First off, if you pay for it, it's called "soil". "Dirt" is free. Neither of your choices are organic, but then again, you'd be hard pressed to find organic soil in Florida. Your best bet, for an area that small, is to get top soil, pine fines, and sand in bags and fill your raised beds with them and mix it up yourself.

I sort of agree with fawnridge as neither of your two choices are fully organic, but I would go with the Forestry Resources as the better choice as the medium to fill your raised beds for the start up. I would strongly suggest you start up a compost pile so that you will have the organic amendments available for each growing season to apply in the beds. The heat in Florida decomposes the compost in the raised beds very quickly and you will constantly need to add it in. You will have to search around for what is available in your area that you can use in addition to your kitchen scraps. EXAMPLE; I was at the local hay/feed barn to get feed for my animals and learned they had 'spoiled hay' (hay that had been wet during a rain storm when a tarp blew off and now had fungus) PERFECT! for composting..... I took all they had (for their cost price). They were happy to be rid of it to make room for a new fresh load, I was happy to get it and make my barn smell like a mushroom cellar.

Lou

I have one raised bed bed equal in volume to your three, 4 cubic yards. I used(so far)2 yards of mushroom compost @ $20 /yd, 1 yd of hardwood sawdust (free), 1 yd of composted oak leaves (free) 1 bale of Canadian peat.I don't remember the price. I've added used potting soil, pine bark fines, compost, Black Hen, you name it. After two years it's begining to look like the soil in my Grandma's garden back in NC. Didn't cost much.
john

Great suggestions. Thank you. Lee Co. ext. called me back today and was a big help. Questions:

What are Cypress fine and Pine fines?? I have no clue....

Where would I buy mushroom compost?? I have heard about it but don't know where to find it.

Lou - yes, I am searching in my area.... becoming a "wacko" as described on the compost forum... eyeing up dead leaves in neighbor's trash piles.... LOL .... We have also been composting all kitchen scraps, news papers and yard clippings we can in the last 10 months and I'm amazed at how little we have ended up with!! I thought we would have lots by now!

I get my mushroom compost from a local landscape supplier. You can get it straight from the growers if you have one in your area, a lot cheaper too. It is great stuff. If you let it compost for a while longer you can use it as fertilizer. I get pine fines at Walmart. It's labeled Pine Mulch and it's in a purple bag. Timberline is the brand. The Canadian peat I saw at Lowes today. $9 for 3 cu ft which expands to a lot more.

Pine fines are simply the pine needles that fall from the trees.
The needles or fines are gathered and neatly bundled into bales and sold.
You can purchase those or gather your own if you have pine trees nearby.

Pine fines are simply the pine needles that fall from the trees. The needles or fines are gathered and neatly bundled into bales and sold.

That is incorrect. Pine Fines is pine bark chipped to a finer degree such that the size of the bark chips ranges from about the size of a quarter to the size of a dime. Many of us use Al's Mix for our container potting mixes, which is composed of approximately 70% Pine Fines.

Gatormom,

You defined pine straw as pine fines which is incorrect. But both are usable in your garden.

The pine fines is pine bark that has been chipped up into small pieces and used in the soil mix as slow composting amendments.

The pine straw is the matted dry pine tree needles found under the pine trees ( I wonder who discovered that? ) and is used as a weed, moisture, and heat barrier for the top of the garden soil. ( it helps to keep the garden soil slightly acidic and also is used under orchard and ornamental trees )

Lou

This thread has been so helpful. Thank you everyone for your input. Johnjsr - your response helped us realize we had ordered DOUBLE the soil mix we needed from Forestry Resources!! DH called them first thing this morning to cut the order (and cost!) in half! They are delivering tomorrow a.m. Where did you find a free yd of sawdust???

The bed frames are all finished and are so pretty. DH built them out of bamboo that some guys let us come cut down and haul for free. He did such a great job for never having worked with bamboo before! I can't wait to post pictures of what he did.

