Soil
C. ovata grows best in well-drained soil without peat moss or other particles to retain large amounts of water. It enjoys rocky hillsides and arid soil, so in cultivation, many different soil mixes are used to mimic these favorable natural conditions. Some growers recommend 50/50 soil mixes of organic topsoil to perlite, haydite, turface, or small gravel and grit. Others have used coir, pine bark and river stones. The general consensus among growers is that the soil should drain quickly and be allowed to dry between waterings, so having a good amount of grit and gravel in the mix is essential.
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Famous quotes containing the word soil:
“The Indian attitude toward the land was expressed by a Crow named Curly: “The soil you see is not ordinary soil—it is the dust of the blood, the flesh, and the bones of our ancestors. You will have to dig down to find Nature’s earth, for the upper portion is Crow, my blood and my dead. I do not want to give it up.””
—For the State of Montana, U.S. public relief program. Montana: A State Guide Book (The WPA Guide to Montana)
“If the accumulated wealth of the past generations is thus tainted,—no matter how much of it is offered to us,—we must begin to consider if it were not the nobler part to renounce it, and to put ourselves in primary relations with the soil and nature, and abstaining from whatever is dishonest and unclean, to take each of us bravely his part, with his own hands, in the manual labor of the world.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The civilized nations—Greece, Rome, England—have been sustained by the primitive forests which anciently rotted where they stand. They survive as long as the soil is not exhausted. Alas for human culture! little is to be expected of a nation, when the vegetable mould is exhausted, and it is compelled to make manure of the bones of its fathers. There the poet sustains himself merely by his own superfluous fat, and the philosopher comes down on his marrow-bones.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)