Making Soil for My Five Gallon Buckets

March 12, 2025

By yesterday, Nox had gotten very smelly since her last bath, so it was time for her to get squeaky clean again. In the morning, I washed her in the shower. After getting toweled dry, Nox sat outside in the sunshine with me.

After lunch, we sat outside on the front porch and watched the birds. While we were on the porch, a package arrived by mail. It was our master bathroom’s new medicine cabinet.

In the afternoon, Bruce took the mower and cart around to move branches cut from the fence row. The grass is greening up and Bruce wants to be able to mow soon without branches in the way.

While Bruce was busy with that, I put Nox inside and went to make potting soil for my five gallon buckets. It is a three part mix, coco coir, vermiculite and cow manure compost. I used my five gallon bucket to measure out the ingredients and a half barrel as a giant mixing bowl. I used a shovel as a giant spoon, stirring and mixing until the potting soil was uniformly mixed.

I shoveled it into five five gallon buckets and carried the buckets to the garden area.

I started rehydrating six more blocks of coco coir in a half barrel.

It took a while to rehydrate the coir. While I was waiting for the coir to rehydrate, Bruce installed a latch and handle on one of the barn doors. He was disappointed that the latch wasn’t level, but he decided it was okay since it was a barn. I didn’t take a picture of his work.

Once the coir rehydrated, I measured a 5 gallon bucket of it into another half gallon barrel. I had another 5 gallons left in the original half barrel. I measured it to make sure it was five gallons.

I added to each half barrel 5 gallons of vermiculite and 5 gallons of cow manure compost.

I was exhausted after mixing up the two batches of top soil one right after another.

I was happy to call it quits for the day and to go in to get supper.