Vegetables Gardening - Growing Organic Vegetables

Most organic gardeners would tell you that you shouldn't just mix sawdust into the soil because it will rob the soil of nitrogen.  But the Mittleider method talks about sawdust and sand mixtures.  Shouldn't this also have the same nitrogen robbing problem?  Does the mix just replace the nitrogen faster than it's consumed by the sawdust?

Sand is easy and dirt cheap here.  But getting sawdust would be a little more difficult and expensive.  Can I just plant in sand only?  

brian

Brian Group:

Find the other ingredients.  Straight sand does not hold water and you would be watering much more often.  In the USA we have something called Perlite that holds something like 20 times its own weight in water.  I like that as a part of the mix.

Jim Kennard