It can be so tricky to buy potting soil off the shelf. All of the bags are covered with pretty printing...with no truth windows to show off the quality of the product inside.

The brands you can get at the big-box stores are notoriously hit or miss in quality. So I was thrilled to find high quality garden amendments of all types at White's Mill on the other side of town.

I splurged on small bags of two different brands to get an idea of their quality before making a larger commitment. At home, I pulled out a handful of each and was quite pleased with the texture and moisture level of both Fox Farm and Happy Frog. (I was even more pleased to discover that White's Mill's prices are less than half of what's listed on Amazon.)

Here's a closeup view of the two soils side by side. Pretty similar! I potted up four lettuce seedlings into each type of soil and will report back if I see a difference in growth. But, at the moment, I'm guessing it would be hard to go wrong with either product.

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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



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