For those keeping track at home, I have some interesting numbers. Earlier I stated that my recipe should fill approx. 20, 7 gallon bags. Also Pure Harvest asked about labor costs.
So yesterday morning I headed off to the Hydroponics store to fetch more perlite. Made it home and got to work. For yesterdays test, and to get some numbers, I decided to make essentially a half batch. I decided to only use 1 bale of peat moss, and use how ever much perlite was needed.
First I measured out in 5 gallon buckets the quantities of perlite and peat moss. A brand new 3 cu.ft bale of peat moss, from Lowes, filled 6 and 1/2, 5 gallon buckets. A brand new 4 cu.ft. bag of perlite filled 5, 5 gallon buckets. Normally I just measure out as I need the product, so it was interesting to see how much was in each virgin bag to start with.
One thing to keep in mind is that, depending on your source, peat moss could be in a 3 cu.ft. bale, or in a 3.8cu.ft. bale. My local Lowes has switched to the smaller 3 cu.ft. bale. Im not terribly pleased, but it is what it is.
My recipe is 3 to 1. 3 parts peat, 1 part perlite. And lime. I mix the goods in a 27 gallon Rubbermaid tote. A concrete mixer should would be nice. I mixed up the soil and filled up my 7 gallon bags. I filled the bags about 4/5 of the way up. I transplanted better boy seedlings into the bags. I hand wrote a tag for each bag. Each bag was placed on the floor, then all was watered in.
Lets talk about labor costs, which Pure Harvest mentioned. I agree, one should have a general idea. Even if you are a 1 man (woman) show. All in all, I spent about 1:10 measuring, mixing, and transplanting. I felt that I was moving at my typical pace. Not rushed, and not too slow. Just a steady pace.
In an earlier post I said that my full recipe should yield about 20, 7 gallon bags. I mixed a half batch and ended up with 10 bags. So my math worked pretty well in the real world. Yes I will need to make a little more to top of the bags
So 10 transplants took about 1:10. Labor costs at $12.55 per hour (thank you Pure Harvest) My estimates come in, that those transplants cost me $14.64 in labor costs. For anyone interested, you can extrapolate from that. Obviously that does not include product costs.
Another interesting note, I ended up with left over 1/2 bucket of peat, and 3 buckets of the perlite. So if you made a full batch, using 2 bales, and 1 bag of perlite you would still have some leftovers. You could just mix the extra perlite and peat in, or figure out the lowest common denominator.
