Potting soil

CyndiSmith

“If you have a dollar, spend ninety cents on soil and a dime on plants.” Boy is that true! I have learned the hard way how important the potting mix is to propagation. Last year I used a consumer brand potting mix available at a local store and my plants from seed were small and not very vigorous. I changed to using a SunShine #1 mix by SunGro (which, by the way, is about half the price of the easily available mixes) and the plants are about double the size of my earlier plants and seem very vigorous. I have only found SunGro products at Steuber Distributing Company in Snohomish. What does everyone else use and where do you purchase it?

wildcatkin

I believe that Steubers is the only convenient place to buy bales of Sunshine #1 or any of the SunGro mixes. But I have wondered if Ace in Anacortes might be able to order them. Not sure. I have used it many years and it is truly good though I have stopped using it and I will explain later in this message. I am curious though about your bad experience with consumer products. I often wonder if people go wrong because the bag they chose is one without a “charge”- that means fertilizer. This is not uncommon with potting mixes- they may not have any or enough. but this is a murky topic.

I am, once again, attempting to eliminate, as much as possible, plastic, and PEAT, from my plant growing endeavors. This is not so easy but there are some ways. Regarding peat: we really and truly must stop using peat. Somehow the momentum for its elimination, on this continent, stalled and then vanished years ago. I don’t know the reasons but peat extraction from Canadian peat bogs continues and we don’t need to use it or import coconut fiber. The various mixes of potting media from other sources, plastic bags unfortunately, such as the ones they sell at Browne’s here in FH, G&B? Garden and Bloom or something like that, have less peat, at least some of them, and they are charged with organic (they even say OMRI certified) fertilizers and mycorrhizal inoculants. I have had fine success with them for seed starting and propagation, plus potting on. I haven’t gone into too much research or trials with other non-peat materials lately but I wonder if there might be more forest product based media out there. I think so as the anti-peat movement is gaining momentum once again.

This is spurring me on to look deeper into the new products available without peat moss. Colleen Howe, here on SJ, used to make her own organic potting soil for her nursery. I believe it was coir based. I wonder if she would share it. I will ask.

I am finding that late autumn and winter sowing of all kinds of seed, as was traditional before the advent of lights and greenhouses and bottom heat!, as nature intended, sown into seed flats or open beds, again, with a lot sand or only sand, is not a bad way to sow many things. We are used to fast growing, bulky, and fleshy plants- we have been trained by the nursery and garden center business. That is not how plants actually are more often than not. Remember the old adage, was it Alan Chadwick who brought it back?: “breakfast, lunch and dinner”. seedlings don’t need a big feed. soil microorganisms.. they need and real life. oh.. but things are not always so simple.. more sharing opportunities. 😄

CyndiSmith

wildcatkin Thanks for the suggestion of checking out prop mixes at Brown’s in FH. I will try there. I have heard about the impact of using peat and would also like to rid it from my plantings. Or if Colleen Howe has a product too, that would be good. I like like supporting local businesses. Or I wonder if Midnight’s Farm here on Lopez could create a mix as well? Perhaps something I could talk to them about.

wildcatkin

CyndiSmith I will ask Colleen if she will share her recipe. She is no longer growing plants for sale and she never sold the potting media. She made it up with ingredients she purchased separately.

There are many recipes here and there, in old books, online. The main benefits I see with commercial mixes are that they are weed free, have the ability to hold a charge, are free-draining, and disease-free. the last one is murky though.

I know that traditional recipes included, home made compost, leaf mold (a key ingredient), sand, sometimes garden loam, and various manures or other sources of fertility. nowadays “soils” are inoculated with mycorrhizal fungi. all often topped off, when sowing seeds or sticking cuttings, with small pebbles.. like 7mm. the way we use perlite or vermiculite or pumice these days but they are very extractive and processed.

I would be cautious about media being made from slash and yard waste systems but with testing and lots of processing I am sure it could work in the end.

When I was first working in commercial nurseries all the container plants, 1 gallon and bigger, were grown in a 50/50 mix of sawdust and sand with, at that time and still standard, slow-release fertilzer.. pelletized. Like Osmocote. Not an option for those of us who wish to change things. But more and more good work from thinking folks is coming. Maybe we all can be part of that?

Maybe Eliza can pipe up about how Salish Seeds manages fertility in the plugs? Would be great to share together how we can grow better plants out of the ground and better for the planet.