- Soil Amendment Process -
Primer
- Thanks to John at Growing Your Greens as I just loosely followed his advice on how much amendments per amount of soil.
- I chose to do it in the beds as I had 5 cu yd of soil delivered and thats a huge mound to be amending. If you have smaller amounts of soil, I recommend doing it on a tarp.
- I left enough bed space(3-4″) so that soil and amendments werent overflowing as I was mixing
- I divided the amounts needed for each bed based on a rough calculation of the amount of soil in each, but mostly just eyeballed it when it came down to pouring out the amendments
- I spread the amendments as evenly as I could accross the length of the bed rather than just dumping in one place to help with a more even distribution
Pour Worm Castings
- Easy pour just like soil
- Amounts:
Pour Vermiculite
- Dont pour this when its too windy, it will fly everywhere
- Amounts:
Pour Rock Dust (Azomite)
- Wear a mask, this is a really fine powder
- There will be some clumps so break those up
- Avoid pouring when too windy as well
- Amounts:
Pour Perlite
- Wear a mask as theres lots of dust when pouring
- Amounts:
Pour Pumice
- Amounts:
Mix Step 1
- I started by digging the shovel in straight down and twisting with a short spade shovel. The handle makes this a lot easier
- I continued accross the length and width of the bed until the amendments pile was lowered to almost even with the top of the bed.
Mix Step 2
- Then I stuck the shovel in at an angle and started turning over the soil accross the whole length and width of the bed over and over until it was evenly mixed
Mix Step 3
- Then raked the soil and moved it around for a final mix
Pre-leveled Soil
- First with the normal end of the rake, then a final pass with the back of the rake
Leveled By Hand
- Take this time to fill in the corners that were hard to fill with a rake
- I used a circular motion to evenly level the soil
Water
- Water in the amendments with the soil