Miracle-Gro Garden Soil

[starrywishes]

Originally Posted by dice

Too expensive. I use soils and container mixes in such quantities
that bagged products would be impractical, regardless of whether
they were any good or not. (Bagged "garden soil" is usually just dirt
with some composted cow manure and wood waste mixed in.
Occasionally it will have a litte peat, too, if the manufacturer
happens to use enough of that in their container mixes to get it
at train car load quantities and prices.)

Usually one would get a higher grade of product from a landscape
materials supply company, and it will be cheaper by the cubic yard,
too, than it would be in bags. However, not all "landscape materials
supply companies" are reliable. Some will mix up any old dirt with
something organic looking, like pine bark, and that is their "gardening
mix." You need to talk to people in your area that have bought from
local suppliers and see how what the suppliers offered worked for
those people. If you can find a local gardening forum, you can ask
a question like, "I need to fill a raised bed for vegetable growing. Any
recommendations for local suppliers and particular soil mixes?"

i see, thx dice. can i actually use garden soil as potting soil? i've got one bag of mg organic choice (2cu) i bought for $8 that i havent used and im currently doing a container garden.

[Crandrew]

Originally Posted by starrywishes

i see, thx dice. can i actually use garden soil as potting soil? i've got one bag of mg organic choice (2cu) i bought for $8 that i havent used and im currently doing a container garden.

In pots you want to use "potting mix" not "garden soil"

In pots you need to stay as close to soilless as possible.

But if you already have it then maybe you mix it with some other items to eliminate the abundance of soil in the garden soil mix.

[starrywishes]

Originally Posted by Crandrew

In pots you want to use "potting mix" not "garden soil"

In pots you need to stay as close to soilless as possible.

But if you already have it then maybe you mix it with some other items to eliminate the abundance of soil in the garden soil mix.

so what do u think if i mix it with mg potting mix, mushroom compost, peat, perlite and some organic bone meal?

[dice]

so what do u think if i mix it with mg potting mix, mushroom compost, peat, perlite and some organic bone meal?

The other stuff sounds good. You could maybe mix in 1/4 bagged
garden soil with that for containers, but it would be better to use
only the other stuff for your containers and spread the MG Garden
Soil out on top of a flower bed (in my humble opinion).

I had a bag of this stuff one year:
http://www.blackgold.bz/soil-conditioner

I tried it for a couple of containers simply because I did not have
anything more appropriate handy at the time. It was good for the
first season. When I checked those containers the next spring, the
organic matter in it had mostly decayed to silt, and it had very little
air space left in the soil. (I mixed it with half-decayed compost and
perlite and potted up annuals in it instead of tomatoes.)

[starrywishes]

Originally Posted by dice

The other stuff sounds good. You could maybe mix in 1/4 bagged
garden soil with that for containers, but it would be better to use
only the other stuff for your containers and spread the MG Garden
Soil out on top of a flower bed (in my humble opinion).

I had a bag of this stuff one year:
http://www.blackgold.bz/soil-conditioner

I tried it for a couple of containers simply because I did not have
anything more appropriate handy at the time. It was good for the
first season. When I checked those containers the next spring, the
organic matter in it had mostly decayed to silt, and it had very little
air space left in the soil. (I mixed it with half-decayed compost and
perlite and potted up annuals in it instead of tomatoes.)

thx so much dice. the explanation means so much to me! coming from another country (with no winter lol), its not easy for me to learn about gardening here. since this is my first year doing a vegetable garden, at first ive got no idea of alot of things...which soil i have to use, which fertilizer is recommended, when to start planting, etc.

backhome, i can just toss my ripe tomato on the ground and they'll grow, we have volcanic soil it is so rich in nutrients, the nature provides fertilizer for growing crops. in here, i have to buy the soil lol.... this is a challenge for me, and im willing to learn new things!

[dice]

Growing in the ground is different from containers for these reasons,
mainly:

Containers heat up more than the ground in the hot summer sun.
If your containers are black, it is good to protect them with some
kind of sunscreen (a shade, low plants, light colored plastic bags,
whatever is convenient).

