This is where it all begins and ends. Organic matter (compost) is the most important ingredient. I did a series of videos on this heap while studying a module on soil and composting last Autumn but forgot to put them up. For now I’ll just say a lot goes in here and it’s still not enough for my plot so I go out and find more, for example spent hops from a brewery, I’m also growing comfrey ‘boking 14’ especially for it. What I will say briefly while we’re on the topic of compost is, if you’re buying in your compost, ALWAYS get one that explicitly says ‘peat-free’ on it. Look it up, others have written extensively on this topic so read up about it if you’re not sure why. I went to @alysf talk several years ago at @guardian and she dedicated a huge portion of it to this subject, after which I never bought peat and have been propagating my own house plants since as they are mostly all grown and sold in peat. Now I don’t normally chat about this type of ‘bts’ thing but just to emphasise it, at the start of the pandemic I came across a company doing organic plug plants and I wanted to highlight them to you as an option for people just getting started but they didn’t answer my questions about whether or not there was peat in them. I did some digging and indeed they use peat so I didn’t recommend them to you guys. They called it ‘sustainable peat’ but as far as I’m aware there is no such thing. Remember, compost can still be @soilassociation organic and have peat in it, peat is organic. Again, read up on it if you haven’t already - I’ve done stories on it in the past but I’m not an expert.