Tropicals & Tender Perennials: Tropical Garden #67, 1 by tropicbreeze

tropicbreeze wrote:
My soil is lateritic gravel laying over a yellow mush in the wet season, yellow concrete in the dry season. Problem in the tropics is that any manure/mulch breaks down too rapidly, there's nothing to holds the nutrients if you don't have clay. But if you have clay you have other problems. Horse manure is good except for being a great harbourer of weed seeds. Their digestive system isn't like that of cattle. I'm using charcoal to improve the CEC of the soil. That's the measure of the capacity of the soil to retain nutrients.

The "before photo" of the Coconut with the Philodendron, before the lightning strike.