How can i make a cheap organic soil using peat moss?

okay, i have a huge brick of peat moss that i got from lowes, now i am wanting to know what can i add to the peat moss to make a good clean organic soil for my plants. i heard mixing peat moss, perlite and gypsum, but i dont know what ratios to mix that at. any advice would be ideal

5 parts peat moss , 3 parts perlite, 2 parts worm castings or compost, 1 cup powdered dolomite lime per cubic foot as a ph buffer. If you use a 3 quart container for your parts in the mix above, you will end up with exactly 1 cubic foot of mix, which is about 7 gallons of soil. this is your base mix, it contains few nutrients, so you will need to add some, It can be as simple or complex as you wish. I did a seed run with some autos using the above mix adding 4 cups Espoma Plant Tone per cubic foot of mix, which brought them well into flowering before i had to supplement by topdressing some flower tone by espoma. if you don't want to use espoma (it is organic) then you can add stuff like blood meal for nitrogen, bone meal for phosphorus, and greensand for potassium. I would recommend adding a cup per cubic foot of espoma biotone starter PLUS for beneficial fungi and microbes as well. If you go the route of using Plant Tone, you will not have to wait to use the soil, but if you add blood meal, bone meal, etc, it is best to let the mix "cook" for a month before use to allow the microbes a chance to multiply. I recommend the biotone starter plus to be used either way, for the beneficial fungi and microbes it contains.

I like my soil a little richer...about 1/3 sphagnum peat moss 1/3 perlite, pumice and/or rice hulls (aeration) and 1/3 worm castings/quality compost.

The most important part of that I think is the QUALITY compost. Most commercial compost/castings are pretty poor. Look around and spend some time/money on getting good. If you can locate a local worm farmer that could be a good place to go depending on what they feed the worms or do like me and start your own worm farm feeding them your veg,fruit,etc scraps. If you can't find something locally check out agrowinn.com as they have some pretty good castings and rock dust at a reasonable price. I've purchased their castings when I didn't have enough from my worm farm...and rock dust is very beneficial to your soil so you could get both. Another source could be a local horse ranch....composted horse manure is excellent...not as good as castings I think but very good...or rabbit poop is very good as well. Other than that you can do just the tone and start getting separate ingredients when you have a little more money.

Neem and karanja meal/cake are excellent sources of slow release nitrogen and also have some anti-pest/fungal properties so when you get some pennies think seriously about adding that to your mix.

your mix also looks good, jcmjrt, but i would forsake the antifungal ingredients, since certain fungi help the plants, there are fungi spores in the biotone starter PLUS, special fungi that form a relationship with the root system and benefit the plant in many ways...

pmumbry said:

your mix also looks good, jcmjrt, but i would forsake the antifungal ingredients, since certain fungi help the plants, there are fungi spores in the biotone starter PLUS, special fungi that form a relationship with the root system and benefit the plant in many ways...

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Absolutely true, marijuana loves mycorrhizal fungi (as do many plants) and the relationship is symbiotic....but neem and karanja meal/cake don't harm mycorrhizal fungi. I'm using it quite successfully right now as my source of slow nitrogen release for my water only soil grow. You can also use neem oil to fight pests as an organic foliar spray. Great stuff! Neem and Karanja are very interesting plants with lots of uses.

well, i was looking for a cheap alternative, worm castings are expensive

Johan said:

well, i was looking for a cheap alternative, worm castings are expensive

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Worm castings don't have to be expensive. I'm running my own worm farm and feeding them my scraps - banana peels, eggs shells, coffee grounds, just general kitchen scraps - and a few wonderful ingredients to be "processed" by the worms such as alfalfa and kelp, etc. It doesn't happen quickly but once the worms are up and eating they can run thru some scraps and produce great castings.

That said if you need a "cheap" source of good compost now - and quality compost is absolutely the MOST important part of your soil mix - look for a pile of composted horse manure. Some horse folks look to get rid of it so you can haul it off for free. It will need to be composted first or it will burn your soil but it's excellent. Something that needs only a little composting (some say none but I wouldn't do that) but is also wonderful is rabbit manure. You can sometimes find rabbit farmers who are looking to offload their byproduct for little to nothing. Check craigslist in your area and see if you can find either. Another thing you can do - make a 3 X 3 or larger pile of leaves and just let it rot for about a year. Yes, I know it takes a while but leaf mold is quality compost and it is free as long as you or a neighbor have a tree that doesn't get a lot pesticide treatments.

Generally, if you can get compost from animals that have been well fed and treated - organic, free range, beloved pet horse getting fed the best oats, hay, etc. Commercial compost will almost always be of lower quality than you can source if you look around at all. What they eat is what they s**t and it's best if it's organic, etc

Johan said:

okay, i have a huge brick of peat moss that i got from lowes, now i am wanting to know what can i add to the peat moss to make a good clean organic soil for my plants. i heard mixing peat moss, perlite and gypsum, but i dont know what ratios to mix that at. any advice would be ideal

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I too bought a "huge brick"(3 cubic ft.) of peat moss from lowes. I mixed the peat 50/50 with perlite then added pulverized powdered lime, mushroom compost(instead of worm castings), and epsoms BioTone starter plus. I used the BioTone instead of bone/blood meal, kelp, etc. because you don't have to let the mix "cook" for a month before transplanting. I just added 1cup lime per cubic ft. of mix, 1gallon mushroom compost for 10gallons of mix, and 2.25cups BioTone per cubic foot of mix. None of these measurements are exact. I pretty much just gathered what info I could on ammending soilless mixes and the just kind-of winged it from there! Good luck man!

i would just use 50/50 peat moss and perlite and add some powdered lime.
all my nutes come from a bottle.

drolove said:

i would just use 50/50 peat moss and perlite and add some powdered lime.
all my nutes come from a bottle.

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any recommendations on powered lime?

and does it matter what peat moss or perlite you use? can i just go to lowes and pick up anything.