Soil Blocking

This year one of my new experiments for the garden is soil blocking!

I watched a video from one of the florists I follow, Michaela Bunting, about soil blocking and I immediately wanted to try it.

There are so many advantages to soil blocking: you can plant more seeds in a smaller amount of space, the seedlings will suffer less transplant shock because they're being "air-pruned", you don't have to buy seed cells every year, and so many other benefits.

The soil blocker I now own makes 20 soil blocks, .5"x.5"x.5".

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When researching a recipe to use for making the soil blocks I came across Blossom and Branch Farm, who had several videos on soil blocking in general and a coupe different recipes.

I watched most of the videos and I have realized that the soil blocker I have is fairly small, and it seems like the 1.5" soil blocker is the best for the space I have. I will be getting one next season.

For the recipe for the first batch of seeds I decided to go with the Coco Loco Seed Starting Mix from Fox Farm. I wanted to also include green sand, and coconut quar, but was not able to get them for the first batch.

I planted my 10-12 weeks before the frost on February 4.

A tray with 240 seeds in soil blocks!

Seeds a week later!

After using the .5" size for the soil blocker I found that the seeds had to be potted up into larger containers because the plants were getting too large for the little blocks.

To fix this, I am going to purchase the 1.5" soil blocker which has larger blocks that will hold the seedlings until they are ready to be placed into the soil.

I will still use the .5" soil blocker, but I will only use it for flowers that are planted very early in the season, such as hardy annuals, or flowers that I have many seeds for and don't need to put in the cutting garden space.