Sunday, May 13, 2012

A step by step for mixing soil

For all my new gardeners who are now at the point of mixing your soil
Here is the step by step (it is in the right bar but hard to follow) It's fun
you burn calories and grow great things when it's all done!


Wish I could come over to your garden and help you directly. 
If I can't try following my step by step method:

 1. lay out your tarp.

 2 open one bag of compost and spread thinly across your tarp.

 3. tap out any lumps

 4. open another bag of compost and spread it over the first taping out lumps. 

 5. add your peat moss to the tarp and spread it over the compost, once again tapping out the lumps, and it does have lumps.  Try not to leave peat moss clods...They need to mix in nicely


 6. Carefully grab an end of the tarp and lift it up and help the mix on the tarp roll into the center. Go slowly and watch as the ingredients begin to mix together.


 7 When mixing move from both ends and the two sides. When you can't move the piled up soil any more spread it thinly over the tarp again.

 8. Add in the rest of the compost and mix completely by lifting the tarp and letting 
the mix roll over it's self .

 9. add in vermiculite, spread gently over the whole tarp. We don't want to brake this up any more than we have to. Gently move the tarp back forward to mix and gently spread it over the tarp thinly and mix again.Spread the mix out across the tarp again.

 10 When it all looks like salt and pepper it's ready. Add it to your garden box.

 Salt and pepper look


I can mix 4 cubic feet of compost, 4 cubic feet or peat moss and 4 cubic feet of Vermiculite in one batch. 

It is Good to have left over soil. 
 Put it back in a compost bag or a trash can and every time you pull a used up plant out you stir in a can of new soil back in.  Later you will only add in compost each time you re-plant a square you must add in food for the next plant.  It's so easy. 

 

1 comment:

Hildred said...

Fonnell - you are inspiring me to grow some veggies in pots, and here in town we don't have extra soil so I am glad to have your formula for Mel's Mix.

Happy gardening...smiles!