Yes! New gardeners need to understand that we cannot blindly trust company claims n products. Over time I've learned how to compost n make my own soil a lot like you do. Every garden year has taught me new experiences. Over twenty years later I still learn n experiment. Just keep on doing what works best.
I have been making my own soil for years and now because of your wonderful talks, I learn every time, and thank you for letting us know that's how we learn more and more. Thank you for all the help you have shared, and please don't stop.
I LOVE YOU FOR THIS ROBBIE!!!I am going into my 2nd year of gardening and cannot get enough of your videos/tutorials! Down to earth, easy to understand and implement, pocket book friendly! 🎉❤ Keep them coming! I appreciate you and I am super excited to grow a bigger garden this season! I want to grow most of my vegetables in containers just to avoid pests and to be able to move them if I need to and because of you my whole family started composting and we are making our own soil in containers!!!❤
Totally aside here - the view behind you is spectacular!! Thank you for reviewing our options for soil/dirt/compost. I always thought dirt was what was already there in the yard, soil was the bagged stuff, compost was, well, compost. My confusion is the difference between compost and mulch. ⁉️ I learn so much from you - recently I bought yams 🍠 from two different stores and found one sprouted and one didn’t (and never did) when I planted them. Thanks for the info!!
I absolutely LOVE your videos! I have always enjoyed gardening but I never did a lot of it before I found your channel. I was going about it the so expensive way. Buying all my soil, and plant food, and pesticides, and anything else I thought would help. While I wasn't too bad at it, i simply couldn't afford all that stuff. Your videos really helps me get back into something i love without breaking the bank.
This is all so true. Here in the UK we have had and still have great trouble with compost especially as we are going peat free by law. The way you make compost / soil is the way that my dad and grandad gardened. Great video.
Thanks for the info. I was looking at ratings on web sites recently and, as an example, on one large site the Miracle Grow raised bed potting soil had 17% one star ratings. I was shocked. Complaints included an excessive amount of large sticks, as well as pieces of plastic and glass. Others had all of their healthy plants suddenly die after application of this raised bed soil. Thought I'd pass this along. I have used it in the past without obvious problems.
I will see if I get any new bags this year, if I notice any odd stuff in it, but I have found plastic before, but I have found worse in other bags of other types, thanks
Thank you for talking about herbicides in our "garden products' and what people use on their lawns. My neighbor has a lawn service that told him that they don't use harmful chemicals..... well, he couldn't understand why nothing would grow in his raised bed garden, that had been lovely for years. He always used his grass clippings as mulch and then to turn in in the fall. Well, his lawn service uses an herbicide. I also know this, because the grass at our fence line, on our side, has no weeds in it. Shame on them. But, it is important to know what is being used before taking grass clippings and using them. Thank you for sharing. Enjoy the day. Catherine
Thank you Robbie, I really appreciate all your tutorials. I'm a pathetic gardener and need all the help I can get! And I love your simple, easy approach!
Thanks Robbie!! I have soil in the oven right now! lol I am so excited to start germinating seeds for the garden. The weather has quickly turned warm and I am so ready!! Thanks for these wonderful videos. I learn something new every time.
Wonderful! I was planting in containers late last night again, and I made a cool indoor tiny greenhouse that the seeds are germinating in just days. Will share this soon, 😊
Those are the Biggest humming birds I've ever seen. Here they are very small. I bought some organic potting soil to grow indoor plants and ended up with fungus gnats that destroyed all my plants. 😢 I'm thinking of putting the rest (I bought several bags but only used 1) in the oven before using. I'm going to put one of the bags in a tote and put it Outside to use to make compost. Hopefully this will work. Thank you for the info you provide.
Good info, Robbie. I don't think Kellogg's tests their product because in 2021 I had evidence of persistent herbicide in the plants I grew in it. They may be testing now, but it doesn't seem like they were testing back then. I set the soil in some old baskets but have yet to see any weeds, or anything else, pop up there. Perhaps this year. ~ Lisa
This was my experience as well. In fall of 2021, I bought their organic garden soil to fill a raised bed and some fall vegetable transplants. Nothing died, but they never grew. The following summer, the same thing happened. I did transplants again and they stayed tiny all summer. Last summer, I had decent results with tomatoes, but peppers and squash were also stunted and never produced. Hoping for better results this summer. I have had weeds sprouting in it lately, so hopefully that’s a good sign.
You have been such an inspiration, Robbie! I have learned so much from you and saved lots of money when planting my totes. I ordered the clothes rack you showed yesterday as well as the dish pans for potatoes. I can’t wait for spring!!
It's me! I'm the one who calls it dirt. I use the term interchangeably with soil and compost. It all gets me dirty when I plant so I call it dirt 😂 I bought a bag of seed starter last fall and it was a lot of sticks... for seed starter! I am using it and it's working but I was surprised when I opened it. I left it on the ground and now it has worms in it. I've gotten a bag of regular in ground raised bed dirt and it was chunky sticks. Hubby said he paid a good bit for it. I was upset I couldn't use most of it right then. I now buy miracle grow since you recommended it. I haven't had a problem with it. A few small sticks every once in a while but nothing that bothers me. Hopefully, I'll only have to buy it this year for the last time.
I was so frustrated last year with large sticks in the bagged soil. Many different brands. It seems the soil is sometimes 30% sticks from small to large.
