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Old 30-01-2006, 10:48 PM posted to rec.gardens
simy1
 
Posts: n/a
Default Building Container Soil

To you:

the best way to fill a new bed for free is to have a tree service dump
200 cubic feet of wood chips on your front lawn. They will do it for
free.Once in the beds, it will take a couple of years to both decompose
and mix perfectly. The earthworms will do the mixing for you and
initially you will be limited to crops that like clay topped with
partially decomposed wood chips (things like tomato or potato or
garlic). Wood chips produce excellent humus when they are done. You can
speed up their decomposition by dumping N-rich organic matter on top of
the chips, of which the best is kitchen scraps. Manure is not
seed-free, whereas the chips are, so it is best to avoid contamination
and hold the manure until weeds come in on their own three years later.

To the original poster:

1) garden soil does not mean much. In my back yard, garden soil is 90%
sand. Your garden soil might be 80% clay.

2) different crops react differently to high levels of compost.
Tomatoes, radicchio, garlic, melons and squash, potatoes, all love to
grow directly in the compost pile. So for those go ahead and use pure
compost. Other crops prefer a fine, neutral, settled soil, things like
cabbage and onions and okra for example, for maximum performance.
Lettuce will grow in unfinished compost so long as it is neutral
(leaves-dominated).

3) Then you have to figure out the root system. Most melons have a
taproot and they might not be happy in a container. Same for carrots
and parsnips.

4) finally, some crops do just fine in waterlogged soil, but things
like garlic or melons or beans will not accept it. Melons will tolerate
some drought if they have a fully developed taproot. Others, like
cardoon and many greens, will rather be too wet than too dry.

so go ahead experiment and change what does not work. You can't have
just one soil for all plants.