Hello, hello everyone. Welcome back to the show.

Kevin here. Today we're talking about a relative to perlite known as pumice. So how do we use pumice? What is pumice and is it a good thing to add into our soil? Let's tackle that first question. What is pumice?

It's basically whipped up volcanic glass that is made up of tiny air bubbles, it's

heated up, and it is a fantastic, fantastic soil amendment, specifically

if you are growing cacti or succulents.

Any plant that requires excellent drainage and air circulation is going to be a good fit for using Pumice.

Pumice also allows microbial life to thrive while maintaining soil structure,

perhaps even slightly better than purlite.

And it also is a naturally occurring product versus purlite has to be manufactured

if that is something that you care about.

So there's a lot of advantages to growing plants in Pumice.

It's going to do a lot of the things that Perlite will do, so reducing water runoff,

it will increase soil absorption in sandy soils so a lot of people say well if your

soil has poor drainage just add sand well that doesn't actually work that well you need

larger particles to help break up that soil and sand will kind of just turn clay soil into concrete.

So I definitely don't recommend doing that.

We'll also help the growth of mycorrhizal fungi.

It has the ability for them to sort of hang out around that

pumice and it's just a good good mixture to use. It does not decompose or

compact too much over time which means that for clay soil specifically it's going to help increase

that soil structure for a longer period of time. Of course, for clay soil, you can just go ahead

and add some compost as well. If it's particularly bad, maybe add a mixture of compost and pumice.

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