The most widely used growingmedia in the production of potted ornamental plants is peat.However, thestudies for alternative solutions are being conducted due to the reasons suchas restricted peat ludwig modular hardware sources, high cost, destruction of natural environment dueto peat production and variability in the quality of produced peat.In therelevant literature, there are two basic ideas on which the studies havefocused on.The first one is the development of new growing media using organic-originwastes, the second one is the preparation of the mixtures in which organic andinorganic materials are used as a component of growingmediums.
In this studywhich was prepared in parallel with the relevant main ideas in the literature,the effects of perlite utilization on the physical properties of indigenouspeat, and on those of the growing media obtained from hazelnut cinder, which isamong agricultural organic materials in our country and has considerable potential to be the most importantalternative of peat, were investigated.For this purpose, the physicalproperties of the growingmedias, prepared by mixing perlite with raw peat andhazelnut husk, at various ratios (10,15,20,25%), were investigated, and theresults obtained were compared with sphagnum peat, and with desired propertiesfor ideal growingmedias, in the literature.When the kiara sky pixie dust results obtained from thestudy were examined, it was seen that as well as the highest values wereobserved in the mixtures using 25% perlite, the perlite addition increased the porosityof raw peat by 68.25% and air capacity by 30.
03%, and that the hazelnut huskdecreased air capacity, higher than the ideal values, by 47.19%,thus approximating it its ideal value range.With increasing perliteratio in the mixtures, the organic substance contents and water holdingcapacities of the growingmedias decreased as their pH values increased.However, in applications using 25% Perlite, the shrinkage rates of raw peat andhazelnut husk were found as 17.
05% and 6.41% respectively, and the water resuction times of those werefound as 1.52 and 1.21 minutes, respectively.
Based on these results, it can besaid that the most important contribution of perlite utilization for raw peatand hazelnut husk is to decrease shrinkage rates and water resuction times, andthat this improvement will avail in preventing the damages that occur in plantroots due to drying and shrinking of thegrowing media, and in decreasing theirrigation frequency.