Eliot Coleman and Soil Blocks

If you haven't checked out the videos of Eliot Coleman and his wife, Barbara on Youtube, you may want to consider it. They offer a LOT of great advice on everything from seed spacing to compost. I have been at this for five years and done a lot of research and still learned a lot from every video of theirs I watched. This video explains soil block makers and shows how to make them for free!

If you want to buy soil block makers, they are available at Johnny's Selected Seeds

Coupon for free shipping for 2013 from Johnny's

I am also learning a LOT from Eliot's Book, "The New Organic Grower." The book is more up to date than the videos according to the differing mixes in both for soil blocks.

There are many advantages to the soil seed blocks.

1) They require no additional fertilizer as all they need is already in the block with the compost.
2) The peat in them acts as a super fertilizer
3) Because they are divided from each other by only air, the roots do not grown in circles like they would in a container

Downsides
1) I hear they need to be watered more often, makes sense.
2) slightly larger initial investment (but after that, never break like stupid plastic pots)
3) no leaching from plastics (yes, I think about things like this
4) no waste of the plastic containers.

So, as you saw in my previous post, I made my soil blocks today and started my first seeds of the season. NOTE TO SELF: Next time, before starting soil blocks, read the chapter!!! I thought it was sufficient that I had watched Coleman's video on soil blocks, but there is so much additional information in the chapter in his book on it, I really wish I had read it first. I will summarize here for you with the most important parts.

* Seed Starting Soil Block Mixture:
16 Parts   brown peat                                           4 gallons
1/4 Part   colloidal phosphate                             1 cup
1/4 Part   greensand (leave it out if not available 1 cup
4 parts    compost (well decomposed)                 1 gallon
 - Note: Coleman also recommends using soil that has previously harvested onions and/or leeks as they seem to add something to the soil that is beneficial for starting seeds.

* Do not cover seeds with soil. At all.

* Many seeds can be put into "mulitplant" blocks

These include:
Beets - 4 (still need to acquire some beet seeds)
Broccoli - 4
Cabbage - 3 (whoops, next time)
Cucumber - 3
Leek - 4
Melon - 3
Onion, Bulb - 5
Onion, Scallion - 12
Peas - 3
Spinach - 4
Turnip - 4

* I only bought the mini-blocker and the 1 1/2"/2" blocker, but he recommends different sized blockers for different seeds. Below are the ones I care about.
Celery 3/4" transplanted to a 2"
Broccoli - 1 1/2" (I'll try to plant them in a group of 4 for an experiment as suggested above)
Cabbage - 1 1/2" (already did it in a 3/4", so it'll be an experiment, I'll probably do the next set in a "multiplant" larger block
Chinese Cabbage - 1 1/2"
Cucumber - 1 1/2" (also try multiplant and not multiplant)
Eggplant - 3/4" to 2"
Leek - 1 1/2" (again, already did it in the smaller, try bigger and bigger multiplant)
Kale- 1 1/2"(same deal)
Lettuce - 1 1/2" (same deal)
Melon - 1 1/2"
Parsley - 3/4"
Pepper - 3/4" (at least I got that one right!)
Pumpkin - 3"!!!!
Spinach - 1 1/2" (same deal)
Summer Squash - 3" !!!!!
Winter Squash - 3"
Swiss Chard - 1 1/2" (same deal)
Tomato - 3/4"


The below recipe will be useful later, once I have to return Coleman's book to the library, so I'll record it below:
*Blocking Mix Recipe (for transplanting seeds to after they are started)
3 buckets brown peat
1/2 cup lime. Mix.
2 buckets coarse sand or perlite
3 cups base fertilizer. Mix.
1 bucket soil
2 buckets compost
Mix all ingredients together thoroughly. Do not sterilize the mix.

Coleman's book also has EXCELLENT chapters on crop rotation, undersowing and green manures. I'll delve into this subject more when I have more time…and I'm hoping the new book I ordered, "Grow more vegetables" will have some insight on succession planting and even succession planting within the same season.