Mulching With Rice Hulls?

Discussion in 'Growing Organic Marijuana' started by Myxin, Aug 24, 2017.

  1. 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?
     
  2. I think rice hulls should work just fine
     
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  3. I agree with Scoob, they will work fine as mulch.

    But please, tell me you didn't use rice hull for aeration.
     
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  4. I did. Along with perlite. Why?
     
  5. 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.
     
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  6. Gotcha. Well that's OK, I'm not doing no till right now. Making new batches every grow.
     
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  7. Aren't you re-using/re-amending mix after a grow? It really does get better with use.
     
  8. 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
     
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  9. 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.
     

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