- Spring Soil -

Primer

  • Wanted to add a cubic yard of soil this Spring to fill my grow bags
  • Decided to go with Viragrows Mj Mix
  • Since they have a 5cu yd minimum for free delivery, I opted to pick up and haul the soil myself
  • If you have a camper shell on your truck, I highly advise to remove it so that soil can be dumped into your bed. The trouble of loading soil far outweighs the trouble of taking a camper shell off.

Viragrow Pickup Process

  • When you get there, just tell them what you want and how you’re going to haul it out of there
  • If you have a truck with open bed, they can directly dump it in with the tractor. Be weary of your trucks payload capacity, a cubic yard of soil weighs about 2000 pounds.
  • If you need to load it yourself, they have a pad to dump it on the ground for you to load.
  • I suggest using some type of bags to bag it up before loading. I opted to directly fill my grow bags.
  • Loading 1cu yd of soil solo is laborious, but took me about 30-40 minutes.

Loaded

  • This is what my truck looked like loaded with 1 cu yd of soil in (10) 20 gallon and (5) 10 gallon grow bags. I had enough leftover soil to fill about 3 more 20 gallon bags. I opted to just dump it in loose where it could fit.
  • Notice how much the truck sags with the full load. I pretty much maxed my payload capacities. My truck stock is capable of 1574lbs payload stock, but I added a leaf spring which gained me an additional 700lbs of payload capacity. A full size truck should have no problems, but with a midsize truck you’d most likely be exceeding the limits without upgraded suspension.

UnLoading

  • I started by laying down a tarp to catch soil spills then grabbed a container to start scooping in the loose soil. Having a Harbor Freight cargo unloader makes the job a lot easier, providing you a smooth surface to work off of and also to pull the load to the tailgate via a handle.
  • I would then pull the grow bags to the tailgate with the unloader and just slide them down into my Gorilla Cart. The 10 gallon grow bags filled, weight about 60-70lbs. 
  • Since my soil was already in its growing container, I just had to move them to where I wanted with no additional movement of the soil. 

#staycollected