How to Make Amazing Potting Mix with Cheap Ingredients
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- Опубліковано 5 вер 2024
- The cost of potting soil mix shouldn’t be a barrier to gardening. Let me show you how to mix up some super affordable potting mix so you can get back to planting.
Instructions:
The base of our mix consists of four primary ingredients: 1 part (25%) aged & cured steer manure, 1 part (25%) of the cheapest Raised Bed Mix, 1 part (25%) Top Soil, and 1 part (25%) sphagnum peat moss
Steer manure provides organic material, water retention, structure, and very mild fertilizer to our otherwise mostly inert mix. We use a potting mix made with a base of wood and forest products to add some larger particulates. It’s also got some small amounts of fertilizer.
Perlite is the more common choice for drainage but it’s $17 a bag right now so this is helping to fill that gap.
Cheap top soil helps bulk out our mix. You’ll notice it says on the bag not to use it in containers and the company’s reps do say online that it's too dense for container gardening. Good thing we’re not using it on its own.
Sphagnum peat moss is really the key ingredient. White it has a tiny particle size it actually adds a lot of fluffiness to the mix and critically provides structure and aeration and water retention.
I recommend combining the sphagnum peat moss and the raised bed mix first as they can be a little more difficult to wet out and incorporate.
The final mixture has a surprisingly light and fluffy texture.
With this mix, you will need to very regularly top dress with compost and worm castings or add some store bought fertilizers.
A layer of mulch is really important because it creates a barrier preventing water pressure from compacting the soil and helps slow evaporation so that you don’t have to water as often.
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I love reminder you put about using "experimental" potting mix to always refresh the soil if necessary. :)
I'm in the tropics. I just visited a nursery. He was using something taboo for potting mix.. 25 percent manure. 25 percent slightly, very slightly composted leaves ( can still see their full shape) , up to 25 percent rice hulls/husks, and the rest 'soil'. His plants looked amazing. I'm doing my best to not over complicate things here in the rural tropics. Huge win today
Soil I believe was compost but the my Thai is limited. :)
PS: if you want to experiment with potting mix Always check the drainage first. :)
Potting mix prices have doubled here in the last two years so I've been experimenting a *ton* since this video as well. My conclusion is there are some really good options out there that don't get talked about a lot. Including using partially decomposed wood chips and leaf litter.
I've also had some unbelievably epic failures. I tried using sand (a popular ingredient) with our native clay soil and it straight up made cement. I wasted a lot of seeds and time on that experiment. 0% germination rate 0_o
@@NextdoorHomestead sorry you weren't successful but we learn from our and others failures.
Thanks for this. I've been using cheap dirt in my special sauce mix for years (my neighbors joke that I'm really good at making dirt). Anyway, my mix is just about the same as yours but I use coco coir instead of the moss and also alpha cubes or bails for extra nutrients. Because I'm in NC - red clay country - I break some of it up into the mix too. Works wonders :)
Love it, thanks for sharing your swap-ins Athena =)
To be honest, I sometimes use a bit of our clay soil in our potting mix too. I always figure a full bag of decent soil is better than an empty bag waiting for the good stuff.
Thanks a lot for sharing,
Great information
Use Coco Coir in place of the peat moss. Cheaper and renewable.
Thanks for sharing that recommendation! I definitely do need to experiment more with coir.
unfortunately people don't take into consideration that coco coir has to be put on diesel chugging ships from the tropics to us. Not that "green" either.
I really struggle with this particular dilemma. Trying to get well educated, but the reality doesn't seem to match the popular discourse for the reason you've pointed out and others. I'm not sure there's a clear solution.
I'm in the U.S. and the coir I use is sourced here in the states. The going to be a footprint for just about anything you use, choose the least impacting for your location........
instead of worm castings and manure, what fertilizer do you recommend amending into the soil?
You can pretty much skip worm castings if you don't have them! The aged manure is important as both a structural component and to add organic materials to the mix. The best substitute would be finished compost.
It's totally possible to make a potting mix without significant amounts of manure or compost but it's generally going to be more expensive and appropriate for specific use cases. For instance, blueberries are sometimes grown in pine chunks and sphagnum peat moss + small quantities of fertilizer =)
Cheers!
Is a 7 gallon big enough for a single tomato plant?
Yep! I prefer 10g, but 7 will work. You can even grab a patio variety - some of the newer ones are pretty productive.
@@NextdoorHomestead Thanks .. how much soil is needed for 4 10-gallon bags? For tomatoes, do I want deep bags?
@@polocash11 Each 10 gallon bag will need just under 1.5 cubic feet of soil.
And yep, deep bags (which is the standard shape for fabric grow bags) is what you're wanting for toms =)
They sell shallow ones, but mostly for greens and the like.
Cheers!
@@NextdoorHomestead I ordered 18" diameter and 12.5" deep.