@@ritaholcombe9905 yeah, I have a pile of chunks from my bags. I'm thinking I will use them on top of a layer of leaves in several of my containers. Mulch now turns to dirt later 😂
I have some compost and some soil I bought from Home Depot I can mix with some and thank you Robbie this is so great, yes I’ve seen those soil at dollar and 99 cents stores but I never tried them after you showed it to us ❤👍🙏🏻😊👩🌾 I’ve watch all your videos ♥️🙏🏻👍👩🌾 hello Gary and little Zoe, take care 😊👩🌾♥️
I Love the podcast style. I have lots to do. I can keep working while listening. Planting lots of seeds in Texas. I have had terrible luck with dollar store soils.
I'm seriously thinking about taking the bags of soil/ compost that I buy this year and planting seeds right into the bag of soil to see if it's good before dumping into my raised beds or garden area. I watched as one you tuber split the bah of soil down the center of the bag lengthwise and planted lettuce and covered it with a clear tote and grew lettuce in the bag.
Hey Robbie! I noticed that our local Dollar General has switched brands of soil they carry. Now it's made by the American Seed Co., same brand of all those seeds they sell. It's pretty decent stuff. At least, I've had no problems with it. It's heavily based on peat moss.
Sheesh Robbie! Been looking high and low for your ORIGINAL video on how you initially set up a container... from square one... I've got the filling part down but the holes?? Can you send me a link??
If you lived in the south you wouldn't be putting kitchen scraps in your raised beds or pots because you would have a huge fire ant bed in a couple days, they are horrible here!. I compost my kitchen scraps in a large trash can, with grass clippings, leaves and garden waste and use it in the raised beds. Composting fall leaves is also a great way to create good compost. I like to buy a good bag of potting soil and mix it with the cheap stuff from the DS, add some of my own compost and some organic fertilizer and it grows plants beautifully. Using AgroThrive adds the good microbes and fungi that makes a living soil that makes strong plants. The health of the soil is the health of the plants.
The year when many people were experiencing bad soil, I had purchased many bags for my greenstalk planter. The organic soil I used was supposedly from a local family farm. This soil was pricey as well because of it being "Organic." I used it in my greenstalk planter and nothing grew. It was a lot of soil that I had used. To test the soil I put in planter areas that ran along my driveway to see if it would control weeds. Sure enough no weeds, except clumps of grass grew in the soil. When I did some research, I found that Scotts purchased this company a few years ago. I had older bags of this brand that were still good, but lost alot of money with that experience. I thoroughly washed my greenstalk and will pull it out this year. I think I will only plant a few layers to test the bagged compost this year.
I got really bad soil last year, I was so excited, I finally had some extra money and called a company to bring me good organic soil. To my surprise nothing grew that I planted and several plants I had the year previous died. I was heart broken. I also used some of it in my raised beds and not a seed sprouted. It was a horrible year for me especially watching a you tuber from my state grow the most gorgeous garden ever. You just can't trust anyone it seems. Thank you so much for all of the info. I won't be planting anything new in that soil this year. The worst part was I have a huge Maple tree that I believe this soil also contaminated all of its limbs seem to have turned brittle and are breaking Everytime we have any wind. I can't afford right now to have the tree topped or taken out.. just be careful when getting soil even if it's said to be organic. It was a mix of soil and compost maybe the compost contained something harmful. I just don't know but it was devastating.
One year I bought a number of bags of Kellogg container mix for my very large containers. Nothing grew in it. When I emptied the pots I found the top dry but the bottoms were saturated with water and it smelled horrible. No wonder my plants were not growing. I had to then go out and buy other products to mix with the bad soil and the rest went into my inground garden. I started making my own soil until it became impossible to purchase vermiculite. When I did find it it was very expensive. I found a different mixed soil that worked really well. Unfortunately the store stopped selling it. Lucky for me I was in the store when they put it on sale. It went from $32 for 2 cubic feet to $2.40. YEP you heard me. $2.40 each. There were 8 bags left and I purchased every one of them. That will keep me growing for quite a while😊😊😊😊. I also compost and use some of that now.
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Robbie, I've learned so much from you! Question, every time I make compost from kitchen scraps I get a ton of rollie pollies and then they eat my plants so I stopped making compost. Help? Thank you!
Use that more in the middle of your containers, I have bought that before too. Add in some leaves, food scraps whatever and mix in, and if you can buy a bag of potting soil and use that on the top like a couple inches, all should be fine. You can also add in some kitty litter, like the ones I use clay only and mix that in with your garden soil too, that helps to retain water if you’re in a dry area.
Hey Robbie, and Gary, Hope you to are doing fine. It getting gardening season again , great.I love you Idea's ! Look at your hummingbirds, they are my favorite.Sending my love and God's blessings to you both. Wanda in N.-E.Corner of Oklahoma, Bartlesville
The only thing that I have heard on the method that you use, is that the energy is going into breaking down the compost. I will certainly try your method in a few pots this year to see the results, though, we all need to save on soil for our pots.
If you look around nature, and leaves are falling and decaying on the ground, you will see seedlings growing up among them, the energy of the leaves, and matter breaking down is giving food to the plants. I hope it all works out for you, try it. 😊 Thanks so much.
I wish I had the money back for all the potting soil I have thrown away over the years. If I had known how to make soil, it would have made a big difference to my garden and to the plants that I tend there.
Robbie, I could not watch the video to the end. --The humming-birds flying past the camera lense is very annoying. I hope it gets better in the future. Ray Delbury Sussex County NJ USa
Sorry, you can just listen to this😊 So many want to see the hummingbirds daily, so this is a way the people here can see how they are here, and migrating. Thanks
