Beginner Gardening: Curious about cedar , 2 by tapla

tapla wrote:
Sometimes the ingredients are easy to find, sometimes difficult. It depends on what part of the country you live in. I also use the soil pictured below for many types of plantings. I think it's important to realize that it's not "my soils" that will make things easier on you and provide a more hospitable home for your plants' roots, it's understanding and being able to implement and manipulate the concept in favor of your plants that's the key. The recipes are simply the best or most practical way I've found of implementing the concept. I think that if there was a pivotal issue, it would be finding a bark that is suitable for either mix.

A 50 lb bag of Turface MVP + a 50 lb bag of grit + a 2 cu ft bag of bark costs me about $22, but you might expect to pay up to $30. You get about 3.5-4 cu ft of soil, or a little over 30 gallons after screening and mixing. The 5:1:1 mix, which is seen in the picture, is much less expensive, and ends up usually costing about half as much as commercially prepared soils based on peat - like MG or MGMC, Promix, and others. You do have to consider the effort it takes to get the materials and screen them where required. I don't usually need to screen anything for the 5:1:1 mix (in the picture), but the Turface for the gritty mix should always be screened, and the bark usually has to be screened, unless you're lucky enough to find prescreened fir bark, which is what I use.

Some pictures that might help, the first is the 5:1:1 mix.

Al