What is going on everyone? Welcome back to the Epic Gardening

podcast. Today we are joined again by Dr Bethky who's a soil scientist, a

consultant for HitMoss and HitMoss is a new sustainable growing media made from organic recycled paper.

And if you were listening to yesterday's episode, you'll know why that's so important as we talked

about the evolution of potting soil, going from the very beginning

to using quite a bit of peat moss and now in phase three shifting away from peat moss and looking

for potentially more sustainable options that also have some other side

benefits as well.

But what we're going to talk about today is going back down to those basics, those nuts and

bolts and asking the question of what actually makes a good soil mix.

So Dr Bethky, I think I'll just pose that question to you and in your opinion what is a good soil mix?

Well, let me first say there's no bad soil.

There's a lot of soils that are inadequate.

They just need improvement.

And you can grow in anything if you work hard enough.

One of the things is a good soil, you don't have to work so hard to grow an excellent

crop and they're a good soil has to do many many

different things of obviously it has to hold up the plant it has to provide

water and nutrients it has to be suitable home for microorganisms and good biological activities. So we want to make sure that the substrate that the plant grows in has the right combination of properties.

And I always say if I could just engineer a good soil, I would first engineer the physical properties.

It's got to have enough airspace and enough drainage so that the gas will exchange from the

roots. The roots expire or give off waste gas.

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