October 14, 2016 - PSSST . . . let me tell you about my secret weapon in gardening. 

          Yesterday I took that entire flat of red pansies and planted them out in large five-gallon pots and the flower boxes that held the caladiums I had just dug up the week before last. [After all these gardening years I have finally gotten it down to FALL: out caladiums and in pansies; then in spring: out pansies and in caladiums - pretty good planning wouldn’t you say?]

          I lined the tailgate of the pickup truck with a tarp. [This is the perfect work height for me.] Mixed Fafard® with mushroom compost and my secret weapon. Then I filled the flower boxes and pots with the soil mix.  Next, I dibbled in six ruby red pansies in each container. Lastly, I watered them and they are ready for this winter’s color along the patio and the entrance walks to the house.  Pansies require ample water and my secret weapon takes good care of them in that aspect.

History of the secret weapon I discovered:

          I receive dozens of different gardening product magazines every year and I try out new products that I think will help me in my gardening endeavor.

One such product is my secret weapon: Hydrosource®.  It is well worth investigating.  I have been using this product for about 17 years and I love it.  Many gardening friends welcome it and many of those “green people” still have an aversion of adding something ‘man-made’ to the soil.  But, you can try it yourself as I have added a link where you can request a sample.

The ‘crystals’ are Cross-Linked Polyacrylamide, [CLP]. They look like rock salt when dry, but when hydrated they look like chunks of clear gelatin.  They capture up to 400 times in water.  When mixed into the soil, they allow plants to take up water and nutrients at all times.  You water less and your plants are not stressed for lack of water.

Unfortunately I didn’t discover this product until AFTER my 20+ landscape trees and shrubs had been planted.  We had a drought that year and we had to carry 5 gallon buckets of water on a rotating basis to all my trees to keep them alive.  That process lasted for a few years.   I did lose the two dogwoods – they are still on my “bucket list”.

I have hard, compacted red clay soil. The builders had driven cement trucks, etc. around the newly poured cement patio.   We built this house in the middle of a vacant field that once grew cotton back in the 1950s.  Nice setting, but the soil has been a challenge to get things to grow due to the hardness and also due to the droughts we have on just about a yearly basis.

The first year we lived here we didn’t have a proper vegetable garden turned up – but I didn’t want to lose the season.   I first dug a haphazard 6 inch wide trench about 6 feet long near the foundation at the back of the house for green beans and they came up, but it was so dry I had to water daily and heavily as it was basically hard caked clay.

Since I was already into the ‘drought’ factor that spring, I happened to see this product in a gardening magazine and I jumped at it.

It was late in the season, but I just couldn’t live without homegrown cucumbers.

I hydrated one cup of the crystals in a five gallon bucket of warm tap water.  [Looks like a bucket of clear gelatin chunks when hydrated.] I dug a trench on the west side of the newly poured cement patio that was 8 inches deep, 6 inches wide and 10 feet long.  It was situated in all day, full blazing sun.  

I poured a bag of mushroom compost in a wheelbarrow along with a bag of Fafard® potting soil and mixed it thoroughly.  I was not sure how to mix the hydrated Hydrosource® into the too full wheelbarrow, so I simply dumped it evenly in the bottom of the trench and smoothed it out.  I then added the mixed soil in the wheelbarrow to the trench, flattened it out and poked the “Marketmore” variety cucumber seeds into the soft soil.  I watered the seeds in and those seeds jumped to life in about 5 days.   Once the plants were up I staked a metal fence along the trench.  I thinned the plants as directed on the packet and sat back and watched the most luxurious cucumber vines climb up and blossom in record time.

Fast forward to harvest time.

          Every few days I literally picked a five-gallon bucket of the prettiest, straightest, and blemish free cucumbers from the metal fence.  I couldn’t find people to give them to.  One day I actually took an overflowing five-gallon bucket to work when I worked on the main street of Spindale, North Carolina. I put a sign on the bucket, “Free – take some” and left it outside the door of the law office where I worked.

Fast forward to garden clean up that year.

          I was most interested in seeing what the root structure looked like when I tore up the cucumber vines.  When I pulled them out I saw the roots had grown down into the Cross-Linked Polyacrylamide and the root structure was massive.  Yes, the cukes got their water all right, and consistently.  My understanding is the product lasts in the soil about 7 years and then breaks down.

          I was “SOLD” on this product from the beginning.  I use it in most of my flower boxes and new shrubs.  Occasionally I forget or run out of product and then kick myself that I didn’t put Hydrosource® in the planting hole of a new shrub or perennial as we hit a dry spell.

          I too, have a “green people’ aversion to using it massively in my vegetable gardens.   I did use it in my first veggie garden to great success, but my new “organic raised beds” I have not introduced it.  I am fastidiously trying to keep them officially “organic”.

          This winter, while we are “off season” I suggest you order yourself a sample packet and hydrate just 5 little crystals to see what it is all about.  Read the literature that comes with it, or go on line.

          Trust me; I will never be without it again. I have the balance of a 35 pound box stashed in the closet for my gardening needs. 

          One of my future blogs will be the “Garden Pillow Technique”.  I mentioned this in my September 15, 2016, blog.   You will need Hydrosource® or a similar CLP product for that project.

Basic information:

          Hydrosource® is a Cross-Linked Polyacrylamide which has been used in agriculture for about 30 years.

          Hydrosource® looks like rock salt when dry and captures up to 400 times its weight in rainwater.  Used in agriculture, it makes water and nutrients available to plants at all times, producing outstanding crop yields.   Plants mature faster, are more disease resistant, and can be reliably grown in areas where there is too low annual rainfall to support ‘traditional’ farming.

Sample: https://www.hydrosource.com/