allison? I need a new source for some coir, as my last guy decided to retire and close his business.

yes ma'am

Joannabanana..do I read your posting right..you add some slow release fertilizer like osmacote to your Premier Promix BX? How much?

Alison, I see your dwarf Marine Heliothrope in your disposable pan there..Is this the first time you are trying it? I keep looking at this plant in seed catalogues that come and have wanted to post to find out if anybody grows it and what their experiences with it have been..so would love to hear about yours, since it seems you have "a green thumb." "Curiosity killed the cat!" What earth boxes?

that was my 2nd try with the seeds.... 1st time didn't go well... 2nd time was better... not sure what I did different... I was going to bring the plants in before winter... BUT I was not impressed with them... they were supposed to smell like cherry pie... I smelled nothing... maybe just a faint sweet smell... so I just let them go... once I fix up my computer that has the photos on it.. I think I took one last fall

here are the diy earth boxes I made

http://www.josho.com/gardening...

ie fertilizer. just a tad in a 4" pot. Don't over due fertilizer dose. Better to be less diluted or amount of granulars than too much

I agree with Karen: some coir is like fine powder - in my opinion, only useful for amending soil outdoors. In pots, it holds too much water, no air, and clogs up any mix you add it to.

Some coir is nice, big, coarse fibers. I liked that for "opening up" a seedling mix that was too powdery and not aerated enoguh (I tend to overwater trays). Now I usually use screened pine bark for that, but the coir seemed to help the one time I used it for seed starting.

I've read that some coir is sold as chips or pieces but never found any.

HOWEVER, I've also read that some coir is salty when sold. If true, that would kill a young seedling pretty fast! Now, I hydrate my coir in a wheelbarrow over several days up to a week. I fill the wheelbarrow with water and let it soak for at least an hour. Dump excess water. Try to squeeze out more water. Refill wheelbarrow. Repeat.

If any companies keep selling salty coir, it will get a bad name and people will stop using it.

I have not run across any salty coir.. but heard others saying they had that problem

I originally heard about "salty coir" in what seemed to be a technical study. It bashed and BASHED coir for killing seedlings and then stunting growth.

Finally, towards the end of the article, as if to prove how fair and balanced it was in every minor detail, it explained how they had fertilized both coir and a control soiless mix to the same point of FINAL mineral ion content. If you looked closely enough, you would see that the coir STARTED with enough salt that they could hardly add any fertilizer ever.

In other words, they never flushed the coir, even though they knew it started out too salty to use.

I thought they should have concluded "you can't start seeds and grow them out in salty medium and then never fertilize them" or "we bought a batch of salty coir", instead of "coir kills seedlings and stunts growth".

It made me wonder cynically if the study had been funded by some organization for marketing peat-based soil mixes!

I am sure.. been using it for 3 years now.. and only that for all cuttings, seed, and containers.. just love it.. and never had to rinse it

>> and never had to rinse it

Ah hah! Maybe it's just a few bad lots or bad companies.

I wish the companies that make seeed-starting mix would use more coir and less peat ... or at least, less "powder" and ultra fine fibers. More coarse stuff.

Some other source remarked that bark mulch can occasionally be salty.

here scroll down to May 7th.. you can see what mine looks like.. and yes I bought that whole lot.. but did not take it all.. a bunch of it was moldy and nasty ... we left those behind

http://cubits.org/myspot/threa...

Where I live, there's plenty of rain 8-9 months per year, and it would have been OK as top-dress mulch on beds or even turned into the soil: nasty fermentation products would be diluted and flushed away.

But better not to have to wonder just HOW nasty the oganisms got while it was anaerobic or hypoxic.

how on earth do you live with all that rain???

I was amazed at how easily I adjusted.

Very quickly, you learn to appreciate a sunny MOMENT or even a patch of blue sky. When that big, round, bright yellow thing in the sky comes out, you just have to stand and stare, along with everyone else.

It would be like ... in New Jersey traffic ... someone slowing down to let someone pull in front.

And you REALLY appreciate the summer, when there's sun and blue skies for 2-3 months at a time. "80" is a heat wave, but even then you can expect it cool down below 70 every night. (But don't expect tomatoes to ripen without some major engineering.)

When I first moved here, there was measurable rain EVERY SINGLE day for 40 days. Not exactly Noah's Flood, but it impressed me. Old-timey Washingtonians seemed to hardly notice. Their reaction was "well, yeah, it isn't SUMMER!"

We trade clouds, mist, drizzle, sprinkle and rain for:
icy roads
deep snow
freezing winters
hot, humid summers
and
mosquitoes.

NJ has better pizza, bagels and Italian/Greek diners, but we have better beer, salmon and coffee.

don't forget the taylor ham!!! no mosquitoes with all that rain?.. that's great!!!.. I wouldn't miss the winter either.. but think I would be depressed being dreary all the time.. guess we can't have it all huh? I will keep searching for that place!!

>> no mosquitoes with all that rain?..

Yeah, I don't know why.

What is even more confusing is that the humidity is never as bad as a NJ summer, when "muggy" is a constant. Roofs and driveways rapidly acquire moss, but the humidty is only mdoerate.

Maybe because the rainy "season" is the three cool seasons, and summer is dry.

The first thing I noticed when I moved "out West" was that everything seemed newer and cleaner than in New England cities.

>> don't forget the taylor ham!!!

True, and even delis are rare. Sometimes I think that passersby are thinking "friends don't let friends eat red meat", but they're too polite to say anything.

Not many bakeries either, whereas parts of NJ that hosted sequential waves of immigrants from different countries retain at least one ethnic bakery from each wave. And even specialty bakeries don't make pumpernickle. At most, "dark rye", which I am told is different.

Another difference - one I really like - is the omnipresence of "barista huts". Little places about the size of 4-6 phone booths where pretty women sell espresso, lattes, whacha-may-callit-chinos ... all those fancy coffee-based beverages, tea and "power drinks". Maybe all the caffiene staves off gloom-induced depression.

Local to my neghborhood is another tradition that staves off depression, at least for guys. This is a varient on the "barista hut": "bikini baristas". I think it's self-explaining, but some carry it to extremes with fancy lingerie.

A friend visited from Nantucket, so I took him to several "bikini barista huts", and his eyes popped way out. I think the collection of empty coffee cups on the floor gave us away, because at the third hut, the barista winked knowingly at us and said "I know what YOU boys have been doing!".

The next day, I almost pulled in at my regular hut where I get coffee every day, and my friend was shocked and dismayed. "We can't go THERE!! They're fully dressed!!!"

So now I tease him with that line before we go into establishment whatsoever, from restaurants to libraries.

We have things that we CALL bagels and CALL pizza, but no one who ever went to Pepe's or The Spot in New Haven would call THAT "pizza".

On the other hand, even in cities, only 1-2% of WA drivers are totally, 100% crazed and deranged. And we blame that 1-2% on the Californication of Washington state.

Sometimes the politeness and courtesy become almost hard to take. People chat with clerks (slowing down the line!!) and even slow down on the road to let people in ... yes, they sometimes slow down on the road! And yet no one shoots anyone over it. Who can figure?