Compost for raised bed

[Addicted]

I want to set up a raised bed tomorrow and have a bunch of compost that a local landscape supply place gave me.I was told after i bought it it would be too acidic,so i bought one of those probes with the gauge on top and it checks out alright.Hope the meter is correct!

My question is do i have to add anything to it,I was thinking peat or something to fluff it up some.

Jason.

[Sherry_AK]

I would not use pure compost, which by the way is generally pH neutral. Can you not mix the compost with some native soils? That would be much less expensive than any alternative.

Sherry

[Addicted]

The soil here is junk,and i have no more money to spend on this.It honestly looks more like dirt than compost to me,should i take a picture of it?

Jason

[TZ-OH6]

Compost should be fluffy unless what you have is wet and compacted. If so it should loosen up when you work it.

I'm not sure what you mean by soil looking like dirt. We grow lots of things in dirt around here. There is a whole big corn field of dirt across the road. The trouble is when the dirt looks like gravel, sand or clay.


I would recommend working the native soil into the compost for two reasons. One is that it will increase your volume/root zone depth, and two it can provide additional minerals not found in the compost due to presence absence of those minerals as well as physical properties (surface charge etc) of silt and clay particles.



About the only reason I can think of not to dig up the bottom of a raised bed, is because of a hard rocky/clay pick-ax subsoil.

[organichris]

As long as the pH is good and you are transplanting, I would just add some sphagnum peat moss to aerate it a bit and grow to your heart's content. When the peat moss breaks down it will turn the medium acidic, but a little lime towards the end of the season should correct that if it becomes necessary. Especially with tomatoes, you can grow in pure compost with excellent results.

[feldon30]

I bought some soil from a soil place and they said it was 25% compost but I sincerely doubt it. I didn't get much in the way of tomatoes out of the beds that I just used that soil, and when I would work in the soil, it seemed mostly sand, shredded pine bark, peat, etc.

Of course I cannot make any determinations based on what you've got and what they are selling you, but 100% compost may not really be that. There is no legal definition of compost. Anything which starts to break down can be called compost. Even if it's pine bark that was shredded yesterday.

[organichris]

Yeah, I guess I should say also that the value of the compost is dependent on the material composted. My own home compost has a lot of diversity but the commercial stuff might only be composted from a few kinds of materials and therefore may not have the nutrient value to sustain optimum plant growth and fruit production.

[Addicted]

i agree,who knows what is in it.I did set something up today though,I used the mystery dirt and mixed it with some peat moss...seems ok so far,ph of about 6.

I'm ghetto and out of money for growing veggies. So i went to the hardware store and bought a large kiddie pool,drilled some holes in it and filled with veggies.I have 4 summer squash,4 bush bean and 1 hot pepper plant in there.

Jason.

[organichris]

Look...ghetto is the only way to go homie! But you may want to invest in some mulch depending on the depth of that kiddie pool.

[Addicted]

It is about 12 inches deep homeslice!..Propa depth.

[Addicted]

I brought some of it to the garden center,the guy said it seemed like loam.seems to be alright with the peat i mixed in.

jason.