What to fill garden bed with? - Page 2

heirloomtomaguy · May 4, 2015

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gerardo

I use the Kelloggs Raised Bed and Potting Mix as a starting point, add peat moss, perlite, sand, manure (chicken + steer), and a few amendments. I've had great results thus far. I've tried a couple of brands and in terms of what goes through the screen, Kellogg's Raised Bed and Potting Mix has the least foreign material (big wood chips/sticks, pieces of metal, large rocks, pieces of fabric, plastic, etc), the worst offender I've found to be the large white bag labeled "Potting Soil Mix" with a green stripe, it seems they'll throw anything in there to bulk it up. I also find some interesting things in those bags of steer manure blend and chicken manure.
And while the ick factor is there with biosolids, organic matter, irrespective of its origin, will work. If fecal-oral contamination routes are of concern to you, there's a lot of those in the supermarket and in our daily lives already--its hard to get people to wash their hands. So remember, its the fresh turds and lack of hand washing you have to worry about. Veggies produced in bed where Biosolids make up a small percentage won't hurt us. Besides, there's always the iodine drops that reduce any potential pathogen counts to a safe level. Bacteria and all their buddies are our friends, not our enemies. Good day to all.

Im more worried about the chemicals found in biosolids than the human poop itself. Here is a link to some highlights of a biosolids study from the USGS.
http://toxics.usgs.gov/highlights/biosolids.html
And also a study about chemical uptake of those chemicals i to soy bean plants
http://www.environmentalhealthnews.o...rom-biosolids/

VC Scott · May 4, 2015

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ghawdex

It's about time we got nice weather!

I just built a 8' by 4' plant bed. Right now I have my plants in containers using fox farms ocean forest (which the plants are loving!)

My question is, what should I use to fill the beds with? If I use fox farms ocean forest, I will be spending quite a bit of money.. which i don't want to do.

Any suggestions?

Thanks!

Is this a raised bed? If so, you might try the Square Foot Gardener's formula:

1/3 vermiculite
1/3 peat moss
1/3 compost (from as many sources as possible)

I substitute Coco Coir for the peat moss and perlite for the vermiculite.

For the compost I like mushroom mulch and composted horse manure.

Gerardo · May 4, 2015

I understand your concern. Undoubtedly there are contaminants in the biosolids, however, as in everything, it becomes a numbers game and it’s all about concentrations. It’s hard to make a judgment on either study without reading the whole thing, and both of those esoteric journals require subscriptions to read them. Next time I’m at a physical bio-environmental sciences library I’ll give ‘em a full read. This little tidbit worried me: “authors used biosolids with a very high water content, which may not represent actual land application practices. They also added more of the chemical contaminants to the biosolids to increase their concentrations, instead of monitoring the chemical levels present in the biosolids and wastewater. This may alter how the chemicals disperse and result in more chemicals available to the roots of the soybean plants in the experiment than would be under real-world applications.”

This topic deserves more study, especially if they’re being concentrated within plant tissues.

bughunter99 · May 4, 2015

It depends on how high your raised beds are. The fastest and cheapest thing to do is to grab a couple of bales of straw and split them up across the bottom of your planters. Wet them really well and sprinkle them with blood meal then top with great potting mix, sounds like what you are using works well.

If straw is hard to come by you can also raise things up by tossing leaf litter, small sticks into the bottom. My catalpa tree yields thousands of hard pods which is great for stuff like this. Bottom line is that you need not fill the whole thing with great potting mix if it is deep.

May 4, 2015	#19
bughunter99 Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Feb 2010 Location: zone 5 Posts: 821	How deep are the planters? It depends on how high your raised beds are. The fastest and cheapest thing to do is to grab a couple of bales of straw and split them up across the bottom of your planters. Wet them really well and sprinkle them with blood meal then top with great potting mix, sounds like what you are using works well. If straw is hard to come by you can also raise things up by tossing leaf litter, small sticks into the bottom. My catalpa tree yields thousands of hard pods which is great for stuff like this. Bottom line is that you need not fill the whole thing with great potting mix if it is deep.

May 4, 2015	#18
Gerardo Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Feb 2015 Location: San Diego-Tijuana Posts: 2,598	I understand your concern. Undoubtedly there are contaminants in the biosolids, however, as in everything, it becomes a numbers game and it’s all about concentrations. It’s hard to make a judgment on either study without reading the whole thing, and both of those esoteric journals require subscriptions to read them. Next time I’m at a physical bio-environmental sciences library I’ll give ‘em a full read. This little tidbit worried me: “authors used biosolids with a very high water content, which may not represent actual land application practices. They also added more of the chemical contaminants to the biosolids to increase their concentrations, instead of monitoring the chemical levels present in the biosolids and wastewater. This may alter how the chemicals disperse and result in more chemicals available to the roots of the soybean plants in the experiment than would be under real-world applications.” This topic deserves more study, especially if they’re being concentrated within plant tissues.