BuildASoil Starter Kit: Grassroots Edition

The classic way to grow living soil Living soil in a 15-gallon pot, the classic way. Everything comes in one kit: the 15-gallon Grassroots fabric pot and the living soil and amendments to fill it. No bottles to mix, no feeding charts. You water by hand, top it with a living mulch, and the soil does the rest. The Grassroots pot is included, along with the soil and amendments to fill it. What is in the kit The pot and everything to fill it. One kit takes you from empty to growing, with no shelf full of bottles in sight. Included The 15-Gallon Grassroots Living Soil Container A Grassroots fabric pot with a food-grade plastic Moisture Lock Liner, and the sweet-spot size for living soil. The liner keeps moisture inside where your living soil wants it, instead of wicking it out the sides like a plain fabric pot. Roots run all the way to the bottom and air-prune along the last 4 inches, which keeps the whole root system healthy. Fifteen gallons is where the biology really takes over and the soil becomes genuinely powerful. It is big enough to buffer your mistakes and push yield, and it is a great size to run no-till, where you keep planting back into the same living soil round after round instead of starting over. 2 Cu Ft BuildASoil Recipe 3.0 Our flagship living soil, and the same mix that earned the number one spot in an independent test of 26 bagged soils. It arrives biologically alive and fully amended, ready to plant the day it lands on your porch. Two cubic feet is right around 15 gallons, just what one pot holds. 1 Gallon BuildAFlower Compost The living, biologically active compost layer you lay on top, built from compost, worm castings, biochar, rice bran, kelp meal, mustard seed meal, and gypsum. This is the layer your plant actually feeds from. You add about a gallon at setup and reapply as the plant grows. 3 lb Bag Craft Blend 2-4-2 Our most popular all-purpose top dress. A slow-release blend of premium dry amendments that keeps your soil fed for weeks at a time. This is the product that replaces a whole row of nutrient bottles. ½ Cu Ft Organic Straw Mulch Your living mulch layer, and it is Certified Organic. That matters, because straw that is not organic has often been sprayed, and those chemicals can carry right into your living soil and harm the biology you are building. Spread over the surface, it holds moisture, feeds the soil life, and protects the surface roots. It is also what makes the cover crop upgrade possible. Optional upgrade Add a Cover Crop Sow our 12-Seed Clover and Cover Crop Blend across the surface and let it grow up through the straw as a living mulch. It puts more living roots into the soil, moves moisture through the root zone, and feeds the soil with root exudates. As it grows you chop the fresh greens and drop them right onto the straw, and your pot turns into a self-feeding ecosystem that gets richer every round. Optional, but it is where this setup really shines. Why living soil, and why 15 gallons is the sweet spot Living soil works the way the ground does in nature. A web of microbes and fungi holds the nutrients and hands them to your plant on demand, so your job gets a lot simpler. At 15 gallons, that whole system really comes alive. •Nothing to mix or measure The food is already in the soil. No bottles, no feeding charts, no pH pen on the counter. •Hard to overdo Living soil buffers itself, so it is very hard to overfeed or burn your plant, even on your first grow. The big soil volume gives you even more room for error. •Gets better with age Fifteen gallons is a great size for no-till. Keep planting back into the same living soil year after year. It is cheaper and far more sustainable than starting over. •A living mulch on top Cap it with straw, and grow a cover crop through it if you like. That living surface feeds the soil and holds moisture where the roots want it. Setting it up in six steps This is the BuildASoil way to run a 15-gallon pot with living soil. The full walkthrough, including the watering and feeding details, lives in our Classic Setup Guide. Fill the pot with living soil Add all the BuildASoil 3.0 in your kit, about 15 gallons, filling the pot right up. Transplant your plant Settle your plant or seedling into the soil first, before you top dress. Add Craft Blend on top Sprinkle a quarter cup of Craft Blend per plant across the surface around your plant, right on top. No mixing in. Add the compost layer Lay about a gallon of BuildAFlower Compost on top of the Craft Blend. This is the living layer your plant feeds from. Add your organic straw mulch layer Cover the surface with 1 to 2 inches of Organic Straw Mulch. It holds moisture, feeds the soil life, and protects the surface roots. Keep it lighter, around an inch, if you plan to grow a cover crop through it. Water it in Give everything a good watering to settle it and wake up the biology. Then keep that top layer moist. That is it, you are set up. How to water (the important part) The 5 to 10 percent rule: water no more than 5 to 10 percent of your soil volume at a time. For a 15-gallon pot that is roughly 0.75 to 1.5 gallons. Keep the soil evenly moist, never soaked and never bone dry. Match the water to the plant. A small seedling in a big pot drinks very little and not very often. As the plant fills the container it drinks more, more often, until a big plant may want water daily. Read the plant and the soil rather than a rigid schedule. Want to automate it? BluMat and AutoPot systems handle the watering for you, holding the perfect moisture level with no timers to fuss over. Read the full Classic Setup Guide → What to add on your end The kit handles the pot, soil, and food. Here is the short list of what to have on hand so you are ready on day one. A seed, clone, or starter plant Light, whether that is a sunny spot or a grow light Clean water and a way to pour it Optional: red wigglers to speed up the soil life Made by people who grow this stuff too Every batch is mixed in small runs in Montrose, Colorado, with the same ingredient and batch transparency we have stood behind for over a decade. Start here, learn the rhythm of feeding the soil instead of the plant, and you will have the foundation for everything you grow next. A look inside your 15-gallon pot The whole setup in one picture: deep living soil full of roots, a rich top dress layer, and a living straw mulch with a cover crop growing up through it.