Thread: Buckets.....
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Old April 6, 2020   #4
zipcode
Tomatovillian™
 
Join Date: Jun 2010
Location: Romania/Germany , z 4-6
Posts: 1,582
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If you need a ton, making your own will certainly be cheapest. You need some good quality peat moss (not too fine, medium or coarse is better), and perlite and maybe lime.
Make sure you read what pH your moss is at, since if the pH is not pre-adjusted it will be acidic, and you need to mix lime in the right proportion to get it to about 5.5.

Something like 20-30% perlite is a popular value, the rest moss.

You should get everything in as big bales as possible, usually those will be cheapest per volume.
There are other recipes for mixes, but this is simple and imo effective.


Fertilizer is like this: if you make your own mix, and ingredients have zero fertilizer, mix in (well) at about 1.5g/l some decent complete chemical fertilizer (here in Germany i would use the 16-8-22 with microelements). A good common choice in US would be the masterblend (with the additions (calcium and magnezium), according to the tomato formula on their site).
This same masterblend (with additions), you can use to water later in the season, after a few weeks, at a dilution of 1-2g/l of water.


The organic way is doable, but slightly harder. Mix about 2 good full soup spoons in the top third of your bucket before transplanting. This will last 1 month or so. Tomato tone seems good. Some mycorrhizae would also help at the beginning, mixed in. Then after one month add some more organic, one spoon maybe 2 weeks per bucket. The problem is that you kinda have to mix this in at the surface, and at some point the root mass will be so dense that you can't really do it anymore. I saw some people do deep holes through the roots with a stick and pour organic in, seems like a decent idea. I would still use some inorganic from time to time though, since with organic only you might run into microelement problems a few months in (organic has some micros but depends a lot on what animal, what they were fed, etc).
I hope that helps.
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