kingconeflower said:... a mixture of good top soil, mushroom compost,coco shells, double shredded hardwood and some sand.....He said in that way, he was "covering all bases!".....
- Starting out with "good top soil" is like starting on Third Base.
- Adding compost is always a good idea.
- Further improving the drainage and aeration might be a life-saver if the "good" top soil was heavy or prone to compaction. It's almost always desirable, since the soil will be in effect "tilled" during mixing and transport into your beds. That kind of thorough "tilling" is likely to reduce some of the soil "structure" or "loft" that was providing good aeration.
It just occurred to me: heavy tilling tends to reduce structure and open pore space in soils that were already well-aerated and drained. However, in very heavy, blo cky soils with little or no void spaces, heavy tilling can break it up into clods that then DO have some drainage and air volume.
I would substitute shredded bark for hardwood chips and dust. Bark breaks down slower than wood of similar size, so bark's contribution to drainage and aeration would last longer.
Also, since it breaks down slower, it would cause less "nitrogen deficit" as microbes fed on the wood but then scavenged all available nitrogen, stealing it away from plant roots.
Presumably the wood was not a major % of the mix, or was coarse or pre-composted for a while. Or the mix had SO much available nitrogen that more N was provided than the wood consumed.
But I'm biased: I really like pine, fir or hemlock bark. Also, the one time I tried to use a mostly-wood "soil conditioner" mixed
into in a bed, almost nothing grew there for one season, and I dug up an ugly mass of powdery fungus. Really nasty! The next year, the bed was OK again.
P.S. Wood CHIPS are great on TOP of the soil as mulch. Since they aren't mixed through the soil, and dry out, microbes can't steal available N from the soil and use it to digest wood. Instead the wood just decomposes very gradually on top of the soil, and plant roots have the free soil N to themselves.
