Grow mediums - What kind and when?

huntsman · August 21, 2009

I presume you start your seeds in a light, fluffy grow mix, but do you use the same mix with successive pot ups or do you use a potting soil at some point?

What about when you move the plant to it's final container outside? Do you plant into dirt, potting soil or the original grow mix?

Thank you!

stormymater · August 21, 2009

I gre in raised beds & "12 gallon" growbags & large ("20 gallon") plastic pots & 5 gallon (just about the same size as the growbags) plastic buckets this year.
Things I have learned -
Dwarves like Lime Green Salad do fine in the 5 gallon buckets.
Big plants FILL the grow bags with roots (I can't get my finger into the "soil" in those bags now b/c of the roots) & require daily watering. PIA
Raised beds (20 inches high & varying dimensions from 4' x 8' to 4' by 12') seem the best.
Make sure your soil is the proper pH! 6.5 is what I'll be shooting for next year. We actually have native soil whose pH is 7.3 - 7.4 - therefore never needs liming! In fact needs some acidification - unlike anywhere else I have ever lived & gardened. Get your soil right & your tomatoes will reward you for it.

I used a soilless sterile starter initially & for first separation (followed the dense seeding tutorial) then into my own soil in older raised beds or the new "topsoil blend" (pffft) that turned out to have an incredibly high pH that I had to bring down - problematic.

Barbee · August 21, 2009

I use sterile seed starting mix to start seeds. Leftovers get mixed into regular potting mix (which is cheaper) for potting up into the containers I'll use to hold them until time to go in the ground.

dice · August 22, 2009

You can pot up into potting soil, but not all potting soils are
created equal. The seedlings will naturally do better in some
than others.

ROB TWO-HAWKS home-made potting mixes:

http://www.tomatoville.com/showthrea...mold#post90943

huntsman · August 22, 2009

I'll check that link out, dice - much appreciated.

I really have to find a cheaper method than the one I have, as it's costing U$26 per bag...

I'm not sure if we have a sterile starting mix here, Barbee; the bag I have was imported from Holland, but I'll certainly check it out... Thanks!

Stormy, I was considering growing in the black plastic grow bags, but read that they can become too hot for the roots in my climate. You reckon that's true?

habitat_gardener · August 25, 2009

Last year, I used homemade compost as a seed-starting medium using wintersowing (started the seeds outdoors under covers). Problem was that for slow-to-germinate seeds, I couldn't tell what was the desired seed and what was the volunteer, and I lost a few to damping off. I did get at least one very vigorous plant, though.

This year I used a mix I found in a local harware/home improvement store that is not called seed-starting mix, but on the bag one of the recommended uses is seed starting. It uses coir (instead of peat moss, but has a similar texture) and includes mycorrhizae. For iirc one cubic foot, it cost about USD $8. I used Craig's dense planting method, also outdoors under cover, and though most seeds germinated within a week or so, for some seeds it took as long as 50 days! (I also used this mix last week for onions and kohlrabi, but for vigorous and large-seeded plants such as peas and kale, I still use homemade compost.) I lightly sprinkled my seed flats with cinnamon once or twice as an antifungal.

Once I divided and potted up the seeds, it was easy to tell what was the desired plant and what was a volunteer, so I used homemade compost to pot them up. I ended up with over150 seedlings, since I was also testing germination of my saved seeds, and I gave away dozens. The main problem with starting seed outdoors was snail and slug depredation of newly germinated plants -- the covers protected them from predators such as birds.

Almost all the tomatoes got planted into garden soil, which gets regular additions of homemade compost -- before planting, a few weeks after planting, and (if I have time) a couple months after that. Four of the tomato plants went into bottomless 5-gallon pots filled with homemade compost and a handful of alfalfa pellets. The pots were placed around the edges of the garden, on top of unamended soil where it was not possible to dig regular holes for tomato plants. All the tomatoes also got a half inch to an inch of mulch. Some of the early tomatoes also got a small handful of a humic acid product (something like John and Bob's Soil Optimizer).

For peppers, which were slower to germinate and even slower to get taller than a couple inches (and tastiest of all to the slugs), iirc I potted up into a mixture of the coir mix and homemade compost, and then into 1-gallon pots. For some of the pots, I used compost or compost and coir, and for others I bought a large block of coir, which turned out to have large chunks instead of the fluffy material I was hoping for, and mixed that with homemade compost. All the peppers seem to be doing about the same, and the ones that were potted up earliest are finally setting fruit.

dice · August 26, 2009

A note on using leaf mold: here in the US, people gather leaves
in the fall, and in the midwest and northeast, they freeze in
the winter, which helps them break down faster once
temperatures warm up. By mid-spring, they are in pretty good
shape for amending a soil or mixing with coarse sand and
whatever else to make potting mix.

