As most of us outdoor guys know good dirt isnt dirt cheap. We also know that just a few plants can require quite a bit of dirt to be brought in. A standard 3X3X3 hole is 27 cubic feet. If you have 10 plants thats nearly 300 cubic feet of dirt. So my question for all you guys is how do you make your dirt without going broke?
What do you guys reccomend for a soil mix?
Personaly, i try to keep it as free and organic as possible...... im kind of a grass roots man my self, but i gota tell you it takes ALOT of work.
you have to have a suitable organic compost to do this properly.
it starts in the fall before the grow season, you have to go down and see the local cattle farmers and get fresh manure, hopefully free (in small ammounts) but you might have to pay for the manure, dont worry its cheap. if you can get it you should get cow,goat and rabbit manure to get an even mix of nutrients although any one of the 3 will do. the thing about manure is it has to sit for the winter before you can use it.
next step is this: you go out to a local swamp and you dig all the peatmoss from the edges of the swamp (it has to be a LARGE Old swamp) i usualy get a couple pickup loads (1000~ CF). and go down to a publicly owned beach/quarry/gravel pit and get a pickup load of coarse sand, the sand should resemble perlite or vermiculite.
mix up the peatmoss and manure in your organic compost and let it sit over the winter. when spring comes you have to "turn" the compost, fliping the contents so the bottom comes into contact with the oxygen.
when grow season comes mix the organic soil with the sand you got and you have a nice, evenly draining, nutrient rich compost soil. just add weed + water
hope i helped.
P.S: it helps to know people from the agricultural sector (farmers..), i have a few farmer friends and they have been priceless when it comes to fertalizer products such as ammonia nitrate, animal manures and fertalizers, ect...