Mixing Mel's Mix Using the Power of One

First step: line the bed with weed blocker. The black plastic cloth came in a roll of 3x25 feet. Since my bed is 12 feet long, I simply folded the cloth back on itself and cut it in half with a pair of scissors. This was more difficult than it sounds because, my luck, it was windy.

I decided to put the cloth in so it would go up the sides, leaving a 2-3 inch overlap in the middle. I used masking tape to stick the cloth to the tops of the sides so it wouldn't move, then I placed newspapers two layers thick on the bottom of the bed, directly on top of the existing grass and weeds. The wind kept blowing the newspapers around, but with one quick spray of the garden hose, the newspapers stuck to the bottom weed cloth like paper mache. Yeah!

Next, I put a tarp over one of the ends of the bed so that the sides of the tarp were elevated like a rim.

Then I did some mental calculations and came up with this plan. I would mix each component in 55L amounts. The number 55 was simply half the 110L bag of vermiculite. So for for the first batch:

1. Dump in half bag of vermiculite, 55L;

2. One bag of mushroom manure, 25L;

3. One bag of Sea Soil, 32L; and

4. 1/2 bag of 3.8 cubic feet (ft3) Peat Moss, 1.9 ft3 (expands to approximately double volume).

This was about 1/8 of the total volume of the bed. This was still a large volume of material to be mixing all at once. It was truly back breaking labour. I couldn't even lift up the huge block of Peat Moss. I had to roll it end over end to get it anywhere near the bed. Clunk. Clunk. Plop. Then, when I got it to the edge of the bed, I couldn't lift it up to put it inside the bed. Simply too heavy. The peat moss was so compact that it was hard to any quantity out from it. I tried attacking it with my fingers in gardening gloves, and that worked to some extent. Later I used a spade to break it up and scoop it out. Even when I had managed to get it out of the bag, the peat moss was clumpy. I had to break up the clumps with my fingers.

I tried lifting one side of the tarp to mix it, as Mel suggests. Mel also suggests doing it with a friend. That didn't happen. I was by myself and didn't want to wait for my husband to help. I wanted to get it done immediately. The tarp was incredibly heavy. I sweated and sweated. It was pouring down my face, and it was fairly cold outside, 15C.

I also did this while wearing an N95 dust mask. The vermiculite and peat moss are dusty, and the vermiculite may possibly be harmful to inhale. The mask made it worse, as did wearing my glasses, which fogged up from all the action.

Raking the mound did not work. Neither did scooping it up in spades and turning it over. Later I refined my technique and mixed it this way:

1. Add 1/4 bag vermiculite, 27.5 L;

2. 1/2 bag mushroom manure, 12.5 L;

3. 1/2 bag Sea Soil, 16.25 L;

4. 1/8 bag Peat Moss;

5. Repeat.

This way, there was more layering of ingredients and I could mix it more easily. Then I started mixing it with my hands, and gave up on the tarp rolling method. After I finished mixing, I simply moved the tarp to the other side of the bed and dumped it out.

It took me three hours in all to create "Mel's Mix." Nice stuff it is. I enjoyed moving my fingers through the mix. It was so loose and airy, not like ordinary soil. After filling the bed, I removed the masking tape.

My calculations were a bit off. The mix doesn't come up to the 12 inch wall edges. It's short by about an inch. That's okay, since SFG only requires 6 inches of depth most of the time.

I created the square foot grid by buying round maple dowels from Kerrisdale Lumber for 81 cents for a 1/8 inch dowel four feet in length. The 1/4 inch dowel was 1.29 each. The dowels were various lengths, but the shortest was at least 4 feet long. I marked off 12 inch lengths on all 20 dowels and used them as a measuring guide. I cut all width dowels to fit just inside the walls of the bed, using a rose clipper. I tied the dowels together with twist ties. Unfortunately, a few of the dowels were not straight, so I have some wonky squares in the bunch. This whole process took me 1.5 hours! I did not cut the lengthwise dowels, but let them overlap. I made three grids of 4x4.

Finally, I planned out the garden, basing the location of plants according to how much shade they needed. I labelled coloured popsicle sticks with permanent marker: red for beets, orange for carrots, green for peas, blue for spinach, yellow for celery, purple for mizuno. I accidentally planted a carrot square next to another. This violates SFG guru Mel's rule against putting two squares of the same thing next to each other.

Now to wait for something to come up!