Is The Plant Soil Your Using Harming Your Plants?
Even if you go out of your way to purchase the best plant soil for growing your plants, there are still additional plant growth factors that could come into play and limit your plant growth. Slacking and dispersion, compaction, water logging and pH are all important aspects that can serve as negative plant growth factors. Slacking and dispersion are related factors, but they are not the same. Slacking is essentially the soil’s structural soundness. It determines the soil’s ability to hold pore spaces under varying environments. Dispersion refers to problems in the chemistry of the soil. Typically slacking and dispersion are discussed together, and the biggest problem faced by plant growers in terms of slacking and dispersion are high sodium levels. Slacking and dispersion can also be fueled by mechanical disturbance (such as that brought on by tractors.Compaction is the situation when the soil has been so firmly compressed that the pore spaces have been greatly reduced. This is a danger both in outdoor plants through mechanical manipulation, and indoor plants, through well meaning owners who have smashed the soil too much with their fingers. A good way to test for compaction is to simply reach your hand into the soil and run your fingers over the dirt. It should be lose enough to run through your fingers without much effort. If it’s not, you run the risk of having compaction problems. Water logging, put simply, is the problem of over-watering your plants. This more frequently occurs to indoor plants, but can happen to outdoor plants, as well, particularly in areas where there is significant rainfall. This is dangerous, because the water fills up the pores that would otherwise allow for smooth transference of air. When looking after your plants, it’s important to check the rate of slacking, dispersion, compaction, and water logging within the plant soil. If you do not, you can easily find that your other efforts to increase plant growth factors will be futile.
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