HelpfulGardener.com

Have you noticed how a lot of gardening techniques are like baking techniques?

I was mixing up a batch of seed starting and transplanting mix using my favorite recipe. There I was sifting the rich fluffy compost, mixing in the light colored sand, rich dark Under the Woodpile Dirt, rock phosphate, greensand, dolomite lime, soaked and swollen/crumbly alfalfa pellets (like gelatin powder or yeast). Watching the different colors come together -- yep, just like baking, mixing the dry ingredients. Same tech too, sweeping motions from outside in, turning the bowl ... eh... the saucer sled (it's EXCELLENT for mixing small batches. for large batches I use the wheelbarrow).

Then it was time to add water to moisten it. So what did I do? Make a mound with a hollow center -- home made pasta or bread dough! Poured the water in and started to mix... until just crumbly, or the stage in pie-dough making when it's READY for those spoonfuls of ice water, when the mixture just holds it's shape when squeezed, then falls apart.

Love the enthusiasm of your dreaming here! I can almost smell the mix as you're working along.

I've moved this topic from What Doesn't Fit to Seed Starting and am bumping it since I had the impulse to link to it several times recently.

Main seed starting time is *almost* here!

I'm baking bread right now. gardening and baking are complimentary thats for sure

Applestar, do you sterile the compost you use for the seed starting mix or do you just use screened compost from the bin? If you sterilize it, what's your protocol? thanks

Nope! Not sterilize, not even pasteurize.
My soil is full of living organisms, big and small, from worms to microbes -- and I like it that way!

(When I was experimenting with soil blocks, earthworms were migrating from one block to another, leaving visible holes -- that had me puzzled until I figured it out. )

I don't screen very fine either, not even for seeds.