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Mixing sphagnum peat, sand, and pine needles

My Father used to be a brick layer. He saw what I did to my hands recently trying to mix ingredients for soil and brought this over for me to use.  He used this tool for something or other before he retired, maybe to mix concrete?  I have learned that it is the equivalent of a big kitchen hand mixer. It's a little too much tool for me (too much torque) as it got away on me when I was trying to use it but my Dad mixed my batch of planting medium and finished in 15 minutