How To Use Triple Mix. The Top Secret To Know

As a gardener, you have to know how to use triple mix in two steps for raised beds. Using triple mix in addition to a greenhouse will guarantee year-round productivity of vegetables and other crops. Remember that it’s not enough to use any soil on raised beds, and you might be shocked by the difference if you considered using this soil mixture to your garden. 

Generally speaking, the triple mix is simply a combination of topsoil, compost, and peat moss. The result is a favorite among gardeners because you can use it to almost any plant, from fruit trees to even evergreens. So before you start planting in your raised beds, read down below the top secret for your garden’s success.

How To Use Triple Mix: The Secret For Raised Beds

For raised beds

You can use triple mix on your raised beds in ornamental and vegetable gardens. Depending on your assessment, triple mix can act as a top dressing or improve the soil quality for specific crops.

Check soil

For starters, check the quality of your soil before adding triple mix. This way, you or the supplier will identify how much mixture your garden needs. Adding triple mix to raised beds makes it ideal for planting for an extended period. 

Top dress or use as a soil amendment

Remember that raised beds are meant to be permanent in the garden or greenhouse, so it should supply the ideal growing ground for annuals and perennials. The University of Idaho recommends preparing the soil of raised beds, and the composition of triple mix ticks is the perfect soil amendment. Therefore, you can treat triple mix as a top dressing for raised beds and spread a thin layer on top of the beds.

If you’re considering amending the soil before planting, some gardeners even fill their beds with triple mix and compost where ¾ of the ratio is the triple mix.

Why use triple mix for raised beds?

The University of Saskatchewan recommends triple mix for raised beds. First, it is already rich in nutrients thanks to compost, eliminating the need for additional fertilizers unless the plants have different requirements. In addition to improving the soil quality, the peat moss component of triple mix helps with water retention to maintain soil moisture and even retain nutrients for the plants. 

You can also prevent your raised beds from being waterlogged because of the better aeration after adding triple mix. 

When not to use triple mix

There will also be instances when triple mix is not sensible to use. For example, be wary of using triple mix as a top dressing for lawns or flower beds. In some cases, the mixture may have plenty of weed seeds depending on its manure component. 

The good news is that this consideration is easy to overlook as you can sterilize the mixture to make sure that it will be weed-free for the garden. You can also guarantee that commercially sold triple mix will be free of weed seeds. 

What Is Triple Mix?

As mentioned earlier, triple mix is a mixture of topsoil, compost, and peat moss. However, this composition can vary, depending on the situation and what the gardener needs. For example, the compost part of the mixture may provide specific nutrients, and you might even find worms in the mix. 

Some manufacturers add manure, sandy soil, and black loam. Having sandy soil in the mixture will make it easier for the nutrients to leech quickly and absorb the plants. It also hastens the breakdown of the mix and improves drainage. 

On the other hand, some mixtures have a small amount of black loam. It turns the color of the soil darker, so its primary purpose is to improve the plants’ vibrancy in the raised bed. 

Why Is It Important To Prepare The Soil For Planting?

Throughout this article, one might get curious about the importance of preparing the soil for planting. Triple mix also provides the main benefits of soil preparation, such as increased nutrients and drainage and retention. Unless you are sure with your soil’s quality, it’s necessary to check it and make the proper amendments before planting. 

Different plants vary in nutrient requirements, and when you’re starting with young plants, they will quickly absorb the nutrients in the medium. Therefore, you want to avoid deficiencies by adding fertilizer or a rich mixture like triple mix. You should also check the soil drainage, and moisture retention as drawbacks in these qualities will negatively affect your plants. 

Excess water must drain efficiently, but the medium should also have good moisture retention to keep the plants growing and healthy. Some soil types such as clay can be heavy, so adding a triple mix can help loosen and improve the qualities mentioned. 

Conclusion

As time goes on, gardeners have developed different mixes to improve the medium for planting. This is why it’s essential to learn how to use triple mix because of its extensive list of benefits. In particular, triple mix is beneficial for raised beds. 

You can improve the soil quality, moisture retention, drainage, and nutrients of the raised beds for ornamental and vegetable gardening. Gardeners commonly use triple mix as a top dressing, but you can also incorporate it as a soil amendment. However, the emphasis is necessary on checking your medium first to adjust the triple mix components accordingly.