What is Big Box Miracle Gro Organic Soil REALLY Made Of

Alright, this is John Kohler with growingyourgreens.com. Today we have another exciting episode for you coming at you from my backyard garden here in my compost alley, and today I'm actually sifting out soil to make a new batch to top off my beds before the summer season, before I plant for the summer. That being said, I was at my local Walmart, and actually I bought this soil, and so you guys may be surprised. I said, John, you got Miracle-Gro soil, well it's Miracle-Gro organic raised bed and garden soil, and it's like OMRI listed, it says OMRI listed on here, wherever. And the reason why I bought it, because I wouldn't normally buy this stuff, but check it out, there's a save $3.97, so basically it's half off. So it's like $4 for this huge bag, and it says grows more vegetables guaranteed, and it's OMRI listed here on the side. But, you know, as soon as I got this bag home, the first thing I did was sift it out. So I used a sieve here that I made, if you guys want to make your own sieve out of two by fours, link's down below for that video on how I made this very sifter here, that I used on top of my wheelbarrow right here, and basically I dumped about half the bag, and then I was sifting it out, once again, quarter inch screen, so all the big pieces are left on top, and after I sifted it out, I'm like, I'm looking at this stuff, guys, this stuff, to me, looks like mulch. It shouldn't actually be in a bag of raised bed soil, they should sell this stuff as mulch. I mean, these are nice large chunks, and in my opinion, they shouldn't mix this many large chunks in with garden soil, but once again, you know, when you guys buy soil in a bag at a local store, basically what you don't realize is that what it is made from, it is generally made from a waste stream. They take this waste stream, they combine them, put them in a bag, and now instead of being waste, now they charge you guys money for it, and it may not be the quality you're expecting. This is not the quality I was expecting from milk or grow organic raised bed garden soil, like there's no way in heck I would ever add this straight to my raised bed garden. This is way too chunky, woody, it can't lock up nutrients, alright. The other thing I want you guys to be aware about when you do buy bagged soil is I always want you guys to flip the bag over, don't just look at the nice pictures on the front, look at the back, and I want you guys to look at, over here, the ingredients, right, and it says, this product is formulated from one or more of the following processed forest products, manure, digestate, food processing waste, processed manure, agriculture processing waste, and or compost and fertilizer. And it says in California why this product is formulated with processed forest products, compost and fertilizer, in Texas, Michigan, and Oregon, Pennsylvania, Oklahoma, and Idaho, this product is formulated from compost, processed forest products, and fertilizer. In Georgia, this product is formulated with 45 to 55% processed forest products, compost, and fertilizer. In New Hampshire, this product is formulated with processed forest products, compost, and fertilizer. So I guess every state may have different regulations, and then they have to make a disclaimer on there. I'm not in any of the states listed, but if we just look at the state of Georgia, which I respect for their laws, because it says this product is formulated with 45 to 55% processed forest products. And you know, what is that definition of processed forest products? There's no legal definition. They can shred these forest products up into shreds, they sit them in a pile, it sits there for six months because they're, you know, too lazy, and then they finally basically add it to a compost mix in the ratio of about half, which in my opinion is way too much. I mean, if you did want to have some of this stuff in there, I mean, I would say 10%, but there are far more valuable things you could actually add to soil that you're going to top off your raised bed with. Once again, links down below to some of my videos where I basically make my own soil mix. Actually, that's what I'm doing today. Nonetheless, I wanted to bring this episode to you guys because I want to reveal the truth about this bagged soil stuff. As I'm sifting it out, I'm like looking down below the stuff that I sifted, and I'm like, alright, this stuff's looking pretty good. But then I'm like looking at the top stuff, and I'm like, man, there is just way too much composted forest products on top, or what I would call literally mulch. So what I thought I'd do for you guys is sift out the rest of this on camera, and then I'm going to fill up two identical five-gallon buckets, or maybe even more if I need it, with the composted forest products, the mulch, and actually the compost amounts, so you guys can see what percentage of this bag is what. And I'm going to guess it's about 50-50 based on the label, and of course, this bag is 1.5 cubic feet of compost, alright. So next up, let's go ahead and scoop out all this composted forest products into one bucket to see how much we got for this first sift. I will say I did find some plastic bits in here, here's some other kind of plastic bit or something. So, you know, that doesn't bother me too much, plastic is literally everywhere, but what bothers me a lot more is just the amount of literally the mulch that actually you should sift out and then actually put on top of your garden bed, not mixed in to the soil. Alright guys, so I got it all in there, it looks like about one-third of this five-gallon pot was the mulch, so what we're going to do next is actually just going to dump out the rest of this stuff and get it sifted out to see how much more mulch is actually literally in this raised bed soil. Alright guys, so what I will say is that this does have a really nice earthy smell, pretty much smells how it should be. You know, I am smelling a tad bit like ammonia, like maybe they could have composted some of the manure products down a bit better. Look, oh wow, look at this, here's a big just chunk of wood, we're going to just immediately dump in there. And then I usually just like