Just finished with looking at settling test I did yesterday that had the mix of potting mix, mushroom compost and vermiculite with a couple handful's of black cow. The top flotation was about 1 1/2" thick, The water was still cloudy as there must be ultra fine particles that do not want to settle and the bottom portion was about 2 1/2 inches deep. I had an old paint tray and with a spoon removed the top flotation into a paint tray, gently poured out the water and then dumped the bottom segment into the paint tray as I did not see any different layers in that. Looking at the flotation looks like shredded forestry products with a small amount which looks like perlite . The bottom layer has the vermiculite plus what looks like the decomposed mushroom compost, probably peat and the black cow. The bottom layer was real small particles except for the vermiculite. The bottom layer looks like swamp muck except for the vermiculite. At this rate when the top layer decomposes through out the container mix I am going to end up with a container of swamp muck with vermiculite.

After I did the above I washed out the test bottle and filled it about 1/2 way with the mushroom mix and shook that up for a test.

Tomorrow I will go out with the measuring cup and check the quantity in the top and bottom piles which I have set in the paint tray to drain and dry out some.

The third test I will do the potting mix .

I do not know how fast it takes these shredded forestry products to decompose at the size they are. They are pretty small.

May need to use a higher ratio of potting mix with the shredded pieces among the potting mix, mushroom compost and black cow. May just skip the black cow as that is a fine grain product. All black cow is a medium that rates out to 5-5-5 in the fertilizer scale. I already have a bag of time release fertilizer now. A teaspoon or so full of time release fertilizer is a lot less than a couple handful's of black cow.

I miss spell fertilizer every stinking time. If I ignore the miss spelling and you see ferlizer  you will know what I mean. There are few other words that are stinkers too.