Hydrophil™: How to Use Your Planting-Hole Amendment

If you’ve bought Hydrophil™, you’re probably planting into the kind of soil we know very well in Western Australia: sandy, fast-draining, often water-repellent and not especially good at holding onto nutrients.

Hydrophil was developed to help change what happens in the small but critically important zone around a newly planted root system.

It isn’t a conventional fertiliser, compost or synthetic water crystal. Hydrophil is a concentrated planting-hole amendment made from a carefully balanced blend of carbon and mineral ingredients designed to help the soil accept water, retain moisture and nutrients, and provide better habitat for soil biology.

A little goes a long way.

Why use Hydrophil when planting?

A newly planted native has a difficult transition to make.

In the nursery, its roots have been growing in a carefully managed potting mix with regular water. Once planted into the ground, those roots suddenly encounter the realities of the landscape around them.

In much of Perth and south-west Western Australia that can mean coarse sand, rapid drainage, poor nutrient-holding capacity and soil that becomes difficult to re-wet once dry.

Hydrophil is designed to improve that immediate root zone at the time when the plant is most vulnerable.

Rather than replacing the existing soil, we mix a small amount of Hydrophil through it.

The aim is to make the soil around the new root ball work better.

What’s inside Hydrophil?

The exact formulation and proportions are proprietary, but the important ingredients aren’t a secret.

Biochar

Biochar is a highly porous, stable form of carbon.

Its microscopic internal structure creates an enormous surface area capable of retaining water and nutrients while also providing protected habitat for soil microorganisms.

Unlike organic matter that decomposes relatively quickly, biochar can remain in soil for a very long time.

Our biochar is lightly conditioned during manufacture so that it begins life in the soil as a useful reservoir rather than simply an empty piece of carbon.

WA spongolite

Spongolite is an unusual naturally porous mineral formed from the microscopic silica skeletons of ancient marine sponges.

Our spongolite is sourced in Western Australia.

Its porous structure helps hold moisture within the soil while contributing mineral diversity and silicon.

Together, spongolite and biochar give Hydrophil two very different kinds of microscopic pore space: one mineral and one carbon-based.

Kaolin clay

Many of our poorest garden soils contain plenty of sand but very little clay.

Even a relatively small clay component can make an important difference to how soil holds water and nutrients.

Kaolin contributes fine mineral particles and exchange surfaces that complement the larger pore structures of the biochar and spongolite.

A small amount of professional soil wetter

Hydrophil also contains a carefully controlled amount of granulated soil wetter.

This has a different job from the other ingredients.

The wetting agent helps the first irrigations penetrate dry or water-repellent soil. Over time its effect diminishes, while the biochar, spongolite and clay remain behind as the longer-lasting soil matrix.

How to use Hydrophil

Hydrophil is intended as a planting-hole amendment, not something you need to spread across the entire garden.

For forestry tube plants

Use approximately:

1 level tablespoon of Hydrophil per plant.

Dig your planting hole, then mix the Hydrophil thoroughly through the loose soil that will be used to backfill around the root ball.

Do not leave Hydrophil as a concentrated layer underneath the plant.

Plant normally, gently firm the soil and water thoroughly.

For larger plants

For plants in approximately 140 mm pots, use around:

3 level tablespoons per plant.

Again, mix it thoroughly through the planting-hole backfill rather than placing it in one concentrated pocket.

Larger root balls and planting holes may justify proportionally more.

Hydrophil doesn’t replace watering

This is important.

Hydrophil can help soil accept and retain water, but it cannot make a newly planted native drought-proof.

Until new roots have grown beyond the original root ball and into the surrounding soil, the plant still depends heavily on you.

Immediately after planting, give the plant a thorough deep watering that wets both the original root ball and the surrounding amended soil.

Continue checking it regularly during establishment.

How often you need to water will depend on species, weather, season, soil and exposure. Hot weather and drying winds can dramatically increase demand.

The goal is not constantly wet soil. The goal is to avoid allowing the young root system to become severely dry while it is establishing.

As the plant develops a larger root system, you can progressively move toward deeper and less frequent watering appropriate for the species.

Does Hydrophil contain fertiliser?

Hydrophil is not designed as a fertiliser.

There is a very small nutrient component associated with the conditioning process, but its purpose is primarily to prepare the biochar rather than feed the plant.

We prefer this approach because different native plants have different nutrient needs, and many Australian species are adapted to relatively low-fertility soils.

Hydrophil’s job is to help the soil hold and use resources more effectively.

If your plant requires additional nutrition later, we favour gentle native-suitable feeding rather than adding large amounts of fertiliser to the planting hole.

For established plants we commonly use products such as Neutrog Bush Tucker and Neutrog Seamungus, both available from Wild Bosky. These can be introduced later as required; they are not necessary simply because you have used Hydrophil.

Rewilding starts below the ground too

Wild Bosky is about more than putting native plants back into landscapes.

When vegetation is cleared and soil is repeatedly disturbed, we lose more than the plants visible above ground. We also disrupt the enormous living community beneath them and gradually remove much of the biological inheritance that an intact landscape continually builds for itself.

Healthy soils contain roots, fungi, microbes, organic residues, mineral particles and the accumulated remains of previous generations of life.

We cannot recreate an undisturbed ecosystem by adding something from a bag.

What we can do is make the environment around a new plant more hospitable to life.

Hydrophil helps provide some of the physical foundations: water, nutrient-holding capacity, carbon, minerals and microbial habitat.

Then the plant begins doing the rest.

New roots grow. Root exudates feed microorganisms. Leaves eventually fall. Fungi establish. Insects arrive. Organic matter accumulates.

The landscape slowly starts building soil again.

That is what we mean when we talk about rewilding above and below the ground.

Want to go further? Meet Beneflore™

Hydrophil concentrates on the physical foundations of the root zone.

For degraded soils that also need an infusion of organic matter and living biology, we created Beneflore™ Super Soil.

Beneflore combines premium mature composts with Hydrophil™, worm castings, black soldier fly frass, kelp and beneficial microbes.

Think of Hydrophil as helping build the habitat.

Beneflore brings more of the living soil ecosystem with it.

Both are designed as concentrated planting-hole amendments, so you can improve the soil where your new plant actually needs it rather than moving large quantities of soil improver around the garden.

Hydrophil™ — build a better root zone from the day you plant.