Hey, it's Jason here at Fraser Valley rose farm. Let's say you wanted to start your own backyard nursery
That's what I did
I had a little suburban yard out in Abbotsford
And I started by growing cuttings and seedlings in a couple of little trays in my backyard and filling up little pots and selling them
on Craigslist and at the farmers market and
Later on. I got this farm
But I'm still relatively small-scale as far as farms go so I still have to think about my costs and about my soil
If you're starting your own backyard nursery
It's one of the first things - the very first things that I think you should consider is where you get your soil
What's the appropriate soil to use and how much is costing you. I'm going to go through all that in this video
I'll go through the different soil types and talk about what you should use both for propagation and for
for growing on in larger pots
but the first thing I wanted to do is circle back to that cost thing because it can be a big deal when you're
Doing a small nursery. Let's say you started out buying in a bag like this
This is the the 18 liter bags that you can buy commonly in the little hardware stores
Now that alone only cost me seven bucks
So it seems like a pretty easy way to get started and that's how I did start
I got little little bags like this or the next size up
Which is the bale like this and and I started potting that way
So this one here the most common
size of pot that I start my plants in is this
This is a nine centimeter pot or in the States, they might call it a quart pot and a
little bag like this that's gonna fill something in the range of
23
Pots like this, right
Your cost per pot actually comes out to about 31 cents per pot
Does it not gonna break the bank if you're selling your plants for two or three dollars?
But remember you also have to buy the plastic
And you also have to put a plant in it so that can really take a bite out if you bought it
Your soil in the larger size up. This one here actually holds somewhere in the range of
20 times the amount of soil in this Bale uncompressed as this does here and that gets your cost for that nine centimeter pot
Down into the rain of about 12 cents a pot which is way more acceptable
But I'll tell you something else. If you start looking around and you go to your landscape supply stores and you get bulk soil
And get a decent deal on it
You can probably cut even that cost down in half to somewhere around
Six cents a pot or less depending on how much you shop around for
So I would definitely recommend you do that likewise the costs on
this size pot
Which is a nursery gallon pot actually holds about in Canada about three and a half liters something like that and the cost in
This bag of soil is about a dollar thirty to fill this pot in this bag of soil. It's about
53 cents a pot and
If you buy it
Bulk, you'd probably get it down to half that amount. So
26 cents or something along those lines
Now those are Canadian prices and Canadian volumes and everything else
But I think it probably holds true in in every market that the larger the volume of soil you can purchase at a time
The more money you're gonna save and that's gonna give you a real head start into your nursery business
So next I want to show you
The different types of soil and what you should be looking for when you choose that?
Especially when you have to make that decision of buying your own bulk soil
Okay, so I thought I might start out by talking about what goes into soil
potting soil that is now potting soil is actually not the same thing as
top soil or soil that's in your yard for a number of reasons one is that it's a lot lighter the second is that it's
sterile or intended to be made of sterile ingredients and the third thing is
That it's usually intended to drain a lot better than the soil that you find in a yard, so it's not the same thing
and typically they make it out of
Three common ingredients. One is peat moss. The second one is
I'm gonna call it "wood products". It may be
Composted wood bark or bark chips might be composted wood chips or shredded wood of some sort
but that's the second category and the third one that they sometimes use although less commonly in this market is
Coconut fiber. So those are the basic ones and there are some other amendments that they put into those to adjust their qualities
So let's start by looking at peat moss, which is if you look at the two bags that I showed you before
these guys here are made out of
Primarily peat moss that has been improved. So this here I'm gonna see if I can get a good shot on this
is
Peat moss
now
You can see about it that the peat moss is very very fine and texture
it's light it holds a lot of moisture and
If I wanted to say some some good things about it, that's what I would say. The negative things
I would say about peat moss is that it sometimes holds a little too much moisture
it's also a little bit acidic in nature and it's
Hard to wet and what I mean by that is sometimes you'll see pots that have dried out
and
then you try to water them but the water just so rolls off the top and down the sides of the pot and
Doesn't and doesn't absorb into the material
That's because when peat moss becomes very dry, it becomes hydrophobic
