Verdicts on water retention crystals

Just about to start assembling my 4 hanging baskets, and I'm wondering if it's worth adding some water retention crystals to the compost?

Have or do you use them? What's your verdict? Are they a boon or a waste of money?

 

Have used them in our baskets for a few years , but without doing a very strick test /comparision hard to say how effective they are.
We also add some of the timed/heat release fertiliser to each basket.

The crystals seem cheap enough, under £5 at B&Q, and do a good few baskets per pack.

What we do know is ensure you only add the specifed amount of crystals to the specifed volume of compost, too much then when you water the basket the compost can almost errupt and overflow as the crystals swell up.

 

That's a good point, thank you.

 

I got some free sachets, last year, from the water company, not sure if you can still get them.

I used them in some containers but lost track of which ones, put it this way, in mid summer its not obvious that you have used them.

 

Having read fairly extensively about them, anything to reduce workload, I have found the following:
They might work, but they might not [ useful! ]
They DO breakdown to micro plastics.
They do store water, but they may not release it.

 

So a bit dubious, and far from a roaring success. Think I'll pass and save a few pennies. Thank you.

 

I use them in baskets and half-baskets and I think they're useful, but I haven't done a proper trial. A packet lasts me years.

 

The objective test I saw showed that baskets without crystals were wilting after seven days but the identical basket with crystals was perkier for one day more.

 

7 days? any basket type things I have need watering daily in summer when full of roots.

 

I tried them once years ago. Never again. I did use too much to be fair, and got the compost eruption Ricky mentioned. But that's not what put me off. It's more that after I gave up on the idea I emptied it all out on the ground and dug it it. Thinking that's the end of it. But for a couple of years i kept finding blobs of clear jelly on the soil, I think it works it's way up to the surface somehow. Or something completely unrelated and mysterious was happening. I'm not sure. But either way, it's a no from me.

 

I tried them one yr, but it turned out to be a very wet summer and they all rose to the top of the compost and sat there like a globulous mass of jelly. I wouldn't use them again because I'm not sure how you should dispose of spent compost with them in.