All About My Dirt

While I am trying my hand creating a sustainable garden in my little mini green garbles, as I like to call them. I have planned out my garden as to what I am GOING TO GROW. I live on .87 of an acre of land. Some of the lands are on a small hill and some are on flat land.

My goal is to use the landmass to create what I need for my family to eat “veggies only” for the spring to winter. I have been considering some chickens and maybe even a small breed of goats. These would be most beneficial, for many reasons. But for now, I’m just going to concentrate on the veggies.

Gardening adds years to your life and life to your years.

Unknown

Dirt

One of the most important things when gardening, besides location is soil. If you have bad soil you will have a bad crop!

The soil we have on the property had more of a red clay soil not great for growing veggies although the grapes seem to love it!

For a lot of gardeners running down to the local nursery or home and garden store to get a few bags of soil is a great and easy choice. With me living in a small rural town, did I mention we are surrounded by vineyards, it gives me some better options?

Last year when we built our massive planter boxes. We got soil from a soil /recycling company.

I know what your thinking. That is going to be expensive right. Not so fast.

My planter boxes can hold about 1 1/2 cu yards of soil. Doesn’t sound like a lot right? Well here is the breakdown.

A “yard” is a unit of measure. 3 feet by 3 feet by 3 feet is one cubic yard. 

Imagine constructing a wooden box that was 3x3x3. Filling that wooden box to the top would be one yard.

 There are 27 cubic feet in a cubic yard (3’ x 3’ x 3’)

So that means you need 27 1cu ft bags of soil for 1 yard…..WHAT?

Example: So 27 bags @ x 3.00 = 81.00 ahhhhhh That’s a lot

So buying bulk for me make sense.

This year I decided to get my dirt from the awesome folks over at Ellis Ranch. 

They Know dirt!

We purchased their basic (Great Soil) soil. @ $50 a yard. (a steal)

Which consisted of:

• Mushroom compost
• Steer Manure
• Pet Moss
• 5/16 Lava Rock
• Decomposed walnut hull
• Decomposed rice hull
• Grape pomace
• Certified organic chicken manure.

Did I miss anything?……

This soil is awesome! And the veggies are going to love this stuff.

I think that having a great soil base will put you at the head of the garden race helping you have a bountiful and successful garden.

Don’t get me wrong. Buying premixed garden soil is a great choice too. But for me bulk is king!

Thanks for the good folks over at Ellis Ranch for creating an awesome soil mix. 

I can hardly wait to see how the plants will grow.

Stay Tuned!