that's probably compost by now.

composted manure, but I wouldn't turn my back on any of it.

Too fresh manure!!! What? I run around after my chickens with a custard cup held under their downy parts (that's where the best stuff comes from).
(No, I really don't. (Although it is.) I just thought it might amuse.) I can't think of any manure that I would dis. (See how hip I am?)

P.S. Sorry I ruined custard for everyone.

ann, the first pile i looked at was about 6 ft tall and 50 ft long and it was literally smoking.. a bit to fresh for me... she also had a chicken coup she said i could scoop out if i wanted to ....lol

Just what that 2 year old pile was depends on what went into it. Compost is a mixture of a wide variety of organic matter that can include animal manures so if in addition to manure that pile had vegetative waste mixed in in roughly 3 parts vegetative waste to 1 part manure it probably would be compost. However, if it is simply manure piled up it is simply rotted manure and needs to be handled like all animal manures should be handled, with care.

I'm sure the pile was just what she scooped out of the barn ie. manure , hay and or straw and thats it.

Hi Bruce

Please forgive my gardening ignorance but what is "smart pot"? I'm sure there will be many humourous explanations and I look forward to reading them but I don't have a clue what this is.

As to your question, it isn't soil. Personally, I'd consider it to be compost but according to the definition of compost from the NOP guidelines, it would still be considered to be manure.

Lloyd

Loyd,
It a fabric container you can grow plants in. I just came across them a month or so again and thought i would give them a try on my deck. Google smart pots and they have a website.

ah, I see.

Lloyd

P.S. Kind of embarrassed I didn't just google it right off the bat. Normally I would have but I didn't have a lot of time this morning. My bad.

compost is a mixture of a wide variety of organic matter

Not necessarily. Compost is just mostly decomposed organic matter - doesn't have to be any sort of mixture of ingredients although home composters find mixtures tend to be more efficient in arriving at a "finished" product. I'd consider 2 year old manure just well-aged manure unless it looked just like soil and no longer resembled the original product and with no manure-like aroma.

Regardless, I think the point is fairly moot if you are talking about creating a soil mix for any kind of container planting. You do not want ANY kind of compost as a major player in a container planting mix. Too moisture retentive and too prone to continued decomposition and collapse. Much the same reasoning behind not including garden soil in such a mix. A durable, textural, more woody based and freely draining mix is much more preferred and will produce much better results.

Save the compost/manure for the garden, NOT the container plantings :-)

While i was reading through the smart pot website they suggest using a heavier mix because they compare using their pots to raising plants in a raised bed rather than conventional container. SO I was going to go with a raised bed formula ( mels mix) that is made with 5 kinds of compost, sphagnum peet and perlite in a 1/3 mixture if each. Hope I'm not messing up, but I'm followinmg directions.

After checking out the website, I'd concede the type of potting mix is not quite as critical as it is for a hard sided container. However, there is still not the free exchange of water and air as there would be in an inground situation and compaction of the potting medium is still a concern. I would hesitate to include compost as the primary ingredient. Your 1//3 mix sounds about right.

And I'd take their comments about overwatering never being a problem with a very large grain of sand :-) Overwatering can always be a problem, regardless if you garden in hard sided containers, raised beds, smart pots or in the ground (unless your soil is pretty much pure sand).

garden gal, If not a compost base what would you use instead. I'm going to have 5 25 gallon containers and i'm wanting to make a mix instad of breaking the bank with buying a premix.

I think the equal 3 part mix should be OK. Personally, I'd eliminate either the compost or the peat in favor of bark fines. Either will help with some moisture retention but you really don't need both and the bark will add durability to the mix and prevent compaction, which is really a vital element in any kind of container situation, 'smart pot' or not.

Gardengal48, thanks for your advice. I'll replace the peet with bark fines if I can find them here in mo. I appreciate it.Are bark fines labels as such or do they have other names ?

Don't eliminate the compost. In Mel's Mix, the fertilizer is in the compost. It is very potent if you stick with 5 different kinds of compost. I started using Mel's Mix this fall in my first raised bed. But I use vermiculite in place of the perilite (but it is very expensive so I may substitute perilite in my next raised bed).

Every "potting mix" or soilless mix that I have seen is made of organic matter, peat moss, coir, bark fines, with some perlite or vermiculite added to promote drainage. The nursery next door has been mixing styrofoam in their potting mix the last few years to replace the perlite or vermiculite, but the mix is primarily peat moss, organic matter.

What is the purpose of bark fines. Do they retain water. Have they been composted. Can they be made by us at home. What kind of bark are they made from. Exactly what are they called in a store. Will the bag just say Bark Fines on it.

The purpose of bark fines is to provide an organic BASE for container soil mixes, that if used in a favorable proportion will ensure that your soil retains excellent aeration for the intended life of the planting and that it will support little perched water, a significant limitation inherent in soils comprised of primarily small particulates like peat, coir, compost, manure, sand, topsoil ..... These ingredients, used singularly or in any combination as the primary fraction of your soil, simply hold too much water (when used in conventional container media) to offer the same opportunity for your plants to grow to their genetic potential as other soils more durable and with better aeration/drainage.

