Buying garden soil for your vegetable garden? Watch this video first to find the best garden soil to buy!
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Self Sufficient Me is based on our small 3-acre property/homestead in SE Queensland Australia about 45kms north of Brisbane – the climate is subtropical (similar to Florida). I started Self Sufficient Me in 2011 as a blog website project where I document and write about backyard food growing, self-sufficiency, and urban farming in general. I love sharing my foodie and DIY adventures online so come along with me and let’s get into it! Cheers, Mark 🙂
26 Comments
We have a few things in common I think
I luv that you are willing to admit your mistakes and then tell us how you fixed it!
I’ve been a fan of yours for some time now and I think I’m ready to started some raised bed gardens. I do have a question. I’m a American snowbird. Meaning that I spend spring and summer in the Pacific Northwest region and fall and winter in the Southwest region. It’s late summer now and I want to build and fill my raised beds now before I leave town. Once filled, can I leave my newly made beds all fall and winter – a good six months – before I plant in them next spring? How should I cover them for that long? Thanks and I love your videos!! 🥰
so your planting vegetables with store brought soil? don't them vegetables giving you any nutrients.
Im in facebook jail and had to track your amazing self down on yoytube 🤣🤣🤣💪💪💪subscribed followed and liked og gardner ima start my first raised gardens and elevated soil dumps for fruit trees your the man bro 🙌💯👊
Any tips to increase compost output for just the average home gardeners?
Enjoy your videos mate!
Nice one, mate. Thankyou
It’s your joking that kept me watching you; corny maybe but it keeps it from getting boring.
Lol. Thank you. So informative and helpful
Hi mark, would you suggest buying the cheapest garden soil and blending myself with a bulk cow or chicken manure or mushroom compost? I’m about to set up my raises garden beds, and you live nearby me. Would you like to do a video on it and help me set it up 😂
2 questions from North Carolina USA please!
Ok Mark, you got us hooked. Med retired mil dad, ten children, country and world falling apart quicker than the eyes can blink, need to develope a food security plan of our own and we are behind. Top that off, I am not a green thumb! But, I can learn and adapt to my surrounding and gather knowledge from the experiences of others. 4 Birdiebeds 8:1's talls due to arrive today!!! Big investment but they will separate my veggies from the shallow clay soil and help my army rucksack paratrooper back from having to work on the ground like a chicken pecking scratch.
Now, what size should I configure these as, longer and skinny or one panel added to the ends and one size wider? I reckon you've had plenty of time to form an educated observation on best shape. Second question, east-west or north-south?
Thanks Mark for being a voice of motivation and "do it" attitude. You are achieving more than clicks and thumbs up's brother. But here's another for good measure🫵🏻👍🏼
This is one of your best videos. There really is no sense of planting a garden with the idea you will have abountiful harvest if you don't have the proper soil. Sure you can throw seeds in the ground and water them, but how much fruit will you actually get out of it. Good soil=good yield! It's that simple. Thank You for covering this subject. More people need to learn what backyard farming truly consist of
Holy. Moley. I just realized in my very new gardening (lack of) knowledge, I had filled almost all of my fabric pots, mounds, and top dressed bushel baskets (that were layers of unused wood litter pellets and straw underneath) with no regular dirt, all mulch 😳 Now I understand WHY I had such great success! Very few (herbs) were a hand mix of compost, perlite, and organic fish fertilizer. They still did well.
This is a huge realization for little-brained me!😆
Good advice Mark. Thank you. From Ron in Tasmania.
Thanks buddy! I've been gathering soil from the forest and I'm hoping I can grow in this instead of having to pay to mix in vermiculite and peat moss. Plus my seeds are mostly free so if nothing grows no major loss.
Hi Mark, I need your advice on where to buy organic seeds please. Im in Sydney. Thanks
Looks like a PH issue from here but who knows…
Hey, that's an amazing scare on your arm. Tell us about that…
I Love when you dig into better soil (with lots of rotting organic stuff throughout) are full of earth worms. That is usually when I am content. I have tons of clay here and I had to add mulch for years until the ground was loose enough that I was happy with it.
11:00 I wouldn't even buy soul. If you have any amount of woods on your property, I would harvest top soul – look around under leaf debris and get the blackest stuff you can find and mix in as much leaf matter you can. Also you can grow a ton of beans or peas that get their nitrogen from the air and when the stuff is a foot high, turn it over into the dirt. I've found it a good way to add organic matter quickly. Sow as many seeds as you can, wait a few weeks and mulch it all up.
Hey Mark, what do you use your gourds for?
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You went to the flip side of things. I thought they convinced you to take excessively organic soil. A lot of people think you can grow exclusively in compost and while you can get away with it for a year or two, after that it rapidly goes down in porosity. Having inorganic components like clay, sand and silt are vital
Are there any crops that can be grown on poor soil + fertiliser. I want to utilise the front yard space that's not in raised beds
I DON'T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT GARDENING …IS IT OK TO MIX OlD SOIL WITH NEW SOIL???
Thanks for the tips. Was looking for information about garden soil sold in bags. I keep finding 'premium' soil I buy at my large hardware stores are basically fine mulch and less soil. I used to be able to buy dark, rich soil in bags… where there was no sign of mulch. I can understand that some wood fiber is OK, to retain moisture, organic nutrients, and it too will eventually fully decay into dirt. In any case, I min in cow manure and peet moss to condition these less than ideal soils. To my knowledge these soil producers aren't allowing the ground up hardwood mulch to decay long enough, and just sell it quickly as-is. At times I spot signs of plastic bags in the mulch… and that's tells me they're harvesting materials from perhaps the county dump… organic wastes pickup. Something like that. I don't know for sure what their source is. And that doesn't sit well with me. Thank you for your tips.