For plants in the ground, I figure if I can't make a decent, well-drained soil without this kind of product I just won't plant a hosta there. In very sandy soil, in addition to the compost/peat moss/etcetera organic matter, I might toss in some perlite if I have some around for making potting soil. It keeps the soil light and can store some moisture.

We do use the water-thingys in pots sometimes - my wife's area of expertize, I'm afraid. One thing she found was when she tried to "cheat" - plant in a pocket of soil too tiny in some special container, and then tried to make up for the too-rapid drying by putting in some of these pellets ---

the pellets swell up with water - and they can push the dirt and themselves right out of the pot. Soil is not naturally constructed to have relatively tiny particles swell to relatively large glumps of jello and then shrink back to small pellets again.

Overall, given the expense and the aggravation, we've pretty much quit using them...

that would be an exorbitant expense in my mind ...

but in your zone.. what would happen with all that water capacity.. when the ground froze solid???

though many plants like additional water late into the fall ... many do not like it standing around. ...

i would fear winter rots ...

ken

What I calculated in terms of cost based on what I read; was that you could use 1 pound of it on about 80 - 1 gallon pots. I was guessing you would use about the same on a small in ground plant. It is about $7 a pound on e-bay.

Though, good question about the standing water and freezing, I may have to do a small scale test and see what happens. But I sure don't want to find a bunch of dead Hosta next spring.

If it worked, It could be a nice option for our house up north where we are often gone for more than a week at a time and it is all sandy soil. -- I'll stick with the old standbys of organic matter and peat for now to be safe.

Thanks

Jamie

I always use it in the planting hole for my Impatients that are in a little too much sun. It works because I can tell the ones who have it and ones that don't.

For me, I don't think it would help much with the amount of water the hostas require.

Soil Moist is a synthetic polymer...that just seems like more industrial pollution and an unnecessary risk. It doesn't biodegrade much, but what does...turns into a toxin:

"Polyacrylamide hydrogels can physically break down into acrylamide, a known neurotoxin to humans. While acrylamide itself can biodegrade, Cathy Seybold, a soil scientist with the United States Department of Agriculture, notes, “the major source of acrylamide that is released into the environment is from the use of polyacrylamide products

A water-absorbing hydrogel made from bacteria provides a safer soil solution.

Researchers have developed a new hydrogel made from natural and biodegradable materials that allows for applications in agriculture and medicine without the potential risks of synthetic hydrogels.

Kanicki and Pawlicka’s biodegradable hydrogel, however, breaks down into sugars, carbon, and carbon dioxide.

our natural hydrogel biodegrades"

And the only place I've seen it used anyways is for bare root shipping. But more typically, they are just wrapped in wet paper towels, which works just as well, but without the industrial pollution...

The better I've gotten at gardening, I've found the less consumer products I "need." In fact, I don't really use any additives right now. Most of them are just gimmicks for n00bs that are no replacement for simply picking the right plants and the right sites for them.

blackrab, thank you for this valuable information.

My husband and I used something like "soil moist" especially when planting out tree seedlings into ten acres of land that had been badly farmed: eroded, and topsoil mostly gone. We bought it after the former owner had given up on it being productive, and enrolled it in the Conservation Reserve Program, with the intention of turning it back to wild as much as possible. It was sandy and barren. When we saw that much of what had been planted died, likely due to the poverty of the soil, we decided to try plant again, by hand. There was no water supply up there, so we couldn't irrigate; and we didn't have tons of amendments to plow in, or ag equipment to do it with. I think the polymer did help a lot of those trees survive. We put maybe a teaspoon of it into each hole we dug. I can tell the difference now between areas that were planted with the polymer, and those that weren't, in terms of survival. Much higher survival rate with polymer.

Maybe there's a place for such innovations.

But when it comes to hostas - I think you're way better off prepping your beds with compost, and *especially* mulching regularly, with what you yourself gather, not the commercially bagged wood chip mulches. Mulched-up leaves and grass clippings are great. If you mulch your grass instead of bagging, see if you can get clippings from any neighbors. I've had huge success in a yard that was so sandy when we came here that I always had to mow in long pants so as not to get whipped with sand thrown out from under the mower, by mulch-mowing the grass (and reducing the amount of lawn by maker ever larger gardens) and by collecting all the fall leaves from the grass (I leave them on the gardens however) to use as mulch in the following spring/summer. My soil is sandy loam now, everywhere, because of years of doing this. Worms have done their part in mixing it all in.

Good luck!