Thought I would post what I am going to use this year for my soil mix. It is similar to what I used last year for my soil and is a slight modification to Subcool's Supersoil. This year I will need to do the same layering method as I did last year in the pots but I will just do it in the raised beds. So I will have soil layer A on the top 8-10 inches followed by a mix of soil layers A + C, and followed lastly by soil layer C. The recipe here is what I used for the 12- 20-gal pots I used last year. I had a little left over with this recipe but my calculation is for the new area.
I also had planned to use what I have in the pots as a base compost/potting soil and just add the amendments and additional fresh compost and potting soil.
If I plant a plant every 9 linear feet and separate them 10 feet on center laterally then, each grow area for each plant will be approximately 80 cu ft. So what I am going to do is create a 4 x 4 ft square where the plant will be in the center and have 2 ft total depth of the A/B/C soil layers. This will come out to 32 cu ft per plant or I will need about 448 cu ft of total soil layers above the native substrate. I think I will attempt to do some drawings next week when I go back to work. Here are the goodies for the soil mix:
Soil Layer C (all quantities will be multiplied to fill a 4 x 4 square 1 ft deep for 14 plants)
15 cuft (9 cuft G&B Compost, 3.8 cuft Promix, 2 cuft G&B Potting soil)
40 lbs pure worm castings
5 lbs blood meal
5 lbs bone meal
5 lbs bloom bat guano
1 c sweet lime (dolomite)
3/4 c Epsom salt
1/2 c azomite (trace elements)
1/2 c powdered humic acid
50 lbs chicken manure
2 c kelp meal
perlite
The upper soil layer is as follows:
Soil Layer A (all quantities will be multiplied to fill a 4 x 4 square 1 ft deep for 14 plants)
16 cuft (6 cuft G&B Compost, 3.8 cuft Promix, 6 cuft G&B Potting soil)
40 lbs pure worm castings
2 c kelp meal
1/2 c powdered humic acid
1/2 c azomite (trace elements)
perlite
Soil Layer B is a mix of A + B
Damn!! Thats a lot of soil. About 32 cu ft per plant or a total of 448 cuft or 16 cuyrds.
So once I excavate the 6-8 inches of clayey soil, I will add some amendments like gypsum to breakup the clay. Im not trying to do anything with the native clay layer. About 12 inches of soil layer C goes on top of the native soil followed by 4 inches of a mix of soil layers A+C, followed by 8 inches of layer A for a total of 2 ft of soil above the native clay layer.
OK I need to work on some drawings.
