I saw a guy today make small trench with a stick… stomped tf outta the trench. Poured about a half a bag of ice and stomped it in. Turned around and did it again in a random spot. There didn’t appear to be any plants there. I have heard of people using ice to slowly provide water to plants. But what the fuck was this guy doing?
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Ice or Dry Ice?
You can use dry ice to help improve soil condition – if you bury it the carbon dioxide evaporates and aerates the soil, can help fix the Ph level, and encourages root growth for any nearby plants
But yeah – other than using ice to water plants (which you already know) I’m at a loss also
Is it in an area with hard soil? This would be a guess (but hopefully not enough of a guess to piss of the mods) but is it possible he was trying to loosen up the soil to make it easier to dig. Normally you’d do this just by soaking it with a hose but maybe he had other stuff to do (and some extra ice he wanted to use up) and didn’t trust himself not to forget about the hose so just buried some ice instead.
Or maybe he is planning on planting something there shortly and doing it to moisten the soil ready to be planted?
When soil is very dry, it’s actually very bad at holding water. If you were to pour a large amount of water on the soil, a lot of it would either run off or run through.
By pouring ice onto the soil instead, the ice slowly melts, which allows a trickle of water to be absorbed by the soil. As the soil gets hydrated, it is better able to hold more water, so it can hold the future ice that melts.
As others have suggested it’s to better water the soil.
Why that guy did it I’m not sure you’d have to ask them, but that’s the reasoning behind ice in a flower bed. Could be that the soil in that bed was dry or that that’s just the process they follow for the beginning of the year
It’s a pervasive myth that using ice is the best way to water Orchids (it’s not) but if this was a large outside flower bed, I haven’t the faintest idea.
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