more help required soil

[chicken man 257]

what is best scale soil to make or buy.i have some brushwood soil mix.but that's not enough.i bought a tough tray so my lad can play with it.like plough and drill and load it up in trailers.has anybody got any ideas what else I could use

[mike whiting]

I've used dried tea from tea bags. A suggestion from Karen Harris at Farmmodels and it works really well. Although it's used tea bags which are needed, I put them on a Hessian sack and dried them out in the Summer in the garden. Took quite a while to get enough for a diaroma, but it certainly makes a difference after the tea bags are used. Add some gravel from a Hornby railway set to get the stone effect in the soil. I mixed in a bit of very finely sieved garden soil in with it. Main point is to keep it in a sealed plastic container to keep it air tight

[chicken man 257]

oh thank you for the info.proably wrong time of year to dry out.

[chicken man 257]

could I use used ground coffee 

[chicken man 257]

how about porridge and blend it down and stain it with tea

[fordmajor]

 Tea bags dried out you leave as is or crush for finer soil .Works a treat.

[Paul Palmer]

use real soil and seive it,or compost is good

[844john]

As Paul says, dry and sieve garden soil, it will always be the most realistic if you remove the big lumps. If you can come across some, I've found that the soil from the top of a power harrow works perfectly, it is very fine so that it doesn't look out of scale in 1/32, but heavy so that it doesn't float around the room and it is perfect for little ones to play with!

[Tractorman810]

i use dried coffee ,get it free in 5kg bags from starbucks ,they give it away as plant compost , does for me ,  have not got that good a soil in my garden so for me this was an easier option