In the northwest, far west, southeast, and south,
winter temperatures do not get that cold for more than
a few days a winter, and leaves generally need to compost
in those locales before they are broken down enough to be
ready for potting mix. They need to be piled up over the winter
in piles 3 feet or higher with some high nitrogen material
(manure, grass clippings, green shredded weeds without seeds,
alfalfa, etc) to help them build up enough heat to compost by
spring. A lot of people do not even bother trying to use last
fall's leaves in such climates, they use leaves from the fall
before, that have been sitting around in piles composting
for a year and a half.

With your short, mild winter, I would think the latter method
is going to be what you need to make good use of leaves
from deciduous trees. (Note: you want to avoid walnut and
ash leaves, as they carry chemicals that are toxic to a lot
of kinds of vegetable.) Leaves gathered the previous fall
are just not going to be broken down very much by spring
in your climate if piled up by themselves (they are a
"high-carbon" material in composting terms).

Then there is Deer Park's method: he has raised beds filled
with mostly decaying leaves (plus grass clippings when he
has those), that are full of earthworms. Every fall he goes
around and gathers up bags full from the neighbors, etc,
and piles them on the beds. With his short winter in SE Texas,
they are nowhere near broken down enough by spring to be
very useful as a nutrition source, or even as potting mix,
but there is a 12-inch layer underneath last fall's leaves that
are leaves from years before that have been pretty completely
chewed up by bacteria, fungi, and earthworms. So really he is
growing in a foot of earthworm castings with a layer of 3-4
month old dead leaves on top each year for mulch. I do not
know what he pots up seedlings into, but he could probably
mix some of that stuff from about 6 inches down in one of
those raised beds with coarse sand and have a pretty good
approximation of potting mix with earthworm castings.

huntsman · August 27, 2009

I was looking at the leaves that we have after the Autumn winds, and wondering if they would be of any use this season, but I left them where they had fallen, so I guess they'll takes two or three seasons to be of any use...

Nice, informative posts, hg & dice - thank you. Oh, what is iirc?

habitat_gardener · August 27, 2009

iirc = if I recall correctly (I'll have to go back and check the size of the bag)

stormymater · August 27, 2009

hmmm - not sure what to say about black growbags - mine are white. I can tell you my peppers have LOVED growing in 2 to 5 gallon black plastic pots but they may love "hot feet" better than maters - they sure don't need the same volume of water (though they get a daily drink too).

huntsman · August 28, 2009

Quote:

Originally Posted by habitat_gardener

iirc = if I recall correctly (I'll have to go back and check the size of the bag)

Thanks - I can never figure these acronyms out...:-)

Quote:

Originally Posted by stormymater

hmmm - not sure what to say about black growbags - mine are white. I can tell you my peppers have LOVED growing in 2 to 5 gallon black plastic pots but they may love "hot feet" better than maters - they sure don't need the same volume of water (though they get a daily drink too).

Yeah, I'll keep my maters away from black, just in case...

dice · August 28, 2009

I think the best use of those leaves is to pile them up
somewhere, however deep a pile that makes, and once your
plants get a foot tall or so, spead the leaves over top of the
bed and around the plants for mulch. This reduces evaporation,
regulates soil temperatures, keeps the worms happy when they
are up near the surface of the soil, etc. The wind will blow them
around, etc, no big deal. What ends up in the paths between
beds can either be raked back up into the bed to cover bare
spots or left there to suppress weeds in the paths.

Leave them there over the next winter, and pile new ones on
top next year at about the same time of year. If they tend to
be kind of large, and you have a shredder or hefty lawn mower,
you can shred them first to make them a little more
manageable and speed their breakdown into humus.

huntsman · August 30, 2009

Yeah, this whole 'organic farming' thang is clearly not about obtaining a quick fix in the garden....I guess I'll have to rectify years of misuse from the tenant I had in here for the past four years.

Still, cool to be doing something positive...! *nods wisely*

dice · August 30, 2009

Quote:

I guess I'll have to rectify years of misuse from the tenant I had in here for the past four years.

