Top soil

Well I have a dozen bags of rich top soil, it's says its all organic, and I was wondering what to add to it so I don't burn my plant thru the outdoor season... I have dug large holes and I plan to use the top soil since it was dirt cheap lol 1 a large bag, and use the topsoil and other added stuff to fill those in with. I plan to mix it all in large trash cans and the divide that in my 5 gallon buckets and the fill my holes....

What to add to amend the soil if anything?

Any ideas or pointers anything is welcome

i would do 1/3 each of :

topsoil
peat moss or coco
compost, manure, or worm castings

you could also go 50/50 topsoil/peatmoss. as far as nutrients, what are you looking to use, synthetic or organic??

Yeah you don't want to use straight topsoil. Way to heavy. End up turning into mud every time you go to water it. I personally wouldn't use anything labeled topsoil, but if I had to I'd probably mix with 50% peat.

don't forget some dolomite......

get a big bag of worm castings, throw some guano, bone meal, blood meal, compost, and lime and mix it in with some of the native soil. water it and let it sit for a few weeks and you should have a strong biologically active base ready to grow some monsters in.

Awesome and thank you.

So I'm going to mix in large trashcans.

Top soil,
Moss. Peat or spag?

Compost. The compost was made on a small farm from vegetable scraps, hay,
leaves, manure, and anything else it took to get the right mixture. It
does not burn seedlings as the compost is fully matured. Will that work?

Some perlite,
Anything else maybe??

Next question? Why do you water the mix down? Some chem reaction take place?

Maine outdoor grower I have bears near by. I heard the love the bone meal stuff...

Thank you all.

I will do a large mixture of things!

Sparks207 said:

Awesome and thank you.

So I'm going to mix in large trashcans.

Top soil,
Moss. Peat or spag?

Compost. The compost was made on a small farm from vegetable scraps, hay,
leaves, manure, and anything else it took to get the right mixture. It
does not burn seedlings as the compost is fully matured. Will that work?

Some perlite,
Anything else maybe??

Next question? Why do you water the mix down? Some chem reaction take place?

Maine outdoor grower I have bears near by. I heard the love the bone meal stuff...

Click to expand...

any peat moss is fine and any fully decomposed compost is what you will want. also, i forgot to mention dolomite lime but someone else did. use 1 cup of dolomite lime per cubic foot of soil. as for the bone meal, it will attract animals. im an organic man but believe if being organic puts your plants at risk, go chem but thats me and i dont want to argue with any of you tree huggers that see this so dont start.

The reason you water the soil is to allow the biological and enzymatic reactions to take place, essentially cooking the soil until it's ready. The soil would be very likely to burn your plants if you did not start the natural softening and activation with watering. Perlite is always good to add to your mix so long as you won't have any trouble keeping the plants well watered since perlite will dry your soil faster. I do not have any experience with bears in my area but I would have to guess that bone and blood meal might attract them so you would want to deter them with some human hair or even your own urine around your grow spots.