I have seen several times on here beginners lamenting the cost of setting up a squarefoot garden using Mel's soil formula.It is pretty pricey and also of some concern to me that it relies on using products that have been trucked maybe hundreds maybe thousands of miles.

I would like to suggest an alternative of using strawbales. It's something old timers around here use. Our soil is very stoney. What they do is simply take a straw bale and chop out a hole with a butcher knife and stick their transplant in there. It works really well for tomatoes and peppers. I don't know why it wouldn't work for a lot of other items except really small seed plants like lettuce or carrots. It means no building a frame and no buying all those soil mixes.

The down side is you MUST MUST MUST water, and MUST MUST MUST fertilize. The folks I know use Miracle grow which you can now get in generic at walmart.

another thing that is done around here is people who have greenhouses grow tomatoes in bags of bark chips. Again you have to water and fertilize.

If you think about it the purpose of soil is really just to anchor the plants and hold the water and nutrients. Hydroponics uses small rocks or things like that.

If I were starting from scratch I'd spend my money on a good drip irrigation system and not an expensive soil mix.Most of our farmers have gone to round bales so it's getting harder to buy square bales, they're sold more in the fall for people to do halloween decorations. Square bales of hay are still pretty easy to get at the feed stores but I've never tried growing from a hay bale. I don't know if there would be too much "green" for the roots.

Anyway, would be interested in other folks thoughts on this.