Hand Held 4 Soil Blocker w/New Green Comfort Grip

This soil blocker is very sturdy and well built, made of steel and manufactured in the U.K. I wanted to try one of these soil blockers after viewing a video about Olomana Gardens Hawaii dedicated to vermicomposting, and aquaponics (aquaculture + hydroponics), combining fish raising and production of organic vegetables. They used this soil blocker to create 2 inch blocks of worm castings (soil) for seeds and the plants that seemed to thrive in them with very low maintenance. No messy transfer to pots, simply plop the soil block into the planting medium of your choice (they used volcanic rocks and water) after the seedling had grown a bit inside the block. A neat thing is plants don't put their roots into air so it stays perfectly contained within the soil block.A couple of tips: there are no accompanying directions for this soil blocker whatsoever. You will need a bucket for the planting medium of your choice and some water and gloves to mix in the water. You will need a flat surface to create the blocks. I used our side walk. It's a good idea to use the soil block outside to avoid dirt scattering everywhere. The sweet spot for the right mixture takes practice. Too much water will create soupy blocks that dry to concrete. Too little and the blocks won't form. If the soil is too wet the blocks will come out joined with almost no separation. I never bothered to rinse the soil blocker after each set of blocks.To use: simply put your dirt in a bucket with enough water to moisten it slightly. Push the soil blocker into the dirt and scoot it around and push it against the bottom to tamp down the soil into the chambers. When the chambers are filled place the soil blocker down against a flat surface (bottom of the bucket or the side walk or a board) and grasp under the top flat bar with your fingertips and push the plunger down with your palms against the flat surface. A gallon of moistened dirt makes 50+ 2" blocks.When blocks are made place them on a tray with a lid such as  Jiffy 5032 Professional Greenhouse 25-Plant Starter Kit . This soil blocker creates a slight indentation on the top of the blocks to place the seeds. Once you place the seeds (gently if germinated already) into hollow you will need to cover them lightly with a little soil. It is important NOT to smother them with a lot of very wet soil. Set them in a window with some light and keep them moist. Voila!

This is really a nice tool! It is much easier to make the blocks than I expected based on what I had read. There is really not much of a learning curve.Tips for block making that are not commonly found on the sites I visited, but I think are important:1) The mix will get very wet as you near the end of a batch. This is because each time you compress a batch of 4 blocks you squeeze out excess water from the newly formed blocks. This water drips back into your mix. Eventually you end up with a pretty soupy mix. So put aside a quantity of the dry mix, say 20% of the original volume, and then add it back at the end as your working mix gets wet.2) Buy or make a 1/4" screen and use it to get the chunks out of the peat, garden soil, and compost. I even use it on my perlite. It is easy enough to make the screen from some hardware cloth, or you can buy a classifier that will fit a 5 gallon bucket.I am giving the tool 4 stars because it is not quite perfect. The tops of the "pistons" are not exactly square with the "cylinders", so the tops of the formed blocks are not quite parallel with the bases. The result is that the tops of the individual blocks vary all across the tray. This is probably only an aesthetic thing, as I cannot see it causing any actual problems.In short, I highly recommend this tool. It is well-designed and well-made.

My wife and I have been starting all our garden plants from seeds for the last few years, and have been using seed trays with our own starter mix. We had always had to transition the plants once they got to a larger size to a larger container before we could move them out to the garden due to frost. In this process, we would always end up losing a plant or two. My Uncle used soil blocks a couple years, and we noticed how well his plants did. We are trying soil blocks this year, so we are hoping for good results. The soil block maker we bought worked wonderfully to make the blocks! I was impressed at how easy it was. The directions that came with the blocker were good, and gave us a starting place for how to mix the soil to get the blocks started. This made the job very easy, and right now the plants are growing great. I would highly recommend this product for anyone wanting to make soil blocks. We were able to fit about 45 blocks per seed tray, in case you wanted to know how many you can fit.

It seems to work well after a bit of practice; however it did not come with any instructions so it was kind of a guessing game as to how the dirt should be. All in All i think it will be a good investment for our garden.

These are the Ladbrook ones from England, not Chinese copies. This size is perfect for starting seeds and you don't need 10,000 plastic pots. Read up on them in The New Organic Gardener by Elliot Coleman. Pay attention to your soil mixture, look up recipes on the web, and this soil block maker works great. Do your homework first! If you do, these soil block makers are great. Screen your mixture through 1/4" hardware cloth and wet it before you make the block and these will hold together well. If you only get one size, get this one. If you are using the 2" blocks for potting-on the 3/4" blocks, look for the "soil block insert set of 4" to make sure you get the right size square in the block.

Not very smooth.

I started out with a DIY soil block maker that worked well enough for making a few blocks but wasn't ideal for full trays.This block maker works well and is easy to use. it cleans up nicely and produces uniform blocks every time as long as the mix has the right consistency. Obviously if your mix is not good, the block isn't going to hold together well.I found the easiest way for me to make blocks is to scoop soil into the block maker and then flip it over and compress the blocks with the tool rather than jamming the tool down into a pile of soil. Personal preference of mine.