Square Foot Garden, The Dirt

Horse manure at the farm

dug up horse manure

5 different composts

Peat Moss, Vermiculite

Mixing the dirt

Okay, so yesterday I posted how we built our little 2 x 2 ft box to house my square foot garden.  Today I want to tell you about the dirt in my square foot garden.  Mr. Bartholomew came up with a special concoction that he fondly likes to call, "Mel's Mix".  Well since Mel sells his mix only to Utah residence, we have to make our own.  This consists of 1/3 Peat Moss, 1/3 Vermiculite, and 1/3 compost.  The compost is made up of 5 different kinds of compost.  Finding 5 different kinds of compost is no easy trick, but I managed to do it.  I used:  mushroom compost, horse manure, hen manure, cow manure, and worm castings.  The horse manure was free from a farm down the road.  I purchased the hen, cow, and mushroom compost from Lowe's and the worm castings from a wholesale landscape supplier.  The Peat Moss and Vermiculite I bought from a farm/feed store.  After you gather all your supplies, you have to mix all the compost together in equal parts.  We made a small box to use as a scooper and we used 5 scoops of each compost and mixed them together.  Then we took 5 scoops each of the compost, peat moss, and vermiculite and mixed them together.  Then we filled the box.  Whew!  That was a lot of work just for dirt. I am expecting great things from this garden!