So you have to give it a bunch of little small short waterings to try to get the water back into the peat moss
So it has some positive qualities. It's sterile. It's light again
It holds a good amount of moisture and actually holds a fair amount of air in it as well
With the downsides that it can stay a little bit too wet and it's become hydrophobic as well. So
Now let me show you what's in this bag here and excuse me while I go a little bit savage here
Okay, so this here then is
The the mix that you find in that bale, and this is actually sunshine mix
Although there's a couple of different brands out there and what I'll show you about
This is it's a lot like the peat moss
Very fine textured you can see that what they've added in here. You can see the white in there
That's perlite and that's another amendment that they add both to increase the air holding capacity
and improve the drainage. Well, they also add in here is a wetting agent which is intended to break that
hydrophobic
Quality I talked about and they also put a little bit of lime in there to get rid of that acidity
So it's basically peat but corrected for growing situations
This is actually a fairly good medium sterile and all that for doing
Propagation. So if you are starting in propagation and you want to get a bunch of soil and you can fill a bunch of pots
with this
It's actually not a bad way to start but as I say as you go a little bit further you start growing into larger
containers and you also
You know your costs you start getting concerned about your costs. You might start looking at
additional types of soil this one here is a soil that I
Purchased in bulk and you can see what they've done here is they've got some finer pieces in here
so it's got some finer soil, but it also has these chunks and
These are chunks of composted bark and chips ups of
wood that have been composted and
Those help, just like the perlite does, in this mix here to improve the drainage qualities of this soil it also
Costs a lot less. So this as I say it costs basically half as much as the soil in the Bale and
I have it what I can use it for because it has both the finer
Pieces in it and the chunkier pieces in there I can use this general-purpose
So this last year when I did my propagation
I propagated in this. last year when I put it into bigger pots. I potted it into this
Now you'll find that some growers
Swear off the "fines". These are like the really fine textured
Bits that go into your your potting mix and what they prefer is
Just to go with these chunky bits of bark mulch and all that and if you went that way, that's fine
just
Be careful of the balance, right?
because if your soil is too fine, then it's gonna hold too much water and
If it's too chunky then it's going to release the water too quickly, and then you wind up having to water
Quite a bit more often
So for me a mixture of the fine components and the coarser components
end up being the right mix that I can use across all growing situations and
Like I say for you if you're looking for this
locally and this is the hard part about sourcing soil is
This you can find in the hardware store this you can find in the mass merchants store. You can't find always
this specific mix in your local area
so what you have to do is I would suggest you go down to your
Your landscape supply stores your local garden center and look at what they're carrying for a composted bark mulch
Or composted they might call it, you know potting soil or potting mix and see what they sell in bulk. And if it has
a mixture of fine material in it and coarser material if you can pour water into it
You can see it drain out relatively easily. That might be a
Mix worth trying out. Okay a couple of final notes. I wouldn't mind making here
Is that when selecting for your bulk soil?
You should be looking for something. That is well
composted if you're looking for something and it includes a lot of wood products in it
And it looks like to fresher color almost like it's a it's uncomposted
chips or or that kind of thing what will happen is it will continue to break down and
as a compost it may even rob nutrients from your potting mix so
Look for something that is well composted and you can ask the people at the soil yard about that
the second thing I wouldn't mind covering off is
I've been asked questions about
About what to use for
propagating roses and
and for propagation in general and
I
Mentioned that a good amount of fines in the soil would be good and well draining and all that
but another thing you need to look at is this here on this potting mix you're gonna see that this has
NPK or has the the nutrients listed in it. You are actually looking for something that is
Unfertilized so this bag here. I wouldn't be recommending it even though the levels are fairly low
It's not something I'd recommend is getting something that's pre fertilized. If you use something like in the bag here, that would be fine
It's unfertilized or this bulk mix that I got is completely unfertilized
so both of those would be appropriate for propagation but stick away from anything that has
Fertilizer added to it. Alright, that should cover off all my points for your potting soils or your potting mix
So if you have any other questions or comments, please leave them below the video Thanks