Dutch growers & good potting soil?

[JPB]

What do you use and where do you buy it? It is hard to find good potting soil in Holland, and impossible to find loam-based ones...

Thanks, Hans

[Lesley Cox]

Maybe you'll have to invent something Hans. I'm trying a new mixture which has about half crushed pinebark fines, quarter very fine beach sand (from high on the beach and not salty) and quarter rotted pea straw which I've only ever seen used or mentioned as being used in New Zealand, but if you have access to farmland where peas have been grown commercially, there's nothing so good for adding rich, crumbly humus. It rots down very quickly if watered and left to be damp. When the mixture is ready I'll add some slow release fertilizer, probably high potash Osmacote in a long term formulation.

[Luc Gilgemyn]

What do you use and where do you buy it? It is hard to find good potting soil in Holland, and impossible to find loam-based ones...

Thanks, Hans

The same goes for Belgium Hans : no loam based compost.
That's why on every occasion we try to bring home some John Innes when we're hopping over to England ! 

[mark smyth]

Westland do a bag of top soil that contains too much of what I think is sand. The product looks nothing like soil

[JPB]

Well, one thing is to know what to use, but the other is to find it!!! Rotted pea stray sounds like an ingredient for a magic potion! I guess I should also add a teaspoon of spider legs...

For the moment, I use good quality peat based soil (DCM brand) and mix different amounts of perlite, seramis, sand, and lava trough it. It works, but still wondering what my fellow-Dutch use...

At least, relatives of mine are going to Scotland in the spring, so I'll ask them to take a bag of John Innes. But I'm still looking for a more permanent solution.

HAns

[gervandenbeuken]

Well Hans, as long as you are not a commercial grower and need a small amount of soil you can fix your own loambased compost.
The only thing you need to do is to work like the old fashioned way. You have to go to the meadows near a riverside and search for mole-hills.
You need to mix it up with several other ingredients, just what the plants prefer. Limy or acidic. Gritty or peaty. Etc, etc.
This is the most perfect altenative for John Innes compost. The real perfect John Innes compost is very hard to find nowadays in the U.K.
This is what my English plantfriends told me. I know one good adress, but you need to inform me by email about this.
It is the way how I started growing alpines many years ago. Today I'm a commercial grower and leave up my mix to a firm who supplies a wonderful loambased compost.
The only problem for you could be the big quantity you need to order.
Success!!!

[Susan Band]

Hans, I can give them some molehills if they want to collect only joking, I don't think a holiday spent collecting mole hills is high on their list of activities.

[Lesley Cox]

I am sure, from experience that a compost with a small proportion of actual loam in it is the best of all, for all plants including high alpines. It need be only as much as 5 or 10%. There seem to be bacteria or something else in the loam that are beneficial and that are absent from soil-less composts. I don't have a problem with botrytis in liliaceae bulbs with the compost with a little loam in it whereas I do, in a soil-less compost whether based on peat (especially) or pine bark (less so).

Ideally, one would have a section of lawn to be dug up. The turfs, if stacked upsidedown make a wonderful, humusy soil which is a great addition to potting mixes, in varying quantities according to what is being potted.

The pea straw mentioned above makes a wonderful mulch around rhodos and other shrubs or on top of dormant bulbs such as snowdrops, erythroniums or cyclamen, which come up through it as it gradually rots down. We are able to buy it in bales for about 5 euros each or really large bales (equal to 10 small ones) for $25 euros each. I have 20 small bales mouldering away gently now, and they'll be used in the winter. An old friend I had reckoned he raised his children on pea straw. It is also, of course, a wonderful and effective weed suppressant, especially of annuals such as chickweed and as it's incorporated each year, the soil becomes more and more humusy.

[gote]

I have got a feeling that I should put a couple of buckets of loam in my car, drive to Holland and trade against some rare orchids or something. 
Only half joking acually. I could easily export a cubic meter or so but It would be expensive to drive all the way.
Göte
 

[JPB]

Well, thanks for the suggestions! I'll try the "upside down turfs" method and go hunting for mole-hills once the soil is warmed up. I do already use small additions of clay (keileem) to my mixtures and have no problems with fungi

Anyway, it seems that growers in Holland do not use peat-based composts and have their own ways of aquiring good potting soil...

Still frustating, that I can choose around each street corner from many, many different brands for toothpaste, shampoo, even peat-based soil, but not a single bag of decent loam-based soil is available in this country It would be a good business for Gote...you're welcome any time!!

Ger, you have a PM

Cheers, Hans

[Pascal B]

Hans,

Try looking for soil used by growers of cacti and succelents, generally that is more loam based. All plants I grow are in peat based soil but they fall in the catagory "woodlanders" such as Arisaema and Asarum, I use the various mixtures of Jongkind soil, number 6 has added clay for more compact growth and moisture retention. For the choice Japanese Asarum cultivars I use the same medium that most Japanese growers use: Akadama. That is high grade granular clay like stuff that is moisture rententive and yet free draining. Unfortunately it is a bit expensive to buy from Bonsai suppliers (17.50 euro for a 16 ltr bag....) so only worth trying for small numbers of plants.

[cohan]

i have never seen any loam based commercial soil where i have lived in canada--not in toronto, not  in alberta in the city or here in rural areas;
almost all commercial potting soils are peat based (yuck) with perlite (double yuck); those that are not peat are composted bark, which is ok for woodlanders, but i would not use it for cacti and succulents etc (the soils sold for those are peat with more perlite than usual mixes--i wouldn't use those)..
sometimes summer garden centres do have large bags of various kinds of topsoils, and i have occasionally found something more loamy or clayey (in toronto, haven't looked at them here), though sometimes 'topsoil' is still just composted bark and peat..

[Lesley Cox]

I don't think I've ever seen bagged loam/soil in the garden centres or elsewhere. If we want to buy it, it's either from somone like a contruction firm or developers who are clearing a piece of land for housing and usually remove the topsoil first, for replacing later. We can also buy in bulk, loose soil from the garden centres but their sources are the same as those mentioned. It's probably useful to know an obliging farmer too though strictly speaking it is illegal to remove topsoil from anywhere at all, without resource consents and assorted other bureaucratic obstacles.

Some years ago Roger and I owned a turf farm and the end trimmings from the strips of turf were frequently sought by gardeners for stacking and conversion to very good quality and fertile soil.

[cohan]

I don't think I've ever seen bagged loam/soil in the garden centres or elsewhere. If we want to buy it, it's either from somone like a contruction firm or developers who are clearing a piece of land for housing and usually remove the topsoil first, for replacing later. We can also buy in bulk, loose soil from the garden centres but their sources are the same as those mentioned. It's probably useful to know an obliging farmer too though strictly speaking it is illegal to remove topsoil from anywhere at all, without resource consents and assorted other bureaucratic obstacles.

Some years ago Roger and I owned a turf farm and the end trimmings from the strips of turf were frequently sought by gardeners for stacking and conversion to very good quality and fertile soil.

here, too, you could buy soil of various grades from landscapers/gravel companies, by the truckload! and could probably go there with buckets--i imagine things are considerably more controlled in the netherlands; here i can dig my own on the acreage, but that's of no interest or value to anyone else...lol