Last weekend I finally had some time to mix things up. Now, I am a believer in keeping things simple — such as my media. I know that for whatever reason, media can be a hotly debated subject in some carni-circles. All I can say is — do whatever works for you. Seriously.
I have grown plants successfully in nothing but pure peat moss. And it’s good and great! My FAVORITE brand is Sunshine peat moss. Great stuff. I’ve used other brands of peat in the past and it was all effed up. Weeds, twigs, dead bugs, dried leaves, and other schtuff was just hanging out in the moss. Oh… and one time, there was one brand where mold was a problem! Seriously! I bought a bag and there was all this fuzzy stuff growing in the bag! Nasty. So right now, I favor Sunshine. But again, use whatever work works for you. Don’t be afraid to try things out. Just be sure it’s not that MiracleGrow brand or any other brand that has fertilizer in it. Well… you can try it out and tell me how your plants fare.
Like I said, I’ve grown plants successfully in pure peat. However, I needed to make the peat stretch, so added a few things.
This year, I am using sand in my mix.
Now, I don’t know if the below brand of sand is really any good, but my test plants have had no horrific results. I picked this up from (ugh, sad to say… the Depot…) I typically like to go to the quarry and use Oly Sand, (Oly for Olympia, Washington State, I guess…) and that has worked fine for me last year. We’ll see how the plants fare this year with this new stuff. If they all crash and burn and die… then… I’ll blog about it, cry for a while, and then warn you NEVER to use this brand!
Perlite. It adds a nice airyness to the mix. The general CP go-to-catchall mix is 1 part peat to 1 part perlite. Now, I do have to warn you NOT to breath any of this dust in. Don’t eat it either. I know some folk may be tempted. If you use this stuff, please wear a mask. Or moisten the contents of bag. Do not get it in your lungs, because it can cause weird things to happen to you. Seriously. I do wear a dust mask, and also — if you moisten the contents of the bag, it really minimizes the dust from flying all over the place.
So… on to the mix.
I dump the sand in my handy dandy wheelbarrow. I then wash the sand several times over removing some sediment and residue so that it’s cleaner.
Washing sand!
Next thing, below, I dump the moist perlite. This mix is roughly 1:1:2, sand, perlite, peat. A few more additives in there to stretch my media…
Then, I toss in the peat. Yes, I know it’s chunky and a block of hardened stuff in the photo below. The fun part is getting in there and mixing it all up. I get in there with my garden gloves and mash it all up. The sand will actually help break it down so much faster.
… and a few minutes later, a mix ready to fill those pots. I actually went through this wheelbarrow of media very quickly… ah, so much to do. So little time.
Another good friend of mine (Hi Mama Lo!) uses a concrete mixer to mix her media in. I should really invest in one…
