What's going on everyone? Welcome back to the show. My name's Kevin. I am a fellow gardener just like you and I'm taking a question today from my friend Elizabeth so she says hey I was just listening to your episode on potting soil mixes and I have a few questions. How does vermiculite fit into the mix?

I've come across a few people on the internet using it as a substitute for perlite.

Is this correct? Also, for seed seed starting if you're mixing your own

soil do you sterilize it so there are two questions here first vermiculite versus perlite

second do you sterilize your seed starting mix? And before we get

into that, as always, we'll talk about Garden Maker Naturals. If you're interested in the

epic soil starter, which is my custom mixed fertilizer that I have partnered with them to create.

I think a four pound bag is like $10. It's super cheap and if you use the code

partner shipping all one word all lower case you're going to save half off on your

shipping costs so go check that out at gardenmaker.com it's a really awesome mix and I

actually have one of the soil biologists and founders of the team on the show this week. So stay tuned

for that as well. Okay let's get into Elizabeth's question. So her first part of

the question talks about how vermiculite fits into a potting soil mix versus perlite.

Now if you remember my episode on potting soil I recommended a mix of about 1 3rd perlight, 1 3rd

peat moss or coconut quar, and one-third well-blended screened compost.

Now, you may have also heard the episode I did on perlite versus vermiculite.

Both of them have somewhat similar properties.

The difference, however, is that vermiculite

retains much more water than perlite.

Perlite is effectively a rock cotton candy of sorts in the sense that there are tons of

pores in it is extremely lightweight, it does not hold on to water very well.

Vermiculite is different. It is not very fluffy, it's a bit

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