Anyone use styrofoam in their soiless mix?

[PatBezz]

I have been growing a COCO grow for the first time and have always enjoyed making up "mixes" with soil so decided to try a mix of crumbled Styrofoam in my mix. I worked on a mix of 70% CANNA COCO and a blend of Styrofoam/perlite with a 50mm base of 50/50 Styrofoam/coco to ensure a good drainage and high air access. So far the plants are loving it. I have done a similar thing with ornamental plants outdoors using terracotta pots mainly to reduce weight but also to ensure good drainage in our sub tropical climate. Mostly outdoors I have just broken up a foam fruit box into roughly 50 mm chunks and filled up the bottom of a pot for say 200mm and then filled the rest with a top quality potting mix. I have seen Styrofoam used in seed raising mixes in retail punnets before hence the inspiration. I think that an angular shape in the foam would be better than round "balls" like bean bag pellets so I just roughly "rubbed" a straight edged piece to create random shapes. Angular shape should provide better air spaces. An added bonus for using Styrofoam would also be weight. Cheers Pat.

 

[PatBezz]

Ummmm 207 views and no comment ? No one use Styrofoam by the looks so I guess no one will ever know. BTW I'm no fool and I aren't using it as a perlite substitute as it has very different properties to perlite. Styrophobes unite in #########. Once I suss out the photo upload I will post some pics of plant growth and maybe that might garner some interest. Pat.

 

[PatBezz]

OK lets see if these pics upload. Both pics are 30 days from seed planting (04/01/2014) they were sprouted in a seed raising mix with roughly 30 % finely chopped sphagnum moss. Seedlings were transplanted 19/01/2014 to COCO with approx. 30% perlite/Styrofoam blend. First pic NICE CHUNK with well developed branching and 2nd pic Marion Davies with some good width. These have been under 18/6 400wt SonT Agro HPS. Cheers Pat.

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[PatBezz]

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[PatBezz]

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[MoPeace]

Ummmm 207 views and no comment ? No one use Styrofoam by the looks so I guess no one will ever know. BTW I'm no fool and I aren't using it as a perlite substitute as it has very different properties to perlite. Styrophobes unite in #########. Once I suss out the photo upload I will post some pics of plant growth and maybe that might garner some interest. Pat.

No it's funny I just came across a big Styrofoam container in was wondering the same thing I guess I try it and get the answer right wish me luck