What to fill garden bed with?

[heirloomtomaguy]

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/