Planter's Mix

Abundant Harvest for Years to Come

Planter's Mix is an inviting soil that will serve your garden well today and in the years to come. This recipe was formulated to provide a balance of blossoms and foliage in the context of vegetables, annuals, perennials, trees and shrubs. We all dislike the disappointment that comes with enormously bushy tomato plants that stimulate our expectations with large leaves, rich color, and uncontrollable size but deliver very few blossoms and thus little fruit. You will never get this result using Planter's Mix due to its delicate balance of ingredients that are both nitrogen rich and nitrogen sequestering.

To create Planter's Mix, we blend in our Dairy Compost with a composted hardwood humus. Working together, these amendments provide pore space, organic matter, NPK, and trace minerals, along with an enormous amount of soil biology that fends off pests and makes nutrients available to our plants in balanced amounts. We also choose topsoils and sands as ingredients in our Planter's Mix with a specific desired outcome in mind. We want this mixture to include a perfect ratio of loam, silt, sand and clay. Each of these soil types brings with it contributing qualities that are wonderful in a balance but can result in disaster if one type is dominant. You may understand this because of what you are presently dealing with in your yard. We have done our best in the Planter's Mix to provide you as a gardener with an economical soil mix that produces an outstanding balance of blossoms and foliage while retaining excellent tilth for many years to come.

1-5 cubic yards purchased

Soil

6 plus yards, volume discount

Soil

The correct soil, in the right place, makes all the differance.

Planter's Mix provides a delightful alternative to heavy topsoils for successfully filling raised beds. Results matter, and finding out in mid season that the gravel pit topsoil you used to fill your boxes with turned hard is always a bummer. Planters mix is blended to remain loose for years to come.

Benefits of Planter's Mix

Remains loose for seasons to come
Balence of blossoms & foliage
Large water-holding capacity
Good drainage
High in organic matter
As few weed seeds as we are able
Balance of sand, silt and clay
Easily handled with a shovel (1/2" minus)

Uses:

Annuals, perinials, vegetables, trees & shrubs
Raised beds, filling
Universal garden soil

Soak your Planting Mix once you have it in place. Soaking equalizes the soil moisture throughout the planting bed, reducing transplant shock. The planting mix is sold relatively dry to make it easier to work with. The mass will require a large volume of water in order to reach equilibrium.

Directions for Use

Confirmation - Be sure to cross reference the product on your reciept of purchase to confirm you are reading the directions of use for the correct product.

Location of use - Planter's Mix is a preblended soil that remains loose in gardens season after season. As a gardener you know that different plants grow better in different types or blends of soils. Let's look into what applications and plants are best suited for planters mix.

Plant types - Planter's Mix is designed to raise a balance of blossoms and foliage. The balance of dairy compost and composted hardwood humus that is included in the recipe lowers the nitrogen levels in the soil while allowing the organic matter to remain high. In this environment, blossoming plants do well. Any garden plant that we as gardeners wish to grow large and yet bear an abundant harvest would perform well in our mix. Examples of these productive plants are vegetables (tomatoes, beans, peppers, etc.), root crops (potatoes, carrots, etc.) and flowers (marigolds, vincas, petunias, geraniums, etc.). Planter's Mix also works well for planting trees, shrubs and other ornamentals. When backfilling the hole of a bareroot or potted tree or shrub, Planter's Mix works well when used in combination with native soil or as a complete backfilling soil. It is always wise to make a jagged-sided hole so the roots can more easily push their way out into the native soil when transplanting trees and potted plants.
Applications - Planter's Mix remains loose and loamy in many applications. This soil was originally designed to fill raised flower beds. Over the years its broad range of uses have become more evident. Planter's Mix can be used anywhere flowering plants grow in a large volume of soil, such as raised beds, complete flower bed soil, complete vegetable gardening soil, etc. One application that we do not recommend is using our Planter's Mix to fill pots that are 10 gallons or smaller. Although this mix is loose and loamy, it is still a soil and not a container mix. We recommend our container mix for potted plants.

Depth - Planters Mix is good at any depth. Keep in mind that the deeper your layer of good soil, the more volume your plants roots will have to grow into, draw nutrients from, and store water in. Our general guideline is from 4"-24" in depth for planting vegetables, annuals, trees and shrubs. The closer to 12" your depth is, the healthier and more resilient your plants will be. After 12" the gain in benefit tapers off. Most applications that use more than 12" are raised garden beds, and we do recommend you use planters mix to fill a raised bed completly. Keep in mind that your added soil will settle over time. When you choose your depth, be sure to account for between 10% and 20% settling. Begin with your end goal in mind.

