This is a very useful thread for cheapsakes like myself. Thank you to all contributors.

Right now my challenge is getting intentionally 'garbage soil'. You see I have yarrow and it thrives in poor soil. I found some old yarrow in an empty lot near my apartment and it looks much better than my grown from seed two-months-along. Transplanting pretty much killed (wilted anyway) the leaves -- only the new growth is strong. The dried seeds and leaves of this truly wild weed smelled wonderful however!

So, perhaps I need to add more sand and perhaps clay (kitty litter?) If I can't find some unwanted-weeds-free deliberately low-value soil that I can put into my old man's cart and bring by bus, I will do what my grandfather did -- go into unoccupied lots, dig up some for free, then sift with a wooden square in which he nailed some screening. One challenge I am finding is the amount of 'lumber' in commercial garden (non-potting) soils. And nobody sells poor soil. No market demand I suppose.
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contexts:

- focus: herbs
- urban (renter with only a patio and sort of a lawn area to encroach upon!)
- westcoast Canada (Vancouver vicinity)
- hardiness zone 7b/81 (will move in 2 years to 6a/71)
- sun: 5-6 hours per day direct, Eastern and some southern (early afternoon) exposure
- container only for now (may join raised bed community garden later)
- beginner (with some vegetable gardening experience in 1970s)
- preference for organic
- goals: AROMATIC, medicinal, weeds, culinary
- why no food per se: as a community church charity volunteer I get all standard veggies for free, so I grow only what is impossible to get at food bank
- style: lazy, prefer weeds/invasive, why fight what works without much help?

ReaneC;
After reading the replies to your post, and seeing that you want this for your raised beds, then I would suggest you sheet compost or Lasagne Garden. When I first came upon this idea I thought to myself ' This can't be ' I gave it a try and sonofagun it worked!
You'll have to stay on your game at first, but then after a season or two you can slow up on keeping them topped, because as time goes by the compost becomes more dense. I can say that after 3 or 4 years into it my plants started to lose their vigor and that is when rock dust came into play.
Now as to the cost, not much out of your wallet, except for the materials for your borders if you want it to 'look' nice but after that, just a lot of work because your layers should not exceed 2 to 3 inches each. You can't beat this on so many levels. The plants will love it, you'll have a place to rid yourself of nearly all your yard & kitchen waste and it will use less water than your average 'dirt' filled bed.
I know I push this idea a lot here on this site and physically here as well, but the benefits all the way around from cost to water usage and even the environment as well with its carbon sequestering are all pluses.
Anywho, I hope this helps.
J.R.

TomatoTango said:I do about 1/3 horse manure, 2/3 worm castings, peatmoss, compost, and top soil. Then I add like 1 bag of perlite, maybe 3 CF total. This is in an 8x4 or 10x4 raised bed at 12" depth. I have great soil with earthworms in every handful. More perlite or vermiculite would be taking up space imo and it's not exactly cheap either. Horse manure on the other hand is like $10 for a truckload off craigslist.

Are you buying earthworm castings? Here in Canada at Art Knapps garden store it is $14 for a small bag which reads '2 litres' (very strange to measure a solid in liters rather than grams or ounces)

Today's recipe...

1. Go to vacant lot where there are many trees
2. Find a soft spot near a tree
3. dig a hole
4. fill a bucket with humus, removing obvious rocks and roots.
5. Add this to my outrageously expensive containers made of mixed soil ingredients: perlite, vermiculite, coir, packaged potting soil, packaged garden soil, mushroom manure, sand and what appears to be by-products from a lumber mill rather than the forest or farm.

Price for this ingredient - just my time

I am going back to my grandfather's container recipe: 1/2 wild soil (he would screen it also), 1/2 peat moss plus a *little* compost. But since I've already blown a return airfare to Hong Kong on store-bought dirt (for Pete's sake) I'll just extend the current boutique potting soils with something more pedstrian.

My yarrow and hyssop hate my fancy soils. My mints could care less. The nictonias seem to be doing OK in it. Time for a change.

Surprised me how interesting foraging for urban soil was. Within a five minute walk there are several empty gone wild lots as well as empty houses awaiting being torn down and high-priced condos built - being up-bid up by foreign buyers as investments mostly (we have a housing crisis in Vancouver).

Anyway, it was a very pleasant experience with some challenges. So far I chose four different locations, and the content varied...

1. Entire house destroyed and empty lot
content: Best so far, not many stones the spot I chose near a tree.

2. House and yard still standing after 8 years (lawn soil)
content: top inch of so looked best (moist, earthworms) but also the most difficult due to many rootlets. After 3-4 inches too many pebbles. In between most sensible to work with.

3. #3, except soil near house which was their flower bulb garden
content: large percentage of perlite. Amazed me considering the price of this at garden store. Maybe it was cheap 40 years ago? Soil nearest house *very* dry, almost like powder. A lot of trash in it such as broken bottles etc. Clearing the grass not difficult.

4. forest (well, an ex-forest, 90% of tress cut down awaiting turning into a park
content: many roots and rotted logs, a challenge to cull for usable soil.

The challenge is access. Due to insurance liability these places are fenced more or less. I enjoyed the dabbled sunlight, discovering insects, and nearby location. Strangest thing was I found many small (under 1/2 inch) orange spheres in the soil. I thought they were eggs of some creature but when I broke one it was solid and dry. I felt like a ten year-old boy again exploring 'abandoned' property. I do this every few days now and am replacing/edging ion natural soil into my containers. I prefer the aroma and texture of the free soil to store-bought. of course there will be weeds and maybe diseases.

Hermes,
the perlite and dried spheres, maybe they dumped many old commercially potted plants in their garden. The spheres could be old timed release fertilizer.

The soil texture should depend on if the raised bed is off the ground, or 'raised' on the ground like an enclosed mound. Two different animals.

Seems like using potting soil recipes for raised beds would be prohibitively expensive. Shouldn't normal soil amendments like compost be added to the existing dirt instead? Using amended garden soil, my garden thrives 95% of the time on natural rainfall alone. If I used a mix of perlite and peat, I'd have to water it three times a day.

I remember reading about the "Victory Garden" program that was on TV years ago. Seems like the producer was getting upset over the time it was taking to prepare the soil for the show. Some comment was made that anyone could now grow plants in that soil(started off as compacted soil under a parking lot) so much peat had been added.

Seedfork said:I remember reading about the "Victory Garden" program that was on TV years ago. Seems like the producer was getting upset over the time it was taking to prepare the soil for the show. Some comment was made that anyone could now grow plants in that soil(started off as compacted soil under a parking lot) so much peat had been added.

I watched it till Robert Swain left, then the show lost its guiding soul.

The amount of petlite some people rescinded, is suppose to make the soil light and fluffy, and let air through the soil for what they call free air exchange. Oxygen you the roots is important too.