2023 Potting Soil Thread

[greenthumbomaha]

I thought this topic needed a separate thread as some new products arrived locally @WalMart.
None of the other large players have restocked soils in my area this early.
Please post and/or review any new bagged container soil or compost sightings, or what you faithfully use as your soil.

Walmart: Whitney Farms

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Whitney Farms Organic Potting Soil for Container Gardens, 1 Cu. ft.
4.7 stars out of 56 reviews
56 reviews
$8.98
Review: Very dark soil, minimal wood chips that don't look like they were from twigs and not pallets. This is earthy but not heavy and doesn't muck up. It is easy to wet unlike other peat mixes. The amendment list looks great, but the soil doesn't have even a spec of perlite. No added fertilizer.
I'll be using this until I can compare to whatever Costco carries in their organic 2 cu ft bags.

Walmart: Back to the Roots Organic Premium Blend All-Purpose Potting Mix Soil, 1 Cubic Foot Bag
4.8 stars out of 77 reviews
77 reviews
Now $7.96
no review, did not buy

[zeuspaul]

I have settled on Kelloggs Patio Plus $8 at Lowes. I like the price and the ingredients. I use it in my containers. Also sift some of the bigger stuff out and use it for my starts. And also add some to the planting holes in the garden.

Kellogg Garden Organics
Patio Plus Premium Outdoor Potting Mix
1.5 cu. ft. (28.3L) bag

Ingredients
Aged recycled forest products, aged rice hulls, composted poultry manure, perlite, peat moss, hydrolyzed feather meal, dehydrated poultry manure, dolomite & oyster shell limes (as pH adjusters), bat guano, kelp meal, worm castings.

https://kellogggarden.com/products/kell ... atio-plus/

kellogg-patio-plus-w800.png

[Paulf]

Again this year Wal-Mart in a small southwest Iowa town had a close-out last fall...and they still had a stack a couple weeks ago for the plain old potting mix...2 cu. foot bag for $4. Used part of a bag for peppers yesterday, tomatoes in a couple of weeks. Had some wood chips and sticks, but for the price that got sifted out.

shopping.jpeg

[Cranraspberry]

I feel like the stuff at our big box stores is so inconsistent! I’d come back in a few weeks to get more soil, and the new batch would be completely different from what I had purchased before. That being said I had pretty decent luck with the Harvest brand at Lowes. Got a few bags of their garden soil, raised bed soil and potting mix and all were fine and inexpensive. The Vigoro brand at HD looked significantly worse. HD did have some nice looking Bonnie’s Best raised bed soil, but at $12 for 1.5 cu ft that was just too much, at that point we’re approaching Coast of Maine pricing.

[rossomendblot]

What you call potting soil over there is just referred to as compost here (even though most brands do not contain much, if any actual compost!). Have you noticed prices going up and up over the last few years? Some brands have almost doubled in price since COVID, making it really costly to grow in containers.

At the end of last season a supermarket was selling off coir blocks at a really low price, so I am using that mixed with worm castings, perlite and homemade compost as my seed sowing mix.

[jamiethemime]

This stuff is on clearance at a local Menards at a decent-looking price, anyone know if it's any good? Probably going to head out this weekend to pick up some packs before it disappears

PRO-MIX® Compressed Premium Moisture Potting Soil Mix - 2 cu. ft.

[GoDawgs]

I have settled on Kelloggs Patio Plus $8 at Lowes. I like the price and the ingredients. I use it in my containers. Also sift some of the bigger stuff out and use it for my starts. And also add some to the planting holes in the garden.

Kellogg Garden Organics
Patio Plus Premium Outdoor Potting Mix
1.5 cu. ft. (28.3L) bag

Ingredients
Aged recycled forest products, aged rice hulls, composted poultry manure, perlite, peat moss, hydrolyzed feather meal, dehydrated poultry manure, dolomite & oyster shell limes (as pH adjusters), bat guano, kelp meal, worm castings.

https://kellogggarden.com/products/kell ... atio-plus/

kellogg-patio-plus-w800.png

I just checked our Lowes online. They didn't have the version you bought but did have Kelloggs Raised Bed and Potting Mix, 2 cu ft for $9.98. The bag blurb says:

It has added kelp meal, poultry manure, and bat guano, providing your plants with premium nutrients to help them grow healthy and productive and coir for greater water retention. It has a slightly more woody texture than traditional potting soil, allowing the perfect balance of moisture retention, porosity for good drainage, and a carbon food source to promote a rich microbial environment in your soil that will result in more healthy plants.

