Container garden secret super soil is our own potting soil mix of soil amendments that we use for gardening in our bucket garden and containers. It is a blend of peat moss, perlite, composted cow manure, garden soil, sodium polyacrylate / diaper crystals, pelleted lime, Epsom salt, bone meal, blood meal, oyster shell calcium, and boron. You can make an organic soil mix from this basic recipe with very few substitutions. We fill, and later top dress, our buckets and containers with this once a year and allow the nutrients to work their way down to the plants roots over time. When planting, we plant or direct sow into this mix with no further amendments needed other than weekly feeding the bucket and container gardens, usually with a water soluble fertilizer. This mix provides everything else, including nitrogen, calcium, phosphorus, magnesium, and boron. It also contains a number of organic materials that will break down over time and extend the fertility of the soil beyond that stated in the base ingredients. This is similar to our Raised Bed Garden Secret Super Soil Mix but is adapted to be closer to a potting type soil. This is NOT a How To, it is a How We Do. And we let our results in the vegetable garden speak for themselves.
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43 Comments
Hi there, I just found your videos and subscribed. Thank you for such great content and instructions. Can you give me an idea of how much this cost you? Also, are you able to reuse this soil each year? And lastly, what do you use to feed your plants weekly?
Thanks so much! This will surely be helpful not only financially (I hope) but to help my children garden again. We used to have beautiful in ground gardens but have since moved and no longer have the space to do that. This seems like the perfect alternative. I truly thought our garden days were behind us until I found you guys 🙏
I cannot thank you enough for all you have taught me. Your Raised Bed Garden Secret Super Soil Mix is like magic soil!! I'm making more this season for the rest of our beds and dedicating one bed to your carrot soil. Will the carrot soil be good for beets too? Also, for a dahlia garden, how would you tweak the SSSM? And one more question I'd be so grateful if you had time to answer: our tomatoes tasted terrible last year, any ideas why? They were also planted in the SSSM. Maybe they were too crowded, I NEVER expected them to grow like magic beans. They were huge, it was a jungle!
When do you use the compost and manure? I was not going to use all of the peat moss. I mite only use 1/4 – 1/2 of the package, so how would I make sure I don't mix to much of all the the other stuff in the mixture.
Was it expensive making your soil mix
Love your clips , so many good suggestions.
I got some cucumbers in pots (bought them from greenhouse) the leafs are droopy and have some light/dark green spots and I am at the end of my wits 🙁
Can you tell me how many 5 gals still mix will fill? Or how to measure these out per 5 gal bucket please?
Good stuff, I have only one question not sure if you mention in your video.
Do we have to leave it to cook/lose heat or we can transplant the plant straight to it?
I used your soil mix with a few additions and had cauliflower and broccoli that were huge thank you so much!!! I tried to upload a picture but wasn’t able to.
Hello, this is my first post on a you tube video. , do you have all the ingredients in written form,?
Hello. I want to let you know that I had a big lost using the Cow Manure. It was loaded with pesticides that the cows ate. Lost over 20,000 of my plantation. Be careful because the cows will pass this over. I used now pine bark cut in small pices to substitute.
I wish I found yall 3 months ago. Thank you for this video. I will use this.
Very thankful for all the info you’ve shared. I’ve watch many of your videos recently and the Super Soil video many times. I have a decent sized raised beds garden in our backyard. I’ve used the Back to Eden method in the past but have not had very good results the past few years… hardly any produce. At some points with all the insects I’ve wanted to take a flame torch to the whole thing.😆… When you mentioned the high nitrogen and adding bone meal this made since after you explained. Really considering adding this to our existing soil but I do have a question. I also have a similar chicken run similar to what you have, we put hay, garden scraps and leaves during Fall into our chicken run. They turn it into compost and I dig it up and put this into the garden. Will this have any effect on this mix or can I skip a step? Thank you ~ Eva
Hi guys. Thanks to my wife I have just found your video's First thing first thank you for your service both of you. You said during your video that this mix may not be enough for your buckets. How did that turn out. Also how do you figure the ratios for smaller or larger batches. We are just getting into the cooler days so I am planning on doing a lot of prep work for our spring gardenBeing in Florida I don't have a lot of time so any help is greatly appreciated. Thank you for these video's
Hey great video….Im an Organic gardener and I just wanna say nice content love the teamwork….Only thung that thru me off here was the 10-10-10 you 2 added to your formula……I was with you till then…..Honestly you dont need the chemicals yall…..I would of added a little more of the Jobes 2-7-4 instead of those chemicals…….But I understand it was for video purposes and education……Earthwormcastings or Wormcastings or Chicken manure can be used as well….Or eggs or eggshells and bananas and or peels…..
