"Feed the soil and let the soil feed the plants."
Anything I read about organic gardening talks first about the soil. The better the soil, the better the plants.
My thought is that the better the soil, the better the nutrition. That's what I want. I want nutritious and good-tasting vegetables.
Mel says that he has put together "the very best ingredients for that perfect growing soil." Don't bother with the soil that's in your garden. Don't bother with soil tests. Don't bother with digging. Once you make Mel's Mix, you never have to replace your soil. These are his claims. Since he's been gardening far longer than I have, I'm all for giving his way a try.
Mel's Mix is an investment. But I can already see that it's the most important part of the garden, so I've decided to make the investment. And I'm taking Mel at his word that I won't have to replace this soil in the years to come.
I made a big batch of Mel's Mix this week and put it in the front and back gardens. Here's what I did.
Mel's Mix contains:
- 1/3 vermiculite
- 1/3 peat moss
- 1/3 compost (which itself should include 5 different composts, unless you're using your own)
At first this seemed like an impossible task, but then I thought about sponges. When you take a dry sponge and slowly add water to it, it just keeps soaking up water until it's finally saturated. At that point, any extra water just drains out the bottom. Well, it turns out that two of our ingredients--peat moss and vermiculite--do exactly the same thing. It takes a while to wet them and keep them moist so you have to keep adding water, but finally, when they become saturated, any excess water just drains right out the bottom.
From Country Gardens, I also bought 4 different composts, including composted cow manure and mushroom compost. I do not have my own compost because we just started composting, so I won't have any quantity for a while.
I bought peat moss from one of the chains because it was considerably cheaper than what Country Gardens had to sell. I hope I don't regret spending less money on that ingredient. By the way, the chains only had small bags of vermiculite.
In the front and back garden boxes, I put down a weed blocker. I happened to purchase mine from a chain, but I've been told that newspaper works, too.
I mixed up the ingredients a little differently than Mel's instructions (see the bottom of page 101). Because my garden is in the retaining wall and elevated, I did the mixing right in my garden space. I chose a day that was NOT windy, and I put the vermiculite right in the box and watered it. I then put the peat moss directly into the box and watered it. The vermiculite and the peat moss are both very light. They need water just so that they don't blow away!
Then I mixed the compost the way that Mel says to do so (see page 102). I added the compost to the garden box and then mixed the three ingredients. Using the garden rake, turned upside down, worked well for mixing the soil. I also got down and mixed by hand. I found that my mom was much better at mixing with the rake than I was!
I was so thrilled to have soil in my boxes! But later that night I realized that the boxes were not full enough. I need the soil to be all the way to the top of the front garden box and nearly to the top of the back garden box. They are not. So, I need to mix more soil.
Thankfully, I have plenty more vermiculite and peat moss. What I need is more compost.
Below are pictures of what the front and back gardens looked like once I put Mel's Mix in them.
Wow, you are a serious gardener.... you make me look like a clown gardener!! I'm so impressed!
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