Diatomaceous earth soil?
- Thread starter ironlings
- Start date
doc111
Well-Known Member
You should be able to find Diatomaceous earth at any garden center. Some hardware stores carry it as well. It's not soil though. I wouldn't want to try growing in just Diatomaceous earth.
Prod1gy132
Well-Known Member
Diatomaceous earth is a common pool filter item. Any pool store should have a large box of it
natrone23
Well-Known Member
You should be able to find Diatomaceous earth at any garden center. Some hardware stores carry it as well. It's not soil though. I wouldn't want to try growing in just Diatomaceous earth.
Yeah DE is like a powder, you can throw it around the corners of your house and what not it kills bugs and its totally organic and not harmful to humans or pets but from my experience it dosent' work to well on soil because once it gets wet it doesnt work anymore. Because the way it works is the powder I beleive it is made from like ground up sea shells and the powder is so fine it get under the skin and into the exoskeltons of bugs and kills them, but it does'nt hurt other animals though just bugs but like I said once it gets wet it does not work
if you have gnats i would use some kind of pesticide, I use some stuff called monterey garden spray and you just water it into your soil and it will take care of the bugs in there.
sticky traps work also but they don't kill all of them like the spray
sagensour
Active Member
I think u mean diatomite. DI Earth will usually be ground up to a fine powder. DO NOT USE POOL DI EARTH, use horticultural DI Earth for bug repellent or moisture uptake for the soil. Diffrent shit sometimes. If you want to grow in Diatomite, it can be used as a medium and some growers ONLY grow in Diatomite. The fine powder of DI Earth does get sprinkled on the top soil and worked in 1 inch or so. This cuts up any lil pest, puts silicate into there body and drains all the moisture from them. DI Earth and Diatomite are Silicates. Thats what I know. Where talking to diffrent things though, maybe?
natrone23
Well-Known Member
have you found that DE works when its wet?
Because once it get wet it turns into mud
doc111
Well-Known Member
You are correct. It even says on the bag that it must be kept dry in order to be effective. I've tried top dressing my soil with up to an inch of DE. It killed off a bunch of them but there are hundreds, maybe even thousands of eggs and larvae remaining in the soil. Once you water your plants with the DE on top of the soil it just kind of absorbs into it. And then the gnats come back. With most insects it's best to figure out how the life cycle works. Time your application of whatever spray, drench or powder you are using so that it kills the second round of gnats before they reach sexual maturity and are able to reproduce. These little fuckers
are ubiquitous and easy to kill but they reproduce so quickly and in such numbers that it makes it all but impossible to completely erradicate them. I strive for a nice balance where I control the numbers with minimal applications of whatever product I'm using. I recently tried gognats and it seemed to work well and left a nice cedar fragrance behind. It's expensive as hell though.
hey there we use Diatomaceous earth to grow bonsai and it works a treat .but you have to get the bigger size .not powder .here in aus we can get it from mount silica. a mine. it is also cat litter. but you have to find it pure.the best bonsai artists in the word grow in it .so go ahead with your idea of growing in it and you will never go back.its very free draining .and it also holds water.the roots of your plants will fly in it .grow fast and you get the small hair like roots the plant lives on.its the small roots that take up water and food .