Growing Medium for the Year

by Larry, Webmaster
(CT, USA)

For a growing medium I have always preferred a combination of perlite and vermiculite held down with a minimum of sand for a Mittleider grow box, but this is not set in stone...

Any growing medium mixture is acceptable as long as it is 'airy' enough to drain water quickly and not suffocate the plant roots.

As prices go up each year I went to purchase some vermiculite and perlite and was unpleasantly surprised at the high price they wanted. And, of course, no else around sold these items (and I checked).

So I decided not to buy these items and come up with an alternative. Overall, peat moss is cheaper by volume so I purchased some with playground sand and some 'soft playground carpet'.

'Soft playground carpet' is a thick, soft layer of wood chips and who knows what else put around playgrounds so kids bounce, unharmed, when they hit the ground.

This was very cheap, and so was the playground sand. Therefore my Mittleider growing medium this year consisted of 2 huge bags of 'soft playground carpet', a 40 pound bag of playground sand and several bags of peat moss.

It did not look pretty but it did the job at a relatively cheap price...