Last time I looked for vermiculite at my local gardening store they were out. I was told that the last mine in the US was shut down. Has anyone been able to find it recently? Is it still readily available?

Peace
-idt

I'm assuming you live in the US? You may need to look into alternatives like perlite and so on.

Yep in the US. Rye grain works well for me when using my own tek, but the PF birthday cakes are so easy to make using vermiculite. Thanks for the feedback though.

really... like no more ever...that seems crazy
but here

that seems reasonably priced to me

psychosisdoses - Shit thanks! I suppose I could have done a google search eh? I'm just so used to finding it at my everyday store. Anyway, yeah! The price seems fair. A bit spendy, but if they are having to import it then it's certainly fair.

Thanks my man!

Peace
-idt

I think this might be false.

I've heard this for years. Apparently there is sometimes asbestos in the same mines that they get the mica they make verm out of. Mines will occasionally get shut down if asbestos is found with the mica. So when there is a story about a mine getting closed down people panic. There were also some health concerns a while back, but I believe all of those were put to rest.


I did a google search and couldn't find anything.

If you are really worried about it, go and pick up 2-5 20lb bags from a different greenhouse supply store. That should last you for a long, long, LONG time.

Perilite does not work any where near as well as verm for PF cakes. There are alternatives, but verm is really the best thing found so far.

I have heard these rumors before too. I went to all of the greenhouses around the city I go to college in and they gave me that bullshit story. I went back to my rinky dink home town greenhouse and they have bags and bags of coarse vermiculite. So I have a nice supply for a while.

the best thing to do is not use vermiculite at all. My setup requires absolutely no vermiculite and it works wonderfully. I was using the monotub setup and I still had to use verm for my casing. But I have been trying the tubs without any casing and it works great. My yield per tub is a little bit short, but it isn't enough to make a difference. Especially once you take into consideration the time and money saved by not putting a casing layer on.

It contains abestos thats maybe why. I wont use it anymore for gardening. No one will buy pure stuff is to expensive. I have been in to many places that had it as insulation wile installing electronic gear I got many lung fulls. I use coconut fiber in its place.

Honestly I get the best yields from Rye, but when I use verm I do a verm / brown rice flour substrate. It makes really nice cakes if I just want to do a simple PF tek.

When I case I don't use verm for my casing layer, I just use a potting soil. I only use the verm for inoculation, so casing really doesn't add much cost or time for me.

I dunno, like I said I get the best yields from Rye with a nice soil casing, so no vermiculite is needed at all. I may just stick with that tek. It's just a little less convenient if you want to do an easy batch in short order.

And yeah acolon, I agree on the perlite. I don't see how you could even make an effective cake using perlite... I've only used perlite as humidity control base layer.

I might try Rye with brown rice flour and see if I can't get a nice compact consistency that would make an effective cake. Never tried that combo, but I bet it would have enough nutrients that once your cakes are flushed out you could break them up, case 'em and potentially get a couple more flushes out of them... :idea: Hmm... I guess I'm just thinking out loud here.