With a thick mulch (like a foot thick) over a winter, that
can happen a lot faster than one might expect:
http://www.puyallup.wsu.edu/~Linda%2...dments%202.pdf

The annual piling of leaves on top of the bed achieves this
incrementally while increasing the soil's inherent nutrition
and supply of organic matter at the same time.

huntsman · August 31, 2009

Very interesting link, with amazing results from simple addition of the wood chips!

I have a labourer clearing an area that is 18 x 30' at a guess, and I was planning to put all of the removed branches etc through a commercial shredder, but I will now have him chop up the trunks also and use as a mulch...

I figured I'd get him to dig about 3' down, and till the entire area, so that when I lay the beds, I have a lot more leeway for error. Sound about right?

August 21, 2009	#1
huntsman Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Jul 2009 Location: Johannesburg, South Africa - GrowZone 9 Posts: 595	Grow mediums - What kind and when? I presume you start your seeds in a light, fluffy grow mix, but do you use the same mix with successive pot ups or do you use a potting soil at some point? What about when you move the plant to it's final container outside? Do you plant into dirt, potting soil or the original grow mix? Thank you!

August 21, 2009	#3
Barbee Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Mar 2008 Location: SW Ohio Posts: 1,818	I use sterile seed starting mix to start seeds. Leftovers get mixed into regular potting mix (which is cheaper) for potting up into the containers I'll use to hold them until time to go in the ground. __________________ *Barbee*

August 22, 2009	#4
dice Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Jan 2007 Location: PNW Posts: 4,743	You can pot up into potting soil, but not all potting soils are created equal. The seedlings will naturally do better in some than others. ROB TWO-HAWKS home-made potting mixes: http://www.tomatoville.com/showthrea...mold#post90943 __________________ -- alias

August 26, 2009	#7
dice Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Jan 2007 Location: PNW Posts: 4,743	A note on using leaf mold: here in the US, people gather leaves in the fall, and in the midwest and northeast, they freeze in the winter, which helps them break down faster once temperatures warm up. By mid-spring, they are in pretty good shape for amending a soil or mixing with coarse sand and whatever else to make potting mix. In the northwest, far west, southeast, and south, winter temperatures do not get that cold for more than a few days a winter, and leaves generally need to compost in those locales before they are broken down enough to be ready for potting mix. They need to be piled up over the winter in piles 3 feet or higher with some high nitrogen material (manure, grass clippings, green shredded weeds without seeds, alfalfa, etc) to help them build up enough heat to compost by spring. A lot of people do not even bother trying to use last fall's leaves in such climates, they use leaves from the fall before, that have been sitting around in piles composting for a year and a half. With your short, mild winter, I would think the latter method is going to be what you need to make good use of leaves from deciduous trees. (Note: you want to avoid walnut and ash leaves, as they carry chemicals that are toxic to a lot of kinds of vegetable.) Leaves gathered the previous fall are just not going to be broken down very much by spring in your climate if piled up by themselves (they are a "high-carbon" material in composting terms). Then there is Deer Park's method: he has raised beds filled with mostly decaying leaves (plus grass clippings when he has those), that are full of earthworms. Every fall he goes around and gathers up bags full from the neighbors, etc, and piles them on the beds. With his short winter in SE Texas, they are nowhere near broken down enough by spring to be very useful as a nutrition source, or even as potting mix, but there is a 12-inch layer underneath last fall's leaves that are leaves from years before that have been pretty completely chewed up by bacteria, fungi, and earthworms. So really he is growing in a foot of earthworm castings with a layer of 3-4 month old dead leaves on top each year for mulch. I do not know what he pots up seedlings into, but he could probably mix some of that stuff from about 6 inches down in one of those raised beds with coarse sand and have a pretty good approximation of potting mix with earthworm castings. __________________ -- alias

August 28, 2009	#12
dice Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Jan 2007 Location: PNW Posts: 4,743	I think the best use of those leaves is to pile them up somewhere, however deep a pile that makes, and once your plants get a foot tall or so, spead the leaves over top of the bed and around the plants for mulch. This reduces evaporation, regulates soil temperatures, keeps the worms happy when they are up near the surface of the soil, etc. The wind will blow them around, etc, no big deal. What ends up in the paths between beds can either be raked back up into the bed to cover bare spots or left there to suppress weeds in the paths. Leave them there over the next winter, and pile new ones on top next year at about the same time of year. If they tend to be kind of large, and you have a shredder or hefty lawn mower, you can shred them first to make them a little more manageable and speed their breakdown into humus. __________________ -- alias

