A fool and his money are soon parted. I really hate it when I end up that fool. It’s even worse when it is a story that involves my soil. This is a tale about how I ended up with garbage soil.

How to Work Hard to Get Garbage Soil.

So my tale starts like many urban gardeners, it is starts with a trip to Lowe’s. By a trip, I mean about 25 but that is because I own a small car, rather than a big truck like a proper Okie.

I started by building my soil. Being a square foot gardener, I start with Mel’s mix as my goal. I miss it because I do not add enough vermiculite but that is not the issue with my soil. Generally, I go 4 parts compost, 2 part Peat Moss and 1 part vermiculite.

I have found that this gives me soil that works well in my windy climate. I’m hunting for a bit denser mix with a bunch more organic matter since clay ends up in the soil.

I realize those with a touch of the authoritarianism in them will balk at my peat moss. We will talk about peat moss another day so go oppress someone else.

In my main picture, it looks like I am picking up a rock on Mars. Seriously, look at two.

This is supposedly, the mix I talk about above. I swear, Photoshop my hand out of the picture and you could straight up fool people.

Anyway, those rocks of many colors are various composts that just happen to look, smell, and behave like clay. I won’t say they are clay but they sure behave like it.

Issue 2

So having clumps of clay in my soil is not amusing. The next thing that appears to be happening is my soil is nitrogen deficient.

Look at the two lettuces. They are both Tango lettuce but the ones in my new bed vs the ones that I planted in my depleted bed last October. The one of the right had no amendment last year at all so it grew in soil that had heavy feeding tomatoes growing in it for two years and it looks gorgeous despite most of it bolting. Look how stunted and faded my lettuce is in my new bed. What even worse is this is 6 weeks of growth. It started life as a transplant.

Whats worse is this is after adding blood meal, fish emulsion and earth worm castings to the bed. All my plants are showing nitrogen deficiency.

Why is this happening?

My best guess is that it is because they stretched the compost out by using unfinished compost and clay to meet demand. While I always saw a bit of clay in the cheap compost, it never was this bad in the past.

What to Do with My Garbage Soil?

First, accept that there is clay in the bed. This is not that bad of a thing. Clay is very rich in minerals. The peat moss and better composts add a bunch of organic matter to the bed. Each time I work the soil the clay continues to break down. It will take a few seasons but everything will be alright on that front and my produce will be more nutritious as a result.

The solution is organic matter. I am mulching most of my beds in wood shavings. I have lots of organic matter in peat moss. Also the soil will correct on the nitrogen as the compost in it continues to compost. It will be a rough year but I think I can manage.

Most years, I am fairly bad about fertilizing my plants. My plan is to use blood meal, bone meal and kelp meal to enrich my soil. Failing that, the pragmatic part of me may go get some ammonium nitrate to solve my nitrogen problem. We will see if the organic approach can work. Hopefully, it can get on top of the issue without modern marvels of fertilizing.

The final bit is to add plants. They may not like it. They may not produce like I want them. It may be the biggest disaster in all of history of crops but plants fix soil. Their presence brings the rest of the ecosystem along for the ride. Even if everything went right, my soil is dead in comparison to the ground or my good soil. It is new land for all the fungi, bacterial and creepy crawlies to colonize.

In short do the best you can because time will heal the soil. I have added everything it needs.

Preventing This Mess.

While I may sound like I was victimized in this post, which I was. It was a calculated gamble. I knew they would likely add greener compost and fillers to meet customer demand. My business school training told me as much. I thought by buying my soil in the off season before this years stuff came in that I was outwitting the system. I started buying in October and continued through February. Wrong does not begin to describe my failing.

In short, I gambled and I lost.

If I had it to do over again, I would have cut the amount of peat humus and cow manure and other composts down or eliminated them outright. It would have hit the pocket book but it would have been easier. I might also have considered replacing its mass with potting soil and amending it with additional Peat Moss, Vermiculite and Mushroom and Cotton Burr compost. I wanted black soil and ended up with red. Those two were black out of the bag. Potting mix is not much more than peat moss, perlite and organic matter and would have worked better than what I did. Finally, I would have bought the pure cow manure. It costs more but no doubt would have been far superior and given me the structure I was looking for from cow manure.

Garbage Soil Prevention Plan

Here are composts, here and here, that I feel did not screw me. I will avoid saying which screwed me but there are more then enough hints in here about which it would be at your local Lowe’s. Also compost is a regional thing so you may have better results with the cheap stuff.

Buy a bag of everything then decide. That was my failing. A couple of bags of bad compost won’t hurt anything over a hundred bags of stuff but 25 sure as hell does.

Try to mix as many kinds as you can so long as they are good and black. Try the more expensive cow manures too. I really regret not doing it this year. Maybe it could have help prevent me from having garbage soil.

One other thing you can do to fix the garbage soil. You can do is mechanical manipulation. It’s a fancy term for break up the clay with the peat moss and vermiculite. I do this with the bigger clumps in the way of my transplants. Whatever you do, do not add sand. You will make adobe and I don’t mean the software company.