yeah, it's a whole lot cheaper as long as it is in smaller quantities.. I made about 7-8 cu ft of soil for the 60 1 gallon plants I just potted up 2 weeks ago. and it really only cost me.. $6 for the pine bark chips (I bought another 4 cu ft of pine chips to put on the top of the soil too as mulch to hold in the top water and prevent me from creating any holes in the soil while watering.. works great) $25 for 4 cu ft of Perlite, andd.. like $4 for the peat moss that I had, I didn't use much, and I could have used a little more, but the other stuff was garden soil that I sifted and compost from a leaf pile that I hadn't even thought about using until now, it's a leaf pile that has been sitting and building for the last 20 years or so lol.. but the whole mix I had is in the link below (the last post I have on that thread) but like I said it's a little thick so I am being careful mixing it now, but my first post says what I used when they were in party cups, I think then I would make sure it drains really well.. and in the 1 gallon pots it is a little heavier, and once they go into 5 gallon buckets for the summer, since I can just use the hose and it will rain, and I don't want them to be flooded out, I will use less garden soil and a little less compost maybe.. we will see.. but you get the point.
Torno, check this thread out too, it's not very established yet with a lot of different mixes, but would be nice to keep going to make a database, just need more people's input lol
http://www.thehotpep...__fromsearch__1
but I had that problem where it would just sit on the top for a really long time and I ended up needing to mix it all up (this is when I had 60 party cups of plants, and it was a HUGE pain) by poking a bunch of little holes in the soil and kind of mixing the top without try to damage the plants.. but once I did get it to soak in, the soil was just holding way way too much water.. so the next week I repotted all 60 plants (and the 14 plants that I had in 1 gallon pots at the time) with a mix with a TON more perlite.
my first mix had a lot of vermiculite but it was "fine" and not "coarse" so it just didn't let the water pass, and it was dry too, so it just kept the water on top, but once it did soak up.. it was so dense that it just didn't let go of any water.. I had a lot of problems with that,
but post what is the mix and ratio you tried out, and is your vermiculite fine or course? Unless what you posted above is what you are actually mixing together in those amounts.. but that would be a little strange I think.. and super heavy (fine will be like fine sand, course is just like perlite for the most part)
