This is John Kohler with GrowingYourGreens.com, today we’re outside my local Lowe’s home
improvement store, and the reason why I’m at the Lowe’s today is because, you know,
not everybody lives here.
And Sonoma Canyon has the Sonoma compost, and that’s what I use to fill my raised
beds.
I use 100% Sonoma compost, which is the locally composted food scraps and tree shavings and
yard waste that they compost and sell back to me for basically 21 dollars a cubic yard.
So that’s really inexpensive.
But not everybody has this luxury to get good locally sourced organic compost.
So I’m at my local Lowe’s store to show you guys what to use if you don’t have Sonoma
compost and what things you could use to fill your raised beds!
So we’re here at my local Lowe’s home improvement store.
And I came in the other day and I saw this stuff sitting here for sale next to me.
And I thought I should make a show out of it since many people asked.
And what it is potting soil, or square foot gardening potting soil.
I had one viewer that wrote in, they said “John, I got all these raised beds, but
I’m going broke filing them.”
So what they have here is basically a garden time ready to use natural and organic square
foot garden soil.
You know, basically, indoors by Mel Bartholomew, the inventor of the square foot gardening.
So this is used for raised beds, it contains worms castings, bat guano, and five unique
composts, including pole tree and mushroom composts.
And let’s take a look at the price here.
It’s basically three cubic foot, and for three cubic foot, it’s going to run you
ten dollars and ninety seven cents.
Let’s take a look at the pack of the package and let’s check out what’s in the there.
So basically Mel recommends in his book a mixture of one third peat moss or coconut
core, and then one third vermiculite and then one third blended compost.
So let’s take a walk down their soil aisle here and see if we could put that stuff together
for less than what we would buy it for.
That being said, this is a blend, and they’re probably using some pretty good ingredients.
If you can afford it, this is probably pretty good stuff to buy.
If it’s got Mel’s endorsement, I’m sure he watches over it and makes sure they’re
using good stuff in there.
It’s by a reputable company here in Tempe Arizona.
Grow well, it’s growell.com.
And basically to fill a four by four foot box, it says you need about four bags of these.
That would cost you about 44 dollars.
So let’s see if we could make up our own mixture using one third peat moss, one third
vermiculite, and one third blended compost.
So it says we need four bags, which is, in one bag, is three cubic foot, so that’s
going to be about three times four, is 12 cubic feet to fill a four by four bed.
Let’s see if we could basically fill a bed with some single ingredients and how much
it would cost.
So over here we have one cubic foot of composted chicken manure for two dollars and seventy
six cents.
If we’re supposed to use one third manure, I would like to mix manure, so maybe we’ll
use one bag of this, and see if we can find other manures.
And once again, this is fully composted, all purpose soil.
And I would encourage everybody to buy the organic certified products whenever needed.
But once again, if this is all you got, and all you can get, you know, good enough.
So here’s one cubic foot composted chicken manure, two dollars and seventy six cents.
All right, so next we need the compost component, so I found this enrich all natural stuff,
soil compost, bale rich soil compost.
It’s three cubic foot for seven dollars and eighty seven cents.
And if we look at the ingredients, I always like to look at the ingredients of anything
I’m going to buy.
It’s got forest humus, compost, composted chicken manure, worm casting, kelp meal, bat
guano, and gypsum with oyster and dolomite lime pH adjusters.
So I don’t know, I think that looks pretty good.
Good for three cubic feet for seven dollars and eighty seven cents.
We’ll need one cubic foot of that chicken manure we saw for two dollars and seventy
six cents, and that’ll basically bring our compost to the four cubic feet that we’re
looking for.
So seven eighty seven, why don’t we just say eight dollars, plus another three dollars.
That’s eleven dollars total for our compost component.
Let’s walk on and see what else we’re going to add to our mix.
So now we have the peat moss ingredient.
And the peat moss ingredient comes in a two point two cubic foot bag.
And these bricks get kinda heavy.
Let’s take a look on the back here.
That’s pretty much it.
Peat moss.
And these are compressed.
They expand when you open them up.
All right, so the peat moss is eight dollars and ninety eight cents for two point two cubic
feet, so we’ll need two of these to make four cubic feet, which is 1/3 of 12 cubic
feet, which is the total we need to make.
So that’s going to cost us about eighteen dollars to make that.
All right, so I’m trying to find vermiculite to add to our mixture.
And they don’t have it here at Lowe’s in big bags!
They have it in small bags which will really cost a lot of money and I don’t recommend
buying it in small bags.
But I know down the street at Home Depot they have it—a huge bag, runs about 18, 17 dollars.
So basically with that, I could calculate how much it would cost us.
And actually it would cost us more than 44 dollars to make our mixture separately.
So why not just get the stuff, pre-mixed?
It’s a lot easier.
So what else can you use to fill your raised beds?
Well basically that’s up to you.
What you fill them with, definitely the Mel’s mix is probably really good.
But if you don’t want to use the Mel’s mix, you could probably use something like
this stuff, all natural garden soil.
Very important to check the ingredients.
I’d recommend something with a high compost content, because that’s where your nutrition,
the nutrients come from.
So this has composted forest humus, compost, composted chicken manure, worm casting, kelp
meal, and bat guano.
Basically bat guano helps to add the nitrogen.
The kelp meal adds some of the minerals.
With that being said, I’d still use the rock dust minerals.
So that’s probably pretty good.
That’s three dollars.
I’m sorry, that’s three cubic feet for seven dollars and eighty seven cents.
The other thing I would recommend is using some organic gardening tools.
So whether it’s the MiracleGrow brand or other brand garden soil or compost, I’d
recommend using that.
And you know, use some inexpensive cheap compost on the bottom to fill it up to fill in, because
some of this organic compost is more expensive.
And you know, let’s take a look at what’s in here.
What they put in here, hopefully its rich in compost.
Made by MiracleGrow.
Not that I’m a big fan of supporting big companies like MiracleGrow, but let’s see,
it has mainly… formulated with organic materials including forest products, peat humus, and
compost, bagged peat compost and manure and poultry litter.
So you know, that looks like a pretty good basic mixture for 6.77 for 1.5 cubic feet.
But you know what, just do the best you can and use what you have available in your local
area.
I’d recommend you look for-- contact your local city or garbage company to see if they
do green bin or food scrap and tree clipping composting in your area.
That’s going to be the most affordable source of compost to fill your raised beds.
Once again, at my house, I use pretty much 100% compost and rock dust minerals, that
are very important to add to your soil.
No matter what you do, whatever you gets at Lowe’s or Home Depot, add the rock dust
minerals.
And I have a really exciting announcement for some rock dust minerals that will be delivered
to your house for really cheap!
And that’s coming really soon, but it’s currently a secret.
But pretty soon that’s going to be online.
You can order it online for really inexpensive.
Get it delivered right to your door for probably cheaper you could buy it locally, almost.
And if your filling your raised beds, do the best you can with what you have in your locally
area, whether its composted from your local city, like I get.
I get cubic yards for 21 dollars.
So it’s magnitudes cheaper than buying the stuff by the bag.
But if all I have is stuff by the bag, I would.
The other thing is check your local nurseries and other places that sell to landscapers.
They can buy things and sell things by the truckload, so you could get quite a better
deal by buying through them than buying it from the bags at a big box store such as WalMart,
Home Depot, or Lowe’s, or a local garden center or nursery.
So once again, this is John Kohler with GrowingYourGreens.com.
And when you’re growing, do the best you can.
Just start growing now, and if you can’t get organic, that’s fine.
Do the best you can.
But start today.
We’ll see you next time.