August 21, 2009	#2
stormymater Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Dec 2008 Location: Pleasure Island, NC 8a Posts: 1,162	I gre in raised beds & "12 gallon" growbags & large ("20 gallon") plastic pots & 5 gallon (just about the same size as the growbags) plastic buckets this year. Things I have learned - Dwarves like Lime Green Salad do fine in the 5 gallon buckets. Big plants FILL the grow bags with roots (I can't get my finger into the "soil" in those bags now b/c of the roots) & require daily watering. PIA Raised beds (20 inches high & varying dimensions from 4' x 8' to 4' by 12') seem the best. Make sure your soil is the proper pH! 6.5 is what I'll be shooting for next year. We actually have native soil whose pH is 7.3 - 7.4 - therefore never needs liming! In fact needs some acidification - unlike anywhere else I have ever lived & gardened. Get your soil right & your tomatoes will reward you for it. I used a soilless sterile starter initially & for first separation (followed the dense seeding tutorial) then into my own soil in older raised beds or the new "topsoil blend" (pffft) that turned out to have an incredibly high pH that I had to bring down - problematic.

August 25, 2009	#6
habitat_gardener Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Apr 2008 Location: California Central Valley Posts: 2,540	Last year, I used homemade compost as a seed-starting medium using wintersowing (started the seeds outdoors under covers). Problem was that for slow-to-germinate seeds, I couldn't tell what was the desired seed and what was the volunteer, and I lost a few to damping off. I did get at least one very vigorous plant, though. This year I used a mix I found in a local harware/home improvement store that is not called seed-starting mix, but on the bag one of the recommended uses is seed starting. It uses coir (instead of peat moss, but has a similar texture) and includes mycorrhizae. For iirc one cubic foot, it cost about USD $8. I used Craig's dense planting method, also outdoors under cover, and though most seeds germinated within a week or so, for some seeds it took as long as 50 days! (I also used this mix last week for onions and kohlrabi, but for vigorous and large-seeded plants such as peas and kale, I still use homemade compost.) I lightly sprinkled my seed flats with cinnamon once or twice as an antifungal. Once I divided and potted up the seeds, it was easy to tell what was the desired plant and what was a volunteer, so I used homemade compost to pot them up. I ended up with over150 seedlings, since I was also testing germination of my saved seeds, and I gave away dozens. The main problem with starting seed outdoors was snail and slug depredation of newly germinated plants -- the covers protected them from predators such as birds. Almost all the tomatoes got planted into garden soil, which gets regular additions of homemade compost -- before planting, a few weeks after planting, and (if I have time) a couple months after that. Four of the tomato plants went into bottomless 5-gallon pots filled with homemade compost and a handful of alfalfa pellets. The pots were placed around the edges of the garden, on top of unamended soil where it was not possible to dig regular holes for tomato plants. All the tomatoes also got a half inch to an inch of mulch. Some of the early tomatoes also got a small handful of a humic acid product (something like John and Bob's Soil Optimizer). For peppers, which were slower to germinate and even slower to get taller than a couple inches (and tastiest of all to the slugs), iirc I potted up into a mixture of the coir mix and homemade compost, and then into 1-gallon pots. For some of the pots, I used compost or compost and coir, and for others I bought a large block of coir, which turned out to have large chunks instead of the fluffy material I was hoping for, and mixed that with homemade compost. All the peppers seem to be doing about the same, and the ones that were potted up earliest are finally setting fruit.

August 27, 2009	#8
huntsman Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Jul 2009 Location: Johannesburg, South Africa - GrowZone 9 Posts: 595	I was looking at the leaves that we have after the Autumn winds, and wondering if they would be of any use this season, but I left them where they had fallen, so I guess they'll takes two or three seasons to be of any use... Nice, informative posts, hg & dice - thank you. Oh, what is iirc?

August 30, 2009	#13
huntsman Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Jul 2009 Location: Johannesburg, South Africa - GrowZone 9 Posts: 595	Yeah, this whole 'organic farming' thang is clearly not about obtaining a quick fix in the garden....I guess I'll have to rectify years of misuse from the tenant I had in here for the past four years. Still, cool to be doing something positive...! nods wisely

August 31, 2009	#15
huntsman Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Jul 2009 Location: Johannesburg, South Africa - GrowZone 9 Posts: 595	Very interesting link, with amazing results from simple addition of the wood chips! I have a labourer clearing an area that is 18 x 30' at a guess, and I was planning to put all of the removed branches etc through a commercial shredder, but I will now have him chop up the trunks also and use as a mulch... I figured I'd get him to dig about 3' down, and till the entire area, so that when I lay the beds, I have a lot more leeway for error. Sound about right?