My soil making experiment

I love experimenting and I also love making things myself. Maybe this is why I love growing my own vegetables so much. I have been experimenting with making my own fertilizer mixes, and spent much of the winter doing research. Now I have just discovered my newest obsession, mixing my own potting soil.

I was beginning to get very tired of going to the garden center every week to buy more potting soil. I was beginning to think that maybe I should have just ordered an entire semi-truck load. Then I remembered reading somewhere about mixing your own potting soil, so I did some research got together some possible combinations and off to the store I went.

First I went to Gales Garden Center. From there I bought a monster bag of Perlite and a giant bag of Peat Moss. Then I went to Home Depot and bought some bags of Top Soil for $1.oo each and some bags of Organic Humus and Manure for not even $1.50 each.

Here is the mix that I used:
2 parts Top Soil
2 parts Peat Moss
2 parts Perlite
1 part Organic Humus and Manure

The four parts of my experimental soil mix

The finished product

I can not wait to see how this mix works out, but so far so good. One thing that I have found that seems to make this mix better than the regular soilless mix that you normally buy everywhere, is that when it is completely dried out it soaks up the water a lot better. Normally when a soilless mix is completely dried out if you water it the water just sits on top of the soil, but my mix soaks it right up with no problem. I would imagine that this could possible cause some problems if the soil remains overly wet for long periods of time, but I do not believe this will be a problem for me. I have never had a problem with anything staying too wet, but always have problems with my plants dring out, so hopefully this mix will help the problem.

If it works out for me, this mix may just be the begining, just imagine all the different types of mixes I could come up with.


My soil making experiment (part 2)