I tried Happy Frog's mix for seed starting in the fall and was happy with it so I'll be using it again this year. I think I'll try this Kellogg's mix for just potting up stuff for the porch. We'll be getting the usual pickup load of local mix for the big tomato buckets some time in April.

[karstopography]

I like Baccto Premium potting soil for seed starting. I use the soiless Jiffy seed starting mix only on the top layer where the seeds actually are, the rest of the container is the Baccto Premium. Baccto Premium uses dark reed sedge peat, perlite and sand. It holds water well without being too dense or mucky when wet. Not inexpensive, but the best I’ve found. I don’t like a lot of the sphagnum peat moss heavy mixes out there.

[Yak54]

For seed starting I prefer Magic Moss seed starting mix.https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q ... RXKVJdjZ02
Out of all the different types of seed starting mixes I've tried over the years this one works the best !

When my seedlings are ready to be potted up I put them in 4" pots filled with ProMix BX and that is what the 15 gal. grow bags have in them for their final transfer. https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q ... YJv1tPkFF6

Dan

[JayneR13]

I prefer Miracle Gro Seed Starting mix for my seedlings. I used to use their potting mix for my container garden and for years wondered why my containers weren't really producing that well. Then I discovered that their potting mix isn't actually soil! It's a mix of bark fines and sphagnum moss enriched with NPK. That leaves out quite a lot of needed nutrition and speaks to why my plants became diseased very quickly. And this year the price is outrageous!

Last year I tried Espoma's organic potting mix, and I had nothing but problems. I bought it for the mycorrhiza and Rhizobium, thinking that the soil would have been sterilized first and then inoculated. Every one of my plants became diseased before I'd even put them outside! I had lots of leaf spots and powdery mildews, and all of my seedlings were runted. I ended up having to buy seedlings from the garden center. This year I've gone back to the tried and true.

[karstopography]

https://americanpeattech.com/peat-its-n ... ted-equal/

https://howtogardenadvice.com/peat-moss ... ble-plant/

All Peats are not created equal. Sphagnum Peat moss is highly acidic. Reed Sedge peat is more neutral in Ph. Most potting soils seem to be the sphagnum type.

[Tomatina]

I'm wondering, why anyone with a garden and a compostpile would buy soil?
Sure, if you just have a balcony, it might be the easiest way or if you just started off gardening.
Otherwise, what is a good reason to buy soil?

I never buy any soil. I have the soil from the garden and the compost. It worked all the years.
After one encounter with fungus gnat (the little flies, hope the translation makes sense), we're always "sterilising" the soil in an old pot on the woodstove, another plus, that no other seeds will germinate.

From my understanding, the peat in most pottingsoils, that is taken from everglades, is harmful to our nature. It should stay, where it was taken from - in the nature. It takes a very long time for the peat to form, for one meter, it takes about 1000 years.
These everglades are very important for the balance of our nature/climate.

So it might be a good idea, to use peatfree pottingsoils or just take your own "black gold" from the compost or gardensoil.

[MissS]

I use Whitney Farms from Costco. They carry it in the spring. This is not made for using in pots but rather to amend garden soil. I use it to top dress things. It doesn't have wood chips or rock but is a nice blend of compost and manures. It's very friable and has a nice dark appearance.

[zeuspaul]

Kelloggs Raised Bed and Potting Mix, 2 cu ft for $9.98.

I have been curious about the availability of the Kelloggs bagged products throughout the nation. Originally it was west coast dominant.

I was at Lowes today for the Patio mix and saw the Raised Bed and Potting Mix so I picked up a bag. The cost per cubic foot is slightly less than the Patio Mix but not enough to make a meaningful difference. At my age I prefer the lighter 1.5 CF bag because it is easier for me to carry. The products seem similar. Aged rice hulls vs coir and the PH adjusters. I haven't opened the bag yet but I am guessing the two products will look about the same. I also picked up a 2 CF bag of ground cover bark. It is a nice small bark that I add to the containers when I think they need it same for peat. It is about half the price per CF of the Patio and Potting mix. Peat has gone way up in price.

