Guides · 7 min read
Soil, mix, and what bags to buy
Native clay in a raised bed is still clay. Buy the bag that matches the job.
Three different products
Seed-starting mix is fine, sterile, and low-fertility. It is for trays. Potting mix is for containers: bark, peat or coco, perlite, a starter charge. Raised-bed mix is coarser and meant to sit in a box for years.
Garden soil in a bag is often composted sand sold to people who did not read the label. Do not put it in a pot. Do not start seeds in it.
The bed
A first 4×8: fill with a bagged raised-bed mix blended with compost at roughly three-to-one. You can spend a year arguing about native soil. You can also eat lettuce in 30 days.
After year one, top-dress with compost each spring. Do not till a working bed into dust. Roots and worms already did the mixing.
What not to obsess over yet
A soil test is useful if you have a lawn you are converting and you suspect lead, or if tomatoes have blossom-end rot every year. It is not useful if you have not watered. Fix water, then light, then soil chemistry.
Match your ZIP · Shop a kit · Start dates
The sow list
A note when it is time to sow
Seasonal, not daily. We will send what to start in your zone, and skip the rest of the year.
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A first garden that actually finishes
Six crops, one 4×8 bed, and the mistakes that waste a spring.
Seeds for containers, balconies, and rented light
Renters now out-buy homeowners on vegetable and herb seed. The packets have to match the pot.
Short-season Midwest: Chicago and zone 5–6
Last frost in mid-April. First frost in mid-October. That is the whole argument.