Has anyone else noticed bagged “top soil” not being of soil quality, but rather a finely shredded mulch with small bit of compost…
On two separate occasions this year I have purchased multiple bags of three different brands of top soil, garden soil, etc. from the big box store, and they all appear as exactly the same material; a shredded mulch, rather than dirt. (It certainly does NOT match the image presented on the bag, of those that have an image…
I also suspect the quality is negatively impacting the growth rate of the planting…
I think it’s been like that for quite some time at least for soil mixes. The bulk ingredients may be something vague like “regionally derived” forest products. Many times in the south, they end up being pine bark fines.
I’ve never seen what you’ve described, but I have bought top soil to find it was probably 50% sand mixed with some organics. Never bought that kind again.
At over a hundred pounds per cubic foot, you are not going to find bagged pure top soil for sale at Lowe’s. Plenty of landscape places that sell bulk mulch also have soil, sand and rock to load up your pickup truck.
I have noticed this problem also. Bagged topsoil seems to be almost all composted woody products and very little mineral dirt in it. I filled new raised beds with 1/2 bagged topsoil and 1/2 compost and noticed how crappy and non-dirt like the bagged topsoil was. I planted cabbages in two of the beds, which normally I have great success with every year in my old raised beds with better topsoil and compost mix. My cabbages (20) planted in the new beds did nothing, despite being well watered and fertilized. Out of 20, I got about two small heads. The rest had okay outer leaves but had rot inside or failed to grow a dense head at all. In past years my cabbages in the old raised beds were huge and dense with little effort on my part except protection from insect feeding on leaves. I was so disappointed. I guess I will have to try Earthworks or some local landscape materials place and see if I can get some real topsoil. I am a little leery though. They used to have great compost sold by the truckload and it had lots of different stuff decomposing in it. They told me this year they no longer make their own but have some “better” compost they buy from somewhere else. So not true. The new stuff is crap and seems to be mostly decomposing bark mulch perhaps with a little bit of something else mixed in. I think with the changes to topsoil and compost sold, it is in an effort to cut costs. If anybody finds good bagged topsoil, please post!
So far as I know, there’s no real standard requiring real topsoil. For one thing, how would your vendor be able to distinguish fill dirt from top soil?
The good news is, you can make your own fake topsoil better and cheaper.
Get a load of wood chips from the transfer station in your pickup truck. A yard or more. Get the pile good and wet. Throw about 8-9 pounds of urea N on the pile. Mostly dissolved in water, but reserving maybe a couple of pounds of the prills to be sprinkled in the middle and lower parts of the pile. Mostly put the Urea in the top half of the pile and let it trickle down.
Turn the pile now and again etc. etc. After the pile “finishes “ send it to a university test lab. Guesstimate the square footage of the pile if it were to be spread out 1 1/2 to 2” deep and add micros accordingly. In my experience, about half the micros are available in commonly available household chemicals. A few have to be ordered Be sure and adjust ph based on the test.
Go to the Landscape supply store and buy a bag or two or three of Turface—-the stuff that they use to make pitcher’s mounds. Don’t skimp here.
Screen your pile as needed and add the turface. ( I found rabbit wire to be useful and fine 1/4 inch maybe, mesh also.)
The end result is very useful although it’s not of course, topsoil. More like potting soil. And cheap.
My “potting soil” source sells by the truckload. There is way too much biochar in it. But I mix it up anyway before using it. Still using composted wood chips. But Kudo’s to TnHunter for his pine needle mulch idea. It really helps get the ph right.
Thanks so much for your very detailed and helpful answer! I may also try digging some muck soil out of the bottom of my small catfish pond. It is probably quite fertile and the pond would only be helped by being a bit deeper.
I got a few bags of “top soil” and they all usually have in the directions to mix it with the soil like an amendment. But most of them look like wood that’s gone through a chipper a few times, not soil
Early 1990’s I used to buy bagged Amish top soil from OH. It was excellent. Now, no matter where you go, it is just mulch. No top soil that I can see. Late 1990’s, Amish top soil went to hell.
I saw on an old garden show. Some guy brought in truckloads of top soil. I guess you have to buy it that way…but no idea.
I recall Dad buying topsoil for the garden. It was quite obviously real topsoil. We lived in the sunbelt and farm land was being taken over a mile a minute by the developers. Real topsoil was readily available.
That’s exactly what I am seeing despite trying different brands of bagged “topsoil”. I am going to have to go run my fingers through some bulk topsoil somewhere and see if I can get a pick-up truckload if it is decent.
Where I live you can’t even get decent real topsoil if you buy it by the dump truck load. The stuff you can buy on the island is all bark mulch and sand mixed with a bit of compost. In a year or two you will lose half the volume and be left with crappy sandy soil. My sister paid like $1600-$1800 CDN to have “top soil” trucked in from off island. Even at this price from supposedly the best source available, the “top soil” was manufactured junk IMO. Better than the garbage soil sold here, but still not that great for the exorbitant price.
My old man had top soil brought in by the dump truck from off island 50 years ago and that stuff was primo. Everything I’ve purchased from here from various sources by the yard or by the dump truck load is manufactured garbage that in a year you’re lucky if you can even get vegetables to grow in it.
I don’t know much about bagged top soil but the yards here tend to offer both a manufactured mix of compost made from yard waste and woodchips and sand as a premium mix and normal and decent soil as their standard.
The premium is not garbage and lots of my customers have landscape contractors that use it to construct their raised bed kitchen gardens and it works very well for that purpose- except for blueberries because the compost tends to have a pH in the mid 7’s. The contractors almost never know to adjust the pH and it is hard to get it down to the mid 5’s when it starts that high. For blueberries they should probably use peat moss and sand if they don’t have access to a purer forest compost with a lower pH. Maybe grass clippings drive up the pH. I haven’t figured out why the compost that comes from yards is as alkaline as it tends to be- but obviously, it’s the ingredients.
If you are having trouble with a commercial top soil, check the pH. Problems with top soil are usually either textural (poor drainage) or the wrong pH for what you are growing. OM tends to be colloidal (at later stages of decomposition) which means made up of fine particles. Clay and OM share this trait.
As far as topsoil that has recognizable pine fines or wood shavings, the issue probably is too much nitrogen being consumed by the bacteria digesting the cellulose. Add extra, quick release N.
I use to get a lot of compost from the city which they make by collecting leaves in the fall and composting them. I’m pretty sure they added some sand or something else in the mix. A 5 gallon bucket was heavy, but not nearly the weight of the soil in my yard. I remember i would use it in mixes and it was always fine–grew lots of veggies with it. Where i live the soil is sandy loam…mostly sand.
