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shopping Buying Soil from specific stores

Helldozer

Helldozer

Howdy all, I have a few questions about soil.

I'm going to be moving my plants into 5 gal containers in a few weeks, or couple of months. The stores I have access to are Navlet's, Lowe's, Home Depot, and Orchard Supply.

Does anyone have any experience or recommendations of which soil to buy and from where?

Thanks!
 
I really would recomend a Nursery they will have it sometimes cheaper, if not it should not be that much more, but when you buy from a nursery your helping the little/neighbors work them selfs up, besides you might find some nice plants in there, My local nursery sells any type and any brand soil for 5$ flat, the home depot and lowes had it for 7 dollars, besides feels good helping the small business
 
Around here big box stores are much cheaper.

Consider mixing something up your self. I am using a soil conditioner (mainly pine fines, sand, and some compost), pine nuggets, manure compost, and a little potting soil for my plants. Inexpensive, light and good water movement. Everything I mentioned above is purchased at the Home Depot. The soil conditioner is 2.97, the pine nuggets are 2.47, the manure compost is 1.47, and the potting soil is Miracle Gro. the ratios I use are 40% soil conditioner, 30% pine nuggets, and 15% each of the manure and potting soil.

Something to start with,,,,,,,,,then craft it to work for your needs.
 
Look at the bags in the stores. Every place I've lived, I've had different experiences. It has to do with how the staff in a particular store stores the soil. If it's sitting outside and the bags look all busted up, go someplace else unless you want to grow moss or fungus. If they keep it under cover or inside, that's better, and still look for undamaged bags. No brand is immune from contamination by weed seeds and fungus spores if the bags have holes and they're stored out in the rain.
 
Personally I wouldn't buy any soil. Unless you plan on amending the heck out of it soil is too heavy and by itself is not a gooding medium to grow peppers in. Peppers prefer something lighter that allows plenty of of oxygen and doesn't hold water. I use Pro Mix HP and it contains Canadian sphagnum peat moss, perlite, vermiculite, macro nutrients and micro-nutrients, limestone and wetting agents. You can mix your own too. I did a couple of years back but I've gotten lazy lately and just buy the good stuff.
 
I agree with Patrick, it is good to add perlite and peatmoss to miracle gro potting mix. I do this because I like the fertilizer in the miracle grow soil then cutting it allows more controll over the fertilizer.


I have another grow medium I am using im my larger containers.

I only show this in discussion of soil and medium. It is 1/2"-1" pine bark.

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patrick said:
Personally I wouldn't buy any soil. Unless you plan on amending the heck out of it soil is too heavy and by itself is not a gooding medium to grow peppers in. Peppers prefer something lighter that allows plenty of of oxygen and doesn't hold water. I use Pro Mix HP and it contains Canadian sphagnum peat moss, perlite, vermiculite, macro nutrients and micro-nutrients, limestone and wetting agents. You can mix your own too. I did a couple of years back but I've gotten lazy lately and just buy the good stuff.
Click to expand...

+1
You may not be able to find pro-mix but maybe you could find a comparable peat or coir based product or mix your own.
 
POTAWIE said:
+1
You may not be able to find pro-mix but maybe you could find a comparable peat or coir based product or mix your own.
Click to expand...

Thanks all for your feedback. So, I'm trying to not complicated this for myself...which I'm really good at. I've read the sticky thread about soil, but it's a little overwhelming. If you had to make a mix from any of the stores above, or not stores, what would the ratio's be? I'm also trying not to run around everywhere to do this, that is why i'm trying stick to the stores noted. I think we may have one or two nursery's around. But, they are about 20 minutes away.

Thanks!
 
When you get a hang of growing you can try my bark mix, planst grow 2X as fast in as Pro-Mix could ever grow a plant even HP. It is harder to grow in but well worth it. You need a hydroponic fertilizer if you do use it.

The results from The bark mix makes peat based mix look like it should not even be used as a medium anymore!!!! :rofl:
 
When you increase the size of the particals, you get more air porosity in the medium..
Anytime your partical size goes above 1/4" it is good to use no Urea, not only that now it is like hydoponics you now need to give the 100% of everything it needs. This mix is good to use with self water up to 3 times a day.

Here is a week old cactus pad in it.

081.jpg
 
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