Containers tend to drain better and dry out faster. (If they do not drain
better, your plants are in trouble.) So they need to be watered more
often, usually, and fertilizer washes out of them faster. One of these
meters will help with keeping track of how often your containers need
water: http://www.acehardware.com/product/i...ductId=1279441
(Product quality varies.)

In the ground, "soil aggregation" by fungi combines smaller particles
into larger ones, restoring air space to the soil, so organic matter
decaying to silt is less of a problem than it is when reusing container
mixes that have a lot of compost. (Most of the non-compost stuff
in container mix takes a few years to decay to fine particles.)

So "soil makes its own air space", basically. (Except for complete
lost causes, like clay with no gravel or roots in it.) In containers,
we have to be sure that what we fill them with has air space,
and that it lasts for the whole season.

That is the kind of soil you have in the lower elevation parts of
the Midwest US, "silty loam." Plants grown in it depend on soil
aggregation to maintain air space in the soil.

I have a good link on lime and soil pH from Missouri:
http://extension.missouri.edu/p/G9102

[starrywishes]

Originally Posted by dice

Growing in the ground is different from containers for these reasons,
mainly:

Containers heat up more than the ground in the hot summer sun.
If your containers are black, it is good to protect them with some
kind of sunscreen (a shade, low plants, light colored plastic bags,
whatever is convenient).

Containers tend to drain better and dry out faster. (If they do not drain
better, your plants are in trouble.) So they need to be watered more
often, usually, and fertilizer washes out of them faster. One of these
meters will help with keeping track of how often your containers need
water: http://www.acehardware.com/product/i...ductId=1279441
(Product quality varies.)

In the ground, "soil aggregation" by fungi combines smaller particles
into larger ones, restoring air space to the soil, so organic matter
decaying to silt is less of a problem than it is when reusing container
mixes that have a lot of compost. (Most of the non-compost stuff
in container mix takes a few years to decay to fine particles.)

So "soil makes its own air space", basically. (Except for complete
lost causes, like clay with no gravel or roots in it.) In containers,
we have to be sure that what we fill them with has air space,
and that it lasts for the whole season.

That is the kind of soil you have in the lower elevation parts of
the Midwest US, "silty loam." Plants grown in it depend on soil
aggregation to maintain air space in the soil.

I have a good link on lime and soil pH from Missouri:
http://extension.missouri.edu/p/G9102

that's right, i put my tomatoes in light colored containers. i've never used soil from the yard, i bought the potting mix and mixed it with mushroom compost, but i did test my potting mix ph, the result is neutral (7) and the moisture is good, , ill lower the ph next year with some organic acidifier, and the moisture is good, im using well water and the water ph is also neutral.

[dice]

Compost tends toward neutral pH. Regardless of whether the inputs
that you are composting start off acidic or alkaline, if you compost
them long enough the result is neutral pH compost. (Still good plant
food and growing medium, of course, and food for all kinds of
bacteria and fungi in the soil.)

One way to lower the pH of container mix is to add some peat
moss. Peat moss is harder to get to soak up water after it has
completely dried out than compost, so you do not want to over
do it. Once it has soaked up water, though, it holds water well.

(Peat moss is not really a sustainable resource, in that it grows
so slowly that it takes forever to grow back once it is harvested.
Coir is a good substitute in terms of water holding capacity and
texture, but it does not have the same effect on pH that peat
moss has.)

Another thing that will lower pH is cottonseed meal (a plant food),
although one probably does not use enough of it at one time
to make any drastic change in pH. I have heard that oak leaves
will reduce pH as they decay, but I do not know if that is true
or not. (I did not hear it from a scientist that was testing pH
as it decayed.)

If one is buying fertilizers like Tomato Tone, Plant Tone, etc,
one can mix in half Holly Tone. Holly trees like acid soils, and
Holly Tone fertilizer is probably formulated with that in mind.

[dice]

PS: If "Midwest US" sounds like a strange description for Missouri,
the name is historical. The US started on the Atlantic coast of
North America. As the formerly European population grew and
migrated across the continent, where "the West" was exactly
moved with it. First "the West" was the Appalachian mountains,
then the Great Lakes and the regions south of there, then it moved
across the Mississippi River after the Lousiana Purchase, then across
the Rocky Mountains, and finally all of the way to California and the
Pacific Northwest (and even on to Alaska and Hawaii).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midwestern_United_States