Thursday, March 5, 2009

Soil Mixture Recipe

This is the soil recipe from the book I'm reading. It's called Mel's Mix. I started this on Saturday, while Gene was away with the three older ones. IT WAS A LOT OF HARD WORK!

This will fill three 4 foot x 4 foot boxes.
ingredients:

3.8 cubic feet peat moss and 2 bags of 4 cubic feet vermiculite.

8 cubic feet of 5 different bags of compost. The dump didn't have their compost ready. I'm hoping I'll get some on the next batch!

I had to mix everything in half batches. There was SO much. This is half of the 5 bags of compost. The other half is in the wheelbarrow.

Mixing in one bag of vermiculite with the compost. Vermiculite is VERY lightweight. The bag size looks deceptively large at the nursery.
Mixing in the peat moss. Now, peat moss on the other hand, is VERY heavy. I couldn't lift it. I had to have help at the nursery, and at my house ( my dad lifted it out of the truck). And I rolled it around my backyard.
The final product.
The pitchfork was wonderful. (I'm so glad I asked for it at Christmas.) My black boots: also wonderful, for mixing up a bunch of crap. Literally. The tarp was small, but necessary for mixing everything.
The boxes filled up. By the time I got to fill them on Monday, everyone was back home. Like I said. VERY HARD WORK!

3 comments:

The Calico Crew said...

I just want to know how you did it all and took pictures while you worked...is that kinda' like whistling while you work but not? Did that even make sense?

JILLIAN said...

RAYN YOU AMAZE ME!

The Heaton's said...

I totally want to do that! What are you going to use to trellis the plants? In the past our have fallen over because of the weight. What do you think is the best way? Your boxes look great!