Nicole Johnsey Burke explains why pre-mixed garden soil often contains artificial fertilizers and shares her "103 blend" recipe instead: topsoil and sand for structure, compost for nutrients, and earthworm castings for biological activity. She avoids peat moss, synthetic fertilizers, vermiculite, and perlite.
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Never buy this for your garden. If you're growing your own food, you want to know exactly how your food was grown, and this is not it. Now, I typically make my own soil blend, but let me show you what I would buy. When you're building your own garden soil, you're looking for 3 things: something that builds structure, something that adds nutrients, and something that increases activity. So for my 103 blend, I use topsoil and sand for the structure, I use compost for the nutrients, and I use earthworm castings for the activity. So an organic soil like this is using forest products to create the structure of the soil. It's using things like rice hulls and humus for the nutrients, and it's using earthworm castings and manures for the activity. Things I absolutely stay away from are peat moss and synthetic fertilizers, and I try to avoid vermiculite and perlite too. And check out the caption to get started.