Filling your soil's moisture profile - Planter's Mix is shipped as dry as the seasonal conditions allow for. We aim for this so that the soil will be easier to handle as you work with it. Because of this, you will want to be sure to soak the soil well before or immediatly following any planting. If you were to dig into your yard's native soil, you would notice that after a few inches of dry soil on the surface, the soil beneath is moist and retains moisture. This level is what farmers refer to as the soil's "moisture profile." This moisture comes up from the subsoil as well as from the surface. If this moisture profile is not adequate, the life in that soil will suffer greatly.

When constructing a new garden bed with our Planter's Mix, the bed will be for the most part dry. It may be moist to the touch, yet this is far too dry to maintain a plant that is being transplanted into that environment. For example, if a gardener plants a young tomato plant in Planter's Mix without presoaking the added soil, the dry soil that surrounds the plant's roots will compete for the moisture that had been used to water the plant. The dry soil will do this until the soil's moisture profile is filled up. Competing dry soil will always win over a young plant's roots. This will cause the plant to wilt repeatedly until the profile is full.

To avoid any plant wilting, we recommend that you soak any Planter's Mix that you may use in your newly filled garden beds to its saturation point. The fastest way to do this is to allow a freeflowing garden hose to fill your Planters Mix's moisture profile. You will be amazed at how much moisture our mix will hold. It will soak up a lot of water, but it will hold it for weeks to come.

Mulch Calculator

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What is the difference between certified organic and nutrient dense?

Some differences between certified organic standards and nutrient dense standards are as follows. Certified organic standards are a list of practices that a grower must NOT perform. Example, no herbicides, no pesticides, no fungicides, no chemicals, etc. With this standard it is possible, even probable, for a pink tomato to be presented at market with a respectable label. Nutrient dense standards are an outcome based standard. A grower's product must meet a threshhold standard for mineral content (nutritional value) in order to carry this label. If the food was grown with natural or organic rules and yet has little nutritional value, it is considered poor quality. Nutrient dense standards are often based on food nutritional values from the 1940's, before our nation's soils began depleting. For more on this subject see our article "Organic vs Nutrient dense, Both And."

What is Nutrient Dense?

The term "Nutrient Dense" was introduced by Ardin Anderson, author of Real Food, Real Medicine, a doctor who resides in the midwest. Nutrient Dense refers to the nutritional quality of a particular food. For example if results of laboratory testing show that the mineral content (along with other key items) reaches levels that are determined and fixed standards, then the food is said to be a nutrient dense food.

Do I need to add synthetic or organic fertilizers to obtain great results?

We make our best effort to provide you, our customer, with a garden soil that will make your project successful. Each soil blend is intended to be used in a general area of gardening for best results. That said, many gardeners have trade secrets that they love to employ with great tact and care. We encourage you to take the good soils that we provide and build upon them if you so wish. Be careful and have fun.

Can I use soils to fill my containers of potted plants?

No, soil mixes are not recommended for filling small to medium pots. We recommend that in the case of filling any kind of container intended for potted plants that you use a container mix, ours or a garden center's. Our container mix, our square foot gardening mix, or our garden soil recipe #5 work very well for container gardening. When a topsoil, amended topsoil, or commercial planting mix is used in a small container the plant suffers from a lack of oxygen and water due to the heavy nature of an actual soil. Because of the density and weight of a topsoil, it is far superior to use a potting media, which is significantly lighter, providing a great deal more porosity for channeling water and oxygen to the roots of the potted plant. Soil mixes (containing topsoil) are intended for filling raised beds, flower beds, gardens, and any other large bed for the growing of outdoor plants (vegetables, flowers, trees, shrubs, annuals and perennials alike).

How much soil do I need for my project?

We encourage you to utilize the material calculator below for fast and easy answers to this question. The material calculator will ask you for the basic dimensions of your project and is able to provide you with reliable answers. Keep in mind that soil will settle a small amount over time, because of this it is wise to over fill at roughly 10%. We would also be glad to work through your project with you as well. Feel free to phone us.

Where do you obtain your topsoil from?

We have a 70,000 yard stockpile that is a deposit from wind erosion on a farm that has grown wheat for the past several decades. We do not use any synthetic herbicides, pesticides, or fungicides on or near our stockpile of topsoil. The farm that the topsoil deposit was removed from is currently still one of the highest producing wheat farms in the Mead Colorado area. We do not accept dirt at random from contractors or construction sites as is the practice of many other topsoil suppliers. Our topsoil is not registered as an organic topsoil with any regulatory agency, although we do practice the standards set forth by several of them. We value and are proud of the topsoil that we utilize in our soil blends.