Martinhouse
Deceased
This last spring, with the help of some family, I put together a nice container garden composed of 60 half-barrels from the white plastic 30 gallon barrels.
Anyway, I used the wrong type of dirt to fill them and this year's garden has been a total bust. I don't mind a learning experience, but it needs fixing. I'm buying some better soil, some that I know will work well, but what I have in the containers now is mostly the new stuff which turns out to be mainly sand and powdered-up peat moss that seems to be colored black with charcoal.
If my property had soil that was mainly clay, I would try to gradually mix it in with the sandy stuff in the containers, but I don't have any and it would be horribly difficult to blend it in. This afternoon I got a sudden idea and I need to know if it would work.
What if I were to get lots of the cheap kitty litter that doesn't have any chemicals in it? I know kitty litter is clay, but is it the right kind of clay to balance out soil that is too sandy? If so, would it need to be half-and-half proportioned?
I sure hope someone knows if this would work as it will take me a while to hit all of the Dollar General stores in town to get enough kitty litter to mix in 60 containers.
Oh, and I plan to put the poor soil that I remove from the containers into the chicken run where I put all the leaves in the fall, so it can eventually be blended with all the leaves I give the chickens to grind up and make into compost for me.
Anyway, I used the wrong type of dirt to fill them and this year's garden has been a total bust. I don't mind a learning experience, but it needs fixing. I'm buying some better soil, some that I know will work well, but what I have in the containers now is mostly the new stuff which turns out to be mainly sand and powdered-up peat moss that seems to be colored black with charcoal.
If my property had soil that was mainly clay, I would try to gradually mix it in with the sandy stuff in the containers, but I don't have any and it would be horribly difficult to blend it in. This afternoon I got a sudden idea and I need to know if it would work.
What if I were to get lots of the cheap kitty litter that doesn't have any chemicals in it? I know kitty litter is clay, but is it the right kind of clay to balance out soil that is too sandy? If so, would it need to be half-and-half proportioned?
I sure hope someone knows if this would work as it will take me a while to hit all of the Dollar General stores in town to get enough kitty litter to mix in 60 containers.
Oh, and I plan to put the poor soil that I remove from the containers into the chicken run where I put all the leaves in the fall, so it can eventually be blended with all the leaves I give the chickens to grind up and make into compost for me.