Organic potting soil, what happened?

Ratmosphere

Ratmosphere

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Moderator
So I found some beetle grubs in Miami and took them home. 

Thought I can just grab some potting soil when I got home but it was not that simple. 

5 different store locations and no organic potting soil without perlite in it... totally trashed my plans lol. Now I gotta order online and wait. 

What happened to good quality organic potting mixes that were offered in previous years? 

 
Most of the commercially-produced potting mixes are composed of low quality "junk" ingredients of questionable origin, and tend to consist in large part of nutritionally worthless things like coconut coir, peat, and conifer tree bark.  Al lot of the "organic" mixes sold at nurseries, hardware stores, etc., are actually composed of waste material sourced from greenhouses, so who knows what might be in it - fertilizers, pesticides, wetting agents?  I've never found any particular usable brand (that is, brands that contain at least the minimum amount of nutrients needed to keep beetle larvae alive) to be reliably available for any more than a season or two, and even those are quite poor in quality as compared to real substrate (made from actual, decayed hardwoods).  The substrate (flake soil) that bugsincyberspace sells is very good - pure decayed wood, soft texture, with fine particle consistency that's easy for beetle larvae to eat.  I've had great success with it for years.

I long ago quit trying to use "composts" or "potting soils" intended for plants - they're just not suitable for rearing beetles, and there is always the worry that they might contain contaminants.

 
A few in the past I used were a great base mixture. Now they're all trash!

Luckily I went into the woods and found a fallen oak tree with perfect decay under it. 

 
You have perlite because you purchased a "potting soil." Perlite helps aeration plus drainage for "pots," and also it lights up the pots (in weight-wise). I have experience of rearing and emerging multiple ox beetle (Strategus aloeus) larvae in organic potting soil of many different brands including Miracle-Gro, which includes fertilizer capsules and perlite. You just have to keep it dry than wet for potting soil. If you keep your soil wet, it WILL rot VERY easily and quickly, producing CO2 causing your larvae difficult to feed or breath. Btw, potting soil is not very nutritious for your scarab larvae, resulting in minor adult males and females at the end.

 
Read my last sentence of my post...

“What happened to good quality organic potting mixes that were offered in previous years?”
Other potting soil mixes I used in the past never had perlite in them.

I use them in a base for my sub as stated in this thread too. 

Come on guys...I’m not new to this lol.

 
I've never found perlite to be harmful, although, being particles of volcanic glass, it's somewhat abrasive and I'm sure that for substrates used for rearing beetle larvae, it's preferable that perlite content be minimal, or not present at all.  In commercially-produced potting mixes / composts though, I'd be more concerned about other additives, especially "biosolids" - which is an industry term to make SEWAGE SLUDGE from waste water treatment plants sound more acceptable! 🙄  I wouldn't even use that in my yard, let alone rear beetles in it.  It's been on the market for years.  I once opened a bag of this stuff, being sold as "100% natural compost", and immediately noticed a very strong sewage / ammonia odor.  I called the manufacturer to ask what it was made from, and they insisted that it was created using only clean, natural, "quality" ingredients sourced from organic farms and forestry products.  If that's the case however, why was it absolutely full of plastic particles, bits of aluminum cans, bottle caps, cigarette butts and everything else that you'd expect to end up in the screens at a sewage treatment plant?!  Anything and everything that's ever flushed down municipal plumbing, ends up becoming a part of biosolids.

 
Great info brother! I have a question maybe you can help me with. I will post something later this week! 

 
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