I just got 8 raised beds. Do I do this to the beds or your super soil video would go down first HELPTY IN ADAVANCE XOXOX
I'm adding two temporary beds this year made out of extra cement blocks we had from a project. I want to add flowers around these beds and also make a tire flower garden. Would this soil be okay for that or should I do something else for flowers? Also I have one spot where I gardener in ground last year, what could I put on it to freshen it up for new planting? And one last question, is this okay for potatoes and strawberries? Also new to growing those this year too lol. Thank you for all the information! I love that you seem to answer every single question people have. That is awesome. Some people post and then im sure get busy with life and don't come back to comments. It shows true dedication to your followers. ❤
This might have been covered already…but do you have a recipe for this like you had in the raised bed recipe video?
Where do you get the Sodium Polyacrylate
Thank you so much for sharing this! Hopefully my plants do better this year 😁
Great job thank you how about a list of ingredients
What would you recommend for a substitute for the blood meal?
Noticed the hat in the first 2 seconds. Thanks for the help Doc. Semper Fi
Hi Mark and Tina! Have you ever tried your super soil in grow bags?
Is this the mix you grew the potato’s in in the buckets ? I noticed this video came after the potato video . Or was it the super soil ?
I was thinking about just using Pete moss potting mix some perlite and bone meal for my
Buckets . Will that be okay? Or do I need to add something to it ?
Hi, was wondering how many of your 21 5 gallon buckets did this fill?
Can I grow Marigolds with this recipe of is to hot.
keep up the good work.Thanks for all the good videos on how to garden
Thank you both for your service to the Country.
Hello Mark and Tina,
Having one of those days. I am mixing up SUPER SOIL . I make a half of a batch at a time, useing my 10 CF wheelbarrel to transport to my raised beds. I am planting so late this year. This old body can only do so much at a time. LOL. Layered the first 4 ingredients and can't find my pelleted lime. So I used a 1/2 cup of wood ash instead. I wasn't sure how much to put in or even if it was a good idea. Finished the last of my layering and started to mix. It's kinda windy here today. All of a sudden I started smelling flowers coming from my mix. What is going on here???? Well last week I had my husband pick me up a small bag of epsom salt at the grocery store, that was it. He got me lavender sented epsom salts.
I have 2 4×4 beds left to fill. So , tell me if lavender carrots or lavender beets would taste better? I refuse to dump the soil, so since I pickel mostly all the beets, lavender beets it will be.
Hope everyone gets a good laugh. I let you know how they tasted. If I haven't ruined all of them, maybe I discovered a new flavoring mix.
Happy gardening to all. Shelly
I have a question. If the weekly fertilizer you’re using contains boron, is it still necessary to add it to the soil mix?
I did a container garden for the first time this summer and – while I was not displeased with the results – I could definitely see room for a lot of improvement. I like the idea of making a soil mix, but I don’t want to botch anything due to my own ignorance.
Also, would it be reasonable to use the old soil from my pots as part of the “filler” portion of the mix going forward? Would you recommend this mix over your raised garden one for container purposes? (I only ask because I’ve seen where you commented that the raised garden will work for both.)
I hope I’m not asking too many questions, but this is all still pretty new stuff to me. I keep telling myself that everything is a learning process and nobody starts out at something with 100% results. So far that’s been working to keep me from getting too frustrated. 😅
I just recently found your site and I love your video's , keep em coming .
is your Jobes tomato and vegetable a powder or pellet form?
Hi Mark and Tina, how much Peat Moss should I use please as in the ratio for the amount of Garden Soil you used in the video above. Thank you.
oh my. so tired but I did it. My pile looks just like yours. I admire you Tina… those bags were so heavy!
Thanks guys I had problems last year with all my garden boxes but you just got straight on what I did wrong I should have a better experience this year! Happy trails God bless
Thank you for your service.
You need a big tumbler
How much of the sodium polyacrylate / diaper crystals did you add to this mix? Do you have any suggestions of additions, subtractions, or changes in this mix to customize it for onions, carrots, melons, cabbage, lettuce, tomatoes, peppers, etc? Thanks a BUNCH!!! You guys are really helpful to the rest of us!!!
This is great – thank you!!!
Hello from Australia guys,
Love your videos,thank you for sharing your knowledge.
Thank you for your service!! One question tho, is there a way to break this mix down into a bucket by bucket ratio? I live in town on a small lot and have room for my bucket garden, but I don’t have a place to mix a big pile of soil like that!!
How did your grow go with this recipe
Really informative,well done!