Little River Coop Garden Soil
1 cubic foot bucket

contains: Florida peat moss, Canadian peat moss, pearlite, composted organic material, humus, pine bark, dolomite

Our garden soil is the backbone of our veggie gardening system and while it may seem like a simple product theres actually lots of considerations to be taken when picking what soil to fill your new veggie garden bed with. South Florida based veggie gardeners mostly choose to make a raised bed and fill it with new soil because we have no naturally occurring topsoil due to our unique geological situation. We spent 5 years formulating our custom blend of materials to suit the needs of vegetable plants, which are a bit more sensitive and less hearty than things like hedging and ornamental plants. The peat moss & composted organic material are included to hold moisture and water soluble nutrients, while the pine bark and coir are included for aeration and drainage. The dolomite is a pH balancing mineral that is included to offset the acidity and the humus is critical decomposed and stable organic matter formed by the decomposition of plant & animal matter over time (similar but different to compost).

If you head to Home Depot and buy the cheapest bags of “dirt” (we never say dirt, instead try to get in the habit of calling it “soil”) you’ll be shooting yourself in the foot, as the soil you fill your garden bed with is a big step towards success in the garden. Its so important we have a whole workshop just about building & caring for it!

Our soil mix is NOT certified organic (we are working on it with our soil company) but it contains no chemicals and is made entirely of organic material. One reason why getting it certified is proving challenging is because it contains compost made from local tree trimmings, which we think is cool and very important, but its hard for the organic certification board to think about because it isn’t easy to regulate. If you choose to buy bags of soil from Home Depot make sure it doesn't have non-organic fertilizer added to it, because miracle-gro loves to sneak it in there (gross)! Also, the bags of soil medium you buy from a big box store came from a different state and thusly had to be pasteurized to cross state lines. That means it's 100% completely dead and devoid of any naturally occurring soil life. Our soil is made locally in South Florida and bagged on site so it isn’t pasteurized.

All bagged soils DO NOT contain the vital macro & micro nutrients that your plants need to thrive, so wether you buy from us or elsewhere you must add a granular OMRI certified fertilizer to your soil before planting. Heed our warning! This is the most common mistake we see beginner gardeners make in their garden. While adding compost and getting your soil fertile in other ways is also an option, its a slower one that takes lots of time and effort, so if you'd like to plant in your soil right away you absolutely cannot leave out the addition of granular organic fertilizer.

How to figure out how much soil you need…  If you're trying to fill a raised bed from scratch you’ll want to use a simple soil calculator like this one: https://www.gardeners.com/how-to/soil-calculator/7558.html

To help you out, there are 25 cubic feet in a cubic yard, and we use 1 cubic yard (thats 25 buckets) to fill a 4 x 8 foot raised bed that is 10 inches deep (thats our standard raised bed depth, if yours is deeper we recommend filling it with a draining medium like pea rock until its 10-12 inches deep, then adding soil). 

If you’re wanting to refresh your 4 x 8 foot raised bed for the fall planting season, we recommend getting 5 buckets of soil.

If you just want to amend your native soil when planting a fruit tree, we recommend getting 1 bucket of soil per fruit tree.

Why do we sell soil in "buckets"? and why did the price increase? 

We tried single use plastic bags a few years ago and we really didn't vibe with it. Our soil comes with some naturally occurring moisture and so the bags were H.E.A.V.Y.! like customers couldn't get them out of their trunks heavy... Plus, single use plastic always weighs heavy on our sustainable hearts. So for now we've switched back to our bucket system. The buckets are basically 7 gallon nursery pots with handles. If you need pots for your garden they are perfect for that, so keep them and reuse them. If you don't need them, please save them and bring them back and we will give you your deposit back.

$2.00 of your soil bucket purchase is a deposit on the bucket, so for every bucket you bring back we will give you $2.00 in cold hard cash, or credit for a new purchase. Heck, if you have 7 gallon pots in good shape (with handles) that you didn't get from us we will buy those from you too!