The Importance of Healthy Soil

Like any greenhouse operation, Robrick has plants that die and plants that are sub-standard. At many greenhouses these plants and their associated soil go into the dumpster and then off to a landfill someplace. At Robrick anything vegetable and any old potting soil goes to a large compost pile. It never goes to the dumpster and on to the landfill. From time to time the compost pile is trucked off and used as a soil amendment on our own land or land owned by neighboring farmers. Here in Florida our sandy soil can use all the organic material we can provide.

Many years ago we used a less expensive soil mix that used Styrofoam instead of Perlite. We learned the hard way that Styrofoam floats out of the compost pile when it rains hard. Those little Styrofoam beads quickly made their way right into our front pond. We have not used Styrofoam in our soil mix in over 15 years. It costs us a little more but who wants little white beads floating downstream? We also use material from the compost pile from time to time to pot up large woody shrubs that we grow for the local market.