Can rice hulls be used as a good indoor Mulch? I've got some left from my soil mix. Or should I pick up some pine bark nuggets or straw?
I agree with Scoob, they will work fine as mulch. But please, tell me you didn't use rice hull for aeration.
Because, after several months, they break down to a sorta humus-like sludge and lose any aeration qualities. The pine bark fines I use in my mixes does the same thing, but with a much longer time frame, closer to a couple of years. I use perlite @~40% for aeration, knowing the pine bark's limited time to help aeration and figuring on it becoming humus eventually. I've also used perlite as an outdoor mulch and then a real happy accident when I added the pine bark mulch over the perlite. They mixed and surprisingly, stayed mixed. I figured they would separate with a heavy watering. They didn't. The real nice thing was, when done, it was easy to scoop it all up, put it in a bucket (with drainage), and reuse it. Either as a mulch, or as handy extra aeration on a small re-amend.
Saving it for reuse yes. I'm using only 6 gallons or so at a time. I'll have to switch the hulls in the future. Maybe I can compost them out since I've got a few fresh soil batches to use still
They work alright but you end up getting rice growing in your pots or beds from the rice that didn't get hulled. I personally have not found it to be a problem I just cut the rice down as it grows and leave it as a mulch on top. Try to find parboiled rice hulls if you don't want to deal with this issue.