Patio Plus Premium Outdoor Potting Mix
Aged recycled forest products, aged rice hulls, composted poultry manure, perlite, peat moss, hydrolyzed feather meal, dehydrated poultry manure, dolomite & oyster shell limes (as pH adjusters), bat guano, kelp meal, worm castings.

Raised Bed & Potting Mix
Recycled forest products, coir, perlite, dehydrated poultry manure, composted poultry manure, hydrolyzed feather meal, peat moss, kelp meal, worm castings and bat guano

[AZGardener]

This stuff is on clearance at a local Menards at a decent-looking price, anyone know if it's any good? Probably going to head out this weekend to pick up some packs before it disappears

PRO-MIX® Compressed Premium Moisture Potting Soil Mix - 2 cu. ft.

I use it for my containers. I do mix in some raised bed mix from the local worm farm to make a sort of custom mix for containers.

[GoDawgs]

I have been curious about the availability of the Kelloggs bagged products throughout the nation. Originally it was west coast dominant.

That's interesting. I've never seen the Kellogg's around here. It may be that the company has grown enough to service a larger area. Maybe they've started a manufacturing facility on the east coast or in the south east. When you first deal with the big boxes it's usually on a regional basis so they can make sure of you as a vendor, that you can keep them adequately supplied and the product sells well.

[karstopography]

Kellogg’s is here in Texas at Home Depot.

[Cranraspberry]

A lot of the soils I see here (DC area) are coming from West Virginia and Pennsylvania. I’ve never seen Kelloggs or Fafard here and Promix isn’t super common, at least not the smaller bags. We do get Black Gold from the Sungro family though and Coast of Maine and Fox Farms for the more pricey stuff. And of course Miracle Gro and Espoma are pretty ubiquitous.

[JayneR13]

I'm wondering, why anyone with a garden and a compostpile would buy soil?
Sure, if you just have a balcony, it might be the easiest way or if you just started off gardening.
Otherwise, what is a good reason to buy soil?

I never buy any soil. I have the soil from the garden and the compost. It worked all the years.
After one encounter with fungus gnat (the little flies, hope the translation makes sense), we're always "sterilising" the soil in an old pot on the woodstove, another plus, that no other seeds will germinate.

From my understanding, the peat in most pottingsoils, that is taken from everglades, is harmful to our nature. It should stay, where it was taken from - in the nature. It takes a very long time for the peat to form, for one meter, it takes about 1000 years.
These everglades are very important for the balance of our nature/climate.

So it might be a good idea, to use peatfree pottingsoils or just take your own "black gold" from the compost or gardensoil.

My compost pile is small, partly due to the size of my yard and partly due to city regulations regarding compost piles. Also the subzero winters in my area mean that the composting process is very slow. My new soil takes 2-3 seasons to be ready for use. Also by itself it's too heavy for container plants to grow well. Therefore, in past years I've purchased soil. This year it's just too expensive and I have a Community Gardens plot in addition to my yard and my CSA share, so I'll have plenty of veggies for the year.

[Seven Bends]

A lot of the soils I see here (DC area) are coming from West Virginia and Pennsylvania. I’ve never seen Kelloggs or Fafard here and Promix isn’t super common, at least not the smaller bags. We do get Black Gold from the Sungro family though and Coast of Maine and Fox Farms for the more pricey stuff. And of course Miracle Gro and Espoma are pretty ubiquitous.

Home Depot here in the Virginia suburbs of DC has been carrying Kellogg soils for a few years now. I had a bad experience the one and only time I purchased a Kellogg product ("garden soil" that was basically a bag of wood mulch), so I haven't tried again. I'm sure it's not always like that; guess I just lucked into a bad batch.

Promix has become more available in the last few years, now that they've created products for the general public in smaller sizes and more eye-catching packaging. They're in Walmart and Home Depot with some products now. I guess you still have to go to independent garden centers to get the large bales of the good stuff in boring gray packaging.