Lou - We are thinking we must be doing something wrong with our compost. We have been putting everything we can get our hands on in that bin since December and I bet we have about 8" - 10" of stuff on the bottom right now. We had BSF in there and DH is wondering if they ate all the goods! Even if they did though I would think that they should have left behind some castings that would be good fert????

Mrs tlc,

It sounds to me like you are doing it properly if the BSF now come to feed on your pile. When the vegetation breaks down into it's component parts the volume disappears. What finally you are left with is a rich growing medium that the nutrients are easily & readily taken up by your garden plants. BSF poop, worm poop, fungus, bacteria, etc. all work to break it down to that rich dark material we all strive for to put in our garden beds.

I have to agree on finding stuff to feed the compost bin is an ongoing ( sometimes losing ) battle as what I throw in there just seems to disappear. I have a chipper attachment for my tractor PTO and chew through the trees I take down here. The logs I burn to make charcoal, the branches I shred to compost and it all gets used up in the garden.

The charcoal works as 'Terra Preta' and really amends the soils here in Florida. So far I have only been using it only for my orchard trees. I use my cement mixer to mix all the components together into beautiful soil and then dump the mixer contents into my tractor bucket and bring it out to the tree planting hole that I've dug out for the new trees. I will take some pictures of the operation when I plant my trees that I ordered when they come in this fall.

Lou

mrs tlc
Well, I hope I did the math right. :>) Actually I rounded up to 18" deep, but it will settle. The saw dust came from cutting down and sawing up a big oak tree in my back yard. Come to think of it I guess it wasn't free.
john

Johnjsr - 3 yds was plenty since I was also layering with hay and compost. We are even going to have some left over to fill the containers for the tomatoes, etc. Thanks again for saving us quite a bit of money!!

Lou - you know, I kind of felt like that way, like it was an ongoing/losing battle - until I saw what it actually produced! I was amazed at how black and rich it was! DH said that when he was scooping it into the garden there were even the big red wigglers in there so I know that means it's good stuff!! I'm always trying to get people to give me dead leaves, kitchen scraps, etc. DH even got the produce manager at Walmart to give us 2 big bags of corn husks. I'm earning quite a reputation.. LOL ... In the end it all seems worth it.

Also remember that if you pay for it or not and are trying to be eco minded and go green it's called "earth".

Phyllie

I stand corrected.
Pine straw does become pine fines eventually.
I skipped a step and called it the wrong name.
Which ever product or name- it's all good.
Have you checked out the soil&compost forum right here on GW?
Interesting posts there full of ideas.

Here is a link that might be useful: Soil, Compost and Mulch

Gatormom,

We all make mistakes it is no big deal. You could equate pine needles to tree leaves...they break down fast and give their nutrients to the soil. Pine fines which are bark do not break down so readily and because of that add more moisture holding capacity and air space which makes the soil lighter. Needles never become pine fines, they just become soil. That may seem nitpicking but there is actually a huge difference. There are many grades/sizes to pine bark....to me pine fines are very small....peppercorn size up to maybe the size of a junior mint. But as you can see Tom's interpretation of pine fines is different, larger than mine but we all agree it is pine bark.

Thanks for all of the help. Gatormom, yes, I have checked out that forum, but things are so different here in FL that most times I prefer asking questions here from people who have experienced our unique climate. I always appreciate the suggestions and advice since I am very new to all of this. I'm happy with the soil/earth that I've ended up with so far between the compost we produced ourselves and the planting mix we ordered from Forestry Resources. I do have a piece of land that has a couple of Australian pines on it and I think I'm going to go up there and collect up some needles to use as mulch as well. Can't beat free!

I filled the bottom half of my beds with my unfinished compost, put on it some coffee grounds and a bag of leaves. Put a piece of cardboard on top and watered well. You could do this then put whatever soil you want to put on top. That would cut your costs by half and the bottom half of your bed is less likely to have chemicals and could very well be organic. Home Depot sells some kind of Andean soil and composted cow manure,both organic at a very reasonable price too. Best.