Soil, Mulch, & Compost

Anita: Have you ever been to a nursery and been overwhelmed by the pallets of soil, mulches, and soil amendments that are there to be found?

Dany Millikin: Here you go, Anita.

Anita: Hi Dany Millikin. What’s this?

Dany Millikin: This is a large bag of pine bark mulch.

Anita: And heavy.

Dany Millikin: And heavy, yeah, but mulches and soils are so important to successful gardening, so you do have to deal with these large bags.

Anita: You do.

Dany Millikin: In fact, we’re going to go through a few great soils now.

Anita: Because you see these bags of soils, and you’re like what? What do I do with them?

Dany Millikin: Right, right. Well, you want to grow plants in them first, and a great way to start is compost. So great thing about compost is it holds water. It really feeds the soil. It’s really great stuff.

Anita: And you can put it onto your beds, onto your lawn, anywhere. And this particular mulch is our favorite: Nature’s Way Leaf Mold Compost.

Dany Millikin: Yeah, it’s a great [inaudible 00:00:56] from Nature’s Way, they do a great job. There you go. Next up, we have a really great Landscapers Pride bed mix and now this is good. It’s going to stay fluffy, really lasts a long time.

Anita: And not only that, but it comes with ColorStar added to it.

Dany Millikin: Oh, wow.

Anita: So you’re fertilizing at the same time as adding a little more soil to your garden.

Dany Millikin: Well that’s great. So if you’ve kind of forgotten your beds for awhile, this Landscape Pride with ColorStar and it’s a really great stuff.

Anita: Yes.

Dany Millikin: Speaking of fertilizer, here’s MicroLife.

Anita: Our favorite fertilizer, this is the 6-2-4 formulation and it’s a soil food.

Dany Millikin: Yeah. So it’ll feed the microbes in the soil while providing nutrients for your plants. This stuff works really great and it’s totally safe.
Anita: And it won’t burn your plants.

Dany Millikin: Which you love that, or you or your pets. Sometimes you can have an issue with divots in your yard and that’s where sand comes in.

Anita: And sand can be added to any type of hole that you have in your lawn. But Dany Millikin, you had a good tip about this.

Dany Millikin: Yeah. So if you’ve got great soil already, soil’s thriving, grass is doing great and you have a divot, just sand’s okay. But if you’re worried about your lawn not being that healthy, compost and sand mixed together can do the same purpose, but also feed the soil at the same time.

Anita: Yeah.

Dany Millikin: So really great stuff. Lastly, but not leastly is Expanded Shale.

Anita: Expanded Shale adds… Well it’s porous so it’ll absorb water and also release the water.

Dany Millikin: And then it can also serve the same role as gravel. It can really add a lot of texture to the space, water can flow through it and it really can make a potting mix a lot better.

Anita: And it aerates the soil at the same time.

Dany Millikin: Well, bags of this stuff is all very, very heavy. And if you go to any of our HomeShow Garden Pro co-op locations, they can help you take it to the car as well as give you great advice.

Anita: As a matter of fact, Dany Millikin, could you take this out to my car right now?

Dany Millikin: Oh, right away ma’am.

Anita: Thank you. For more information, go to homeshowgardenpros.com