Square Foot Gardening: Vermiculite Sourcing

I'm waiting to get my raised bed kit from Costco. I ordered it on May 2, and it is due to arrive on June 26. Not quite the 7-10 days I was originally promised by Costco... I missed most of the early growing season!

Read about Mel Bartholomew's Square Foot Gardening (SFG) method. More garden for less work. Anything requiring less work sounds great to me! Mel advocates a mix of 1/3 peat moss, 1/3 compost, and 1/3 coarse vermiculite. Well, easier said than done... The peat moss is easy enough to find, as is the 5 different kinds of compost. The problem is the holticultural grade vermiculite.

Many discussion groups interested in vermiculite seemed to be marijuana hydroponic growers! They recommend buying vermiculite by mail order through Worm's Way, http://www.wormsway.com/detail.asp?sku=VER944. It's a very reasonable $25 US there for 4 cubic feet. It's reputedly easier to get vermiculite in Canada.

Through the Square Foot Gardening group at Facebook I discovered that Sun Gro makes vermiculite. Sunshine Strong-Lite Horticultural Coarse Vermiculite. The Sun Gro website directed me to a few locations near me: Prickly Pear in Richmond was one. They sell 8L bags for $3.99. Home Depot sells a vermiculite (but not coarse), 9L for $6.99.

So I did my calculations. I will be building an 4x12 box with a 12 inch depth. That requires 48 cubic feet of Mel's Mix. One third of that would be 16 cubic feet, or 453L. Hmmm... that means I'll need to buy 56.6 bags of 8L vermiculite for a total of $226.50 plus tax. So, I put in a telephone call to Sun Gro headquarters in Bellevue, WA. They referred me to Customer Service at 1-888-797-7328 who referred me to local Sun Gro representative for BC, Fred Wickens. He was very kind and helpful. He noted that vermiculite used to be mixed into their potting soils but that is no longer done, and that it is not cost effective to ship vermiculite from the East Coast to sell here. The vermiculite available locally is shipped from South Africa. So much for buying local...

He referred me to Eddi's Wholesale Garden Supplies in Surrey, BC. They sell 110L bags but they would not sell to me as I am not a retailer. So back to the local garden centres. Mr. Wickens had mentioned Gardenworks, which sells the 110L bags for $40. Jackpot! 110L? Now we're talking! Unfortunately, they sold out over the weekend. Hearing that got me into a frantic state of mind, so I tried to order my things over the phone for delivery to get my claws on the next shipment. Well, the vermiculite they were expecting that day showed up, but only two bags. I need four. Also, it was medium grade. I find it strange that the supplier would only ship two bags. I would have to wait until perhaps Thursday for the last two bags I needed.

So I was back to calling around for vermiculite sources. Art's Nursery only has the 10L Dutch Treat bags for $5, despite being "one of Greater Vancouver's largest retail and wholesale garden centres." I did discover, however, that they offer Sea Soil for $65 a "tractor scoop", which is "60-70% of 1 yard." After some calculations, I figured out that I need one tractor scoop. The problem is that delivery would cost $100. If I was willing to truck in the soil myself, this was definitely the place to go for Sea Soil. http://www.artsnursery.com/bulk.asp

For Sea Soil, another option would be to have "Got Dirt Ltd." deliver the dirt to me directly. They did not have peat moss or vermiculite, and I would still have to pay the high delivery charge (less than $100 but more than $50, can't remember). I would rather get the one stop shopping thing done to save on delivery charges. I just couldn't picture myself lugging bag after bag of soil from the store to my car, and from my car to the house.

Ward Teulon of City Farmer also offered to supply me the soil, for $385 plus taxes, which includes laying down newspapers and putting the Sea Soil in the box and amending it with organic fertilizers. Alas, it would not be Mel's Mix. He suggested 25 bags of Sea Soil, which was far less than I calculated for total volume required for the bed.

By searching online, I found a supplier in Vernon, BC, Briteland Distributors, who had the 110L bags along with an interesting assortment of supplies ranging from organic gardening supplies to janitorial and food service indudstries, among others. Shipping costs to Vancouver would be prohibitive, as the supplier would have to find a freight company to ship. Well, if you live near Vernon, this might be a great place to buy your supplies. They even have bat guano!http://www.briteland.com/wecs.php?usetemplate=formatted_organics

David Hunter Garden Centre was mentioned on the Sun Gro site, so I tried there. Bingo. The 110L bags are in stock in the Surrey store, for only $27! Yeah! Other items were also cheaper than GardenWorks, all except Sea Soil. How puzzling.

Here is what I'm buying:

4 x 110L medium grade vermiculite @ $27
2 x 3.8ft3 peat moss (which expands to 16 ft3)
8 x 25L mushroom manure (horse poo) @$3
13 x 32L organic sea soil @ $8
Landscape cloth, $5 for 3x25 feet.
Delivery $25

TOTAL COST: $275 plus tax.

The large bags of vermiculite will be sent up from the Surrey store since the Arbutus store has none.

For comparison, a similar purchase at GardenWorks (Mandeville):

4 x 110L medium grade vermiculite @ $40
2 x 3.8ft3 peat moss (which expands to 16 ft3) @ $17
7 x 30L mushroom manure (horse poo) @$5.50
13 x 32L organic sea soil @ $7
Landscape cloth, $13 for 3x50 feet.
Delivery $70

TOTAL: $409.50 (but 25 feet more landscape cloth and 10L more mushroom manure) plus tax.


Miles at the Arbutus store of David Hunter spent lots of time laughing at me on the telephone when I asked him for his opinion on what composts to buy. He ended up critiquing the whole venture. He had heard of SFG, but thought I would be better off simply digging up the soil in the ground and filling it with mostly mushroom manure, as my mix was not cost effective. When I said that the SFG was supposedly foolproof, he said it was more simply "foolish." Ha ha. True that spending $275 for everything delivered (plus taxes) is fairly exorbitant for a vegetable garden. It would take me forever to recoup the costs if this was a commercial venture. He didn't understand the need for vermiculite at all. So while I am worried, I am going to go on blind faith that the guru of SFG knows what he's doing. I appreciate that Miles had good intentions, and I am appreciative. Heck, I've spent more than $275 on tickets to Beauty and the Beast for the whole family, so I'm not terribly worried. He also suggested I scrap the worm castings as being too expensive ($23 for 20L). This was the piece of advice I did listen to. I was just trying to follow the requirement of five different kinds of compost that Mel prescribes.

I wish my own compost was ready. I've been composting since 1997, but the oldest compost in my new home is about 3 years old and only a small amount seems to be ready. I already used it when I planted some mini pumpkins in the existing garden bed.

Miles also suggested that I use a rototiller to mix everything together. When I mentioned the SFG idea of putting the soils on a tarp and mixing by lifting up the corners, he laughed again. He suggested physiotherapy might be in order after I'm done!

I hope it doesn't matter much that I have medium, and not coarse vermiculite. A quick look at others asking the same question on other gardening forums shows that medium vermiculite is okay, but will break down sooner.

Delivery of the soil is now timed for delivery of the garden bed kit. Dreading the back breaking work of putting it all together.

Update:  March 22, 2012.  I called David Hunter to ask about vermiculite.  I am concerned that the medium vermiculite has now broken into smaller pieces.  It is now $35 for 110L of the coarse vermiculite.  They now have a Broadway location again, at 2560 West Broadway between Larch and Trafalgar.

Update March 13, 2013.  David Hunter (604-733-1534) has medium vermiculite, 100L for $50!!!  Wow, in the course of four years, the price has doubled.