There's a somewhat unique twist to the OP's application though - the Smart Pots. How you use your Smart Pots will largely determine what soil structure is appropriate. If the smart pots are sited on top of the soil, so the earth below acts as a giant wick, you can use heavier soils that skilled container growers would consider inappropriately water-retentive in conventional containers. The reason for that is, when you rest the containers on the soil with the earth acting as a wick, you've turned the grow bags into a miniature raised bed; this, from the perspective of hydrology. If you site the containers on a non-porous surface, like concrete or a deck, then you need to consider them as you would a conventional container, and any mix comprised of any combination of the list above will be excessively water retentive.

Container soils aren't about what the soil can provide in the way of nutrition. You can very easily take care of nutritional needs much more efficiently than you ever could by relying on the soil to provide; this, by simply ignoring the nutritive value of the soil and instead concentrating on the soil's STRUCTURE - on its ability to to provide the most favorable ratio of water:air for the life of the planting, and selecting an appropriate fertilizer that offers the assurance you're providing all the essential elements at all times. It's important to remember it's just as important to have air in the rhizosphere (root zone) as it is to have water. W/o ample amounts of air in the soil, the roots cannot function normally and the plants suffer.

In many cases, the limiting effects of a poor soil go unnoticed, with growers contenting themselves with the results they are used to. Unless they actually SEE how much easier and more productive it is to grow in soils that are well-aerated and support little perched water, they have no basis for comparison. Thousands of people (literally) have come to understand the importance of air in the root zone through their reading here at GW. So far, I haven't seen any turn their back on well-aerated soils once they have tried them. The few that might have and have returned to commercially prepared peat-based mixes undoubtedly put a very high premium on grower convenience, prioritizing it in queue ahead of what is best for the plant.

Al

Thanks Al for adding your valuable input to the discussion :-) A lot of questions arise on this forum regarding container soils - many folks assume that since this IS the Soils and Compost forum, this is the place to ask and while their questions can certainly be answered here, sometimes the advise from those who garden primarily in the ground can be misleading.

I have never used a Smart Pot personally but I would always opt for a more textural and very freely draining potting soil for any kind of contained planting system. Just my opinion :-)

GG

Al, I've got a question. If a person was to go with the 511 approach in a smart pot on a deck, wouldn't you have the same problem as a soil mixture would with where would the water go if not out the bottom of the smart pot . Both would be =. Am I looking at this wrong? I'm just curious. I hope you don't take this wrong.

Thanks, Pam. You're always very clear in your explanations, and I rarely ever have the urge to even add to anything you say because you always tie up all the loose ends so well. I think that comes from a good grasp of the subject and anticipating what the traditional arguments will be, with your being able to nip them in the bud (the tying up the loose ends part). The only reason I posted to this thread was because the interesting twist regarding HOW this type of container is used adds something additional to the conversation.

I too, think there is a widely held misconception that because something works well in our gardens & beds, it should follow that it must also work well in our containers. While 'rich and black' may be coveted adjectives when used to describe the soils in our gardens and beds, it can sometimes, if not usually, be an undesirable quality in our container media.

Phrases and terms often the subject of discussion when referring to the soils in our gardens are often irrelevant when it comes to container media. Phrases like "feed the soil ...." might more aptly be replaced with something like "guard the structure ...." when it comes to container culture. The populations of soil organisms that break down the organic components in the soils making up our gardens and beds, break down the structure if our container media just as readily - so are they desirable or even necessary at all in container culture? The answer is a resounding 'NO', and we need look no farther than hydroponic growing to see that the soil life so coveted by all (including me) in our gardens & beds is unnecessary at best and counter-productive at worst, as their consideration applies to container media.

When it comes to media for containers, if the grower directs his primary focus toward the soil's structure, that is to say toward drainage, aeration, the ht of the PWT, and to the soils ability to retain that structure for the intended life of the planting, he will be better prepared for achieving the goal of better yields and more attractive plants.

I've grown plants in media based on many dozens of combinations of components; among them are compost, manure, peat, coir, topsoil, sand and others equally fine. Some will be surprised, others not, but the easiest and most productive soil I have ever grown in for conventional containers looks like this:
{{gwi:1295}}
a soil comprised of 2/3 inorganic particles. Still though, this soil has a much larger organic fraction than most of the soils in our gardens and beds at 1/3 by volume ..... so the soil pictured above has a larger organic fraction than your garden soils - food for thought.

The above soil is followed closely in the categories of easiest to grow in and most productive by the pine bark-based soil seen at the center here:
{{gwi:2389}}
This soil is nearly ALL organic. At a 5:1:1 ratio of pine bark:peat:perlite, it is about 86% organic, has excellent drainage and aeration, and should retain those properties over the life of the planting because of the durability/longevity inherent in pine bark as the primary ingredient.

Al

Hi Al, I'm new to gardening and recently potted up some plants to try growing on my deck. I find your info to be very interesting and I want to learn more. Can you point me in the right direction? Is there a book or website that describes these mixes? I just potted 4 20" pots with Miracle Grow potting mix. If there is something better for my plants I would love to learn about it. Thanks.
Laura

Hi Laura,
"AL" is the book ;-)
Google "Al's Gritty Mix" you'll get a million hits, they are all good, and you certainly can't go wrong following his learned advice !

{{gwi:30780}}

Al: You are so right about drainage and air being vital for roots' growth. Some one posted a blog blasting EarthGro top soil as being sticky mud, and Schultz potting soil is better than MiracleGro since it has coarse materials, providing better drainage.

I planted William Shakespeare rose in 100% MiracleGro potting soil. He did not like it. I had better luck with pots when I filled the bottom with loose pebbles.