Perlite: What It Is & How To Use It In Your Garden

What's up guys. Welcome back to Epic Gardening. So excited to be back on video. I know it's been a while since I've done one of these, but today we're talking about perlite. And I did this video not only because I just got this bag, it's a black and gold eight quart bag, pretty standard. One of my favorite brands. But that being said, perlite is a confusing soil amendment because it sounds a lot like vermiculite, which although it does have some similar properties, it differs in a really big way and that is water retention. So when should you use perlite and when should you use other soil amendments or maybe even use vermiculite? That's what we're going to talk about in today's video. But first, what is perlite? So number one, it is actually a non-renewable resource. Although we have so much of it and we use so little of that supply every year, it's very unlikely we would ever run out of it. But basically it's a volcanic rock with a high moisture content within it and it's mined and then that rock is heated up. And what's happening is that since there's a high moisture content within it, it's actually that water is turning into steam inside and it puffs up like popcorn. So what I'm going to do is I'm just going to scoop some out. And what you can see is it really does look like white popcorn or like ground up dust that's a bit fluffy. So I'll hold it up close to the camera so you can see it. I'll do a couple of flyover shots too. So why would you use perlite in general? What are the purposes of it? Well, first of all, it's exceptionally lightweight. So you can see right here that, I mean this stuff is, this will blow away in the wind. It's really, really lightweight, which is actually sometimes also a downside. But in general, as compared to let's say hydroton or peat moss or coconut coir when they're wet, perlite is much lighter. It is extremely porous. So oxygen to your root zone or oxygen in your soil as far as air, it's going to be really beneficial there. Really, really beneficial. The last thing that I would say is it's exceptionally cheap. It's relatively cheap. I think this is an eight quart bag for maybe nine or $10 or something like that. And this, you know, there's quite a bit in here. You can use this for quite some time unless you're doing like a really large scale perlite type of hydroponic setup. Okay. So what are some of the downsides of it? Well, it doesn't hold water as well as other things. So coconut coir, peat moss, and its cousin, I guess you could say vermiculite. So vermiculite is used primarily for water retention and not aeration. Whereas perlite is used primarily for aeration and not water retention. So if you're having a water retention problem and you think you're going to add some perlite and fix that, that's not going to help. What you need to do is actually add vermiculite or potentially add a blend. So those would be the main benefits and downsides of using perlite. And now finally, when should you use it? What should you do? So what I had to do actually in one of my raised beds is go out and toss a bag of perlite in the soil because it was very, very heavy soil. It was clay soil and the aeration just wasn't there. This was just soil I was improving. So in one of my raised beds I had to go ahead and add a bunch of perlite in there just to make sure that those roots could breathe, that they had the ability to actually get oxygen. So in a soil application, that's primarily why you would use it. Hydroponically it is a fantastic growing medium for rooting cuttings. So a lot of people don't use perlite as their number one growing medium, as in the only thing they would use for let's say a deep water culture system or a nutrient film technique system or various other hydroponic systems. But what they will do is they will use it as a way to start seeds effectively. So what you do is you would basically just have net pots similar to this. You take your cuttings, you dip it in rooting hormone. You go through all the standard propagation techniques and then you just plop it in perlite and make sure you keep it moist. Because as I said, it does not retain water that well. So you do need to make sure that you keep it moist. And if you're growing hydroponically, that means maybe running a drip system so that the perlite is forever moist and you don't allow that root zone to really get fully dry where those roots could actually be killed just by lack of moisture. So there we have it. That is perlite in a nutshell. This is one of my favorite brands. If you guys want it, I'll leave a link in the video description. But otherwise you can get it at almost any hydroponic store. You can get it at almost any gardening store in various sizes. From fine perlite like this, this is very, very fine, to coarse or even super coarse. So that's it. If you liked this video, definitely hit Subscribe, definitely hit the Like button, and let me know what you want to see in the future because I'm going to be doing a lot more videos on the channel. So thanks for tuning in. Keep growing, guys.