Who here makes their own potting soil blends?
I would very much like to learn more about nutrients and specific plant needs, and potentially start my own business selling bags of custom blended soil.
Mostly I make compost and use it to modify my soil. Potting soil for most people who make their own is sifted compost.
It's best to build compost bins and start recycling all your organic waste that way. As far as nutrients goes a lot depends on the quality of ingredients in the compost mix. Lucerne, comfrey, stinging nettles, manures, legumes, human food waste, coffee grounds, wood ash and eggshells are all potent nutritionally.
The most powerful and most mysterious ingredient is
life. Worm farms produce vermicast and vermifluid - the poo and wee of worms - that are strong and pathogen free fertilizers. The 'hot' compost smokes because so many microbes are working on the organic matter that it heats up to 60C (140F). All the detritus eaters (slates, earwigs, beetles and cockroaches) are at work on the decaying matter and their burrowing, defecation, carcasses and activity aerate and granulate the soil.
Additives like hormones, mineral salts, micronutrients, water crystals, seaweed, microbial inoculants, fish emulsion, gypsum, zeolite, blood and bone etc. add to the cost of the potting mix.
This could be a long topic. LOL.