to, another big chunk of wood, I just like to look at this and if I'm just looking at this here, what I'm seeing is like, I'm just seeing a lot of forested products that are just not really well broken down, I'm also kind of running my hand through here, because some of the compost is like stuck together, so I'm kind of like breaking it up so it'll actually easily go through my screen here, and let's go ahead on out. Alright guys, so I got it pretty much all sifted out, you can see all this is big stuff, it's not going through the screen, there's a lot of big, you know, big chunks, like just big pieces of wood, and then there's a lot of fines, like this hairy kind of stuff that's too big, oh here's a piece of plastic or something else that's nice and white, another piece of plastic here, let's go ahead and take those out. So yeah, so like when I did this, I'm like, man look at that, like it was probably up to here, and then I'm done filtering and it's maybe like half as much as literally the mulch, so once again, let's go ahead and put this into a bucket. Alright guys, so it looks like we almost got this whole bucket full of literally, in my opinion, I call this mulch, not compost, myself, and here it is, next up let's go ahead and take the screen out the way, and check out the amount that we actually end up, did sift out the actual soil that I will be using in my raised bed garden. Alright, so this is a nice fluffy soil we got here, and I mean there is definitely still some small chunks that made it through the screen, that are probably like long, or skinny, because I am using a quarter inch mesh, which I feel is a really good size for a garden bed kind of soil. So let's take another empty five gallon pot here, and fill this soil up, alright good, we got one five gallon pot filled up, and let's go ahead and fill another. Alright guys, so there you have it, I sifted out the whole bag of the organic raised bed garden mix by Miracle-Gro, I bought at Walmart, and you can see this is what we got, basically we got two buckets full of nice soil that I would use in my beds, of course this is going to get mixed up with my existing soil, my existing compost, rock dust, worm castings, biochar, and a few other really good ingredients, including insect frass, and then maybe some perlite before I top off my beds with this stuff, and then basically all the mulch, basically I end up using it in the bottom of pots, so that when I water the pots, like all the soil doesn't leak out, because it has like the mulch at the bottom to stop it all. But yeah, pretty much guys, that is what you're going to get when you guys buy the bag soil, you know, typically I'm not a fan of bag soils, I encourage you guys not to buy bag soils from big box stores, number one is because they're going to do stuff like this, you're going to basically get, you know, a lot of basically what I would consider mulch, if you do buy it, it's going to cause you to have extra work like I did, I mean I always screen out my materials to know what's in there, to check, but yeah, most people don't want to, won't go through this, they're just going to dump the bags into the garden beds, so in my, in this case we're about 30%, 30, 33%, you know, wood chips that I would prefer not be in there, but you know, this is what you get when you get bag soil, so what are the alternatives? I encourage you guys to visit local nurseries, local soil yards, local gardeners, find if your municipality has like a green waste program, where they take all the yard clippings and food scraps and compost it, many states may have this these days, and I encourage you guys to buy your soil in bulk. Number one, it is a lot cheaper and typically it's going to be a lot higher quality because this is what like landscapers and other professionals use, you don't see professionals typically buying bag soils in bags because they know the truth that basically the industry is just trying to get rid of a waste material from another industry, so like you know, the forest industry makes the forest products when they got to clear out forests, you know, and cut back shrubs, prevent fire, prevent burns, whatever they're doing, of course other industries that waste streams are used are from highly, from the manure industry, from the you know, confined animal agriculture industry where these animals are being confined and they're producing massive amounts of poop and that are contaminating waterways and instead of being a contamination problem and a hindrance, now they compost that down, whether they want to call it processed or you know, gone through their compost process, then it actually goes in as a percentage to this, which is definitely, definitely not the best either or whether it's basically food scraps or produce waste from like the agri, you know, produce industry, agriculture industry that gets compost and goes into this, which I'm definitely more in favor of because you know, the best foods to feed your fruits and vegetables are other fruits and vegetables, leaves and parts of trees, alright. So yeah, that's pretty much all I got for this episode, visit your local nursery, try to buy your materials in bulk, it's going to not only save you guys a lot of money, but also a lot of work from sifting it out and just you know, also poor performance from all this woody material in your garden beds in the future. So if you guys enjoyed this short episode today, please be sure to give it a big thumbs up, more importantly share this with other people so that they don't get ripped off buying bad soil products and they can learn the truth about it. Also be sure to click that subscribe button right down below so you don't miss my new videos. Upcoming episodes are going to be 5-7 days, you're going to learn a short way of learning on my YouTube channel. Make sure you click the little bell so you're notified as many videos come out. And finally be sure to check out my past episodes, past episodes are a wealth of knowledge. Over 1700 episodes at this time on this channel dedicated to teaching you guys how to grow your own food at home. So with that, my name is John Kohler with growingyourgreens.com, we'll see you next time. Until then, remember, keep on growing.