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What soil to buy for a raised bed vegetable? Should I get the miracle gro garden soil for vegetables or should I get an organic soil. Also, Should I buy a bag of compost (like mushroom compost)?
I would till up what soil you have and take a good look at it. Is it sandy, Loamy( good)or a heavy clay? bags and bags of potting soil like miracle grow would be expensive. Much of it is sphagnum peat moss and compost anyway.
I like composted cow manure. I bought 4 bags at $2.50 a bag for the vegetable garden and pots and planters. 3 40 pound bags went into a 5 x 10 plot about an inch deep. Then I shoveled it over into already tilled soil. I could have added more but its already pretty heavy in organics from past years. I've added sphagnum peat moss as a mulch this year and last, normally I just use dried grass from the lawn. Working that in the fall makes it nice and loose. I use miracle gro fertilizers and have no complaints against them. You should try to improve your soil and make it better, not replace it.
Most universities have garden/community extention offices, where they'll test and analyse your soil, or simply answer questions, and can tell you exactly what you need to amend the soil with. The area I live in now used to be a big farm back in the 40s and 50s, and there's a big community garden down the street....neighbors tell me nothing much needs to be done to the soil here. It's very dark and rich, with worms galore. What you add depends on what soil you're starting with.
Best vegetable garden I ever had was when I added aged chicken poop (I had chickens at the time) and oak leaf mulch and tilled it in to what was fairly sandy soil. That was an incredibly productive garden!
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Originally Posted by msbiz
What soil to buy for a raised bed vegetable? Should I get the miracle gro garden soil for vegetables or should I get an organic soil. Also, Should I buy a bag of compost (like mushroom compost)?
Your zipcode tells me that you are in my neck of the woods, North of Westpark and West of Hillcroft. Raised beds work great here. You should get this guy's http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/...g/5578965.html planting almanac for Houston if you haven't already. Houston soil doesn't really till up all that well. You could probably amend it and fine tune it over a period of years, but it would still be gumbo that you can make bricks and pottery out of, you will always have drainage problems and the only things that will be truly happy in it will be citrus trees and dallisgrass. I think it is much more cost/time effective to build a raised bed and fill it with a quality soil mix.
Nature's Way Resources is a great outfit for good dirt (they only operate in the Houston area) and will deliver in bulk to your home. If you have your bed planned out you should be able to calculate the cubic yardage and order that amount for delivery.
It isn't outrageously expensive, but it isn't cheap either.
I have six 10'x5' beds and filled all of them with their "Garden & Flowerbed Mix Plus". Great stuff. You shouldn't need to add anything for two or three growing seasons, maybe longer if you rotate crops properly.
EDIT: If you're raised bed is on a smaller scale, I would go to Southwest Fertilizer on Bissonnet. They carry bagged Nature's Way products.
EDIT2: Wabash Feed & Antique on Washington also carries bagged Nature's Way products and their staff is universally friendly and knowledgeable in varying degrees.
Last edited by jimboburnsy; 05-23-2011 at 08:03 AM..
I like to use the Mr. Good Stuff growing soil for my backyard vegetables. It has compost, perlite, turkey droppings & doug fir. Plust i can just order it online real easily at [url]https://www.goodstuffsoil.com[/url]. If you live around the Sacramento area they deliver basically the same-day every time.
Location: East of Seattle since 1992, 615' Elevation, Zone 8b - originally from SF Bay Area
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I just stopped at the Grange nearby and picked up my soil for the vegetable garden yesterday. It's not cheap, but well worth it. Regularly $9.99/2 Cu. Ft. it was on sale for $8.99. The Gardner & Bloome potting soil, mostly, with the addition of some of the Harvest Supreme. I have used it for years now, and it's made a huge difference. It's not available in all states, however.
What soil to buy for a raised bed vegetable? Should I get the miracle gro garden soil for vegetables or should I get an organic soil. Also, Should I buy a bag of compost (like mushroom compost)?
I do it a bit differently than others. I use straw bale to fill up the raise bed (cheaper) then top it off with bags of compost (I use cow manure, think it was $1+ a bag). For the last two years it proved to be a success.
This how I do it. First build a raise bed (left) then fill it up with straw bale (right)
Add drip irrigation
Success with Zucchini
Can you believe this
Success with Cherry Tomatoes
It's true what they say, once you taste your own home-grown sweet tomatoes....
Japanese Eggplant
Cucumber
The straw bale will decompose over the summer and provide a great compost to the vegetables. You'll need to refill the straws the next spring to start a new season. But as you can see from pics above, this works great in a raised bed garden
In the picture of the tomatoes there's a plant at the forefront that I don't recognize. It's the one with the large almost mapley shaped bright green leaves with red ribs and fuzzy red stems. What is that plant?
In the picture of the tomatoes there's a plant at the forefront that I don't recognize. It's the one with the large almost mapley shaped bright green leaves with red ribs and fuzzy red stems. What is that plant?
.
That's okra.
It produced red okra. I planted from seeds and was learning how to grow them this past year. It turned out they need a lot of space! So these two in the foreground were stunned because the tomatoe vines blocked the sun for 1/2 of day.
One thing I learned is don't let the okra grow too big because they turned fibrous and tough to eat.
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