OK - I've seen lots of references to this "Florist Foam" stuff. Why IYHO is this stuff superior to using a standard kitchen sponge or two soaked in 50/50?

Opinions???

The florist foam seems to hold a much larger amount of liquid than a kitchen sponge (which has a lot of large, useless air pockets). I was amazed at how much a chunk of foam's weight increased as I kept adding 50/50 to it.

Also, kitchen sponges tend to be a breeding place for mold, bacteria, odors, etc., whereas florist foam seems to bypass most of those problems. Not to say it couldn't happen with the foam, but is much less likely, IMHO.

Well if your talking about humidors I would go with the florist foam however if your talking about birth control I would go with the sponge. JonR

Just go with the beads. 😉

One reason that floral foam may resist mold & bacteria: A Rather Long Story.

I used to work for a grower of culinary herbs. One of our products was a living basil plant, with the roots in a plug of peat/perlite. This tended to give the plant a dirty look as the soil spilled onto the plants. So we looked into alternatives, Oasis being one of them. What gave us some pause was that one of the ingredients in Oasis is formaldehyde. Obviously, we wanted to know if a plant grown in Oasis would present any health problems to the consumer. We became convinced that it was OK, so we shipped our "Living Fresh" herbs grown in plugs of Oasis. But that experience makes me think that Oasis is probably a harsh medium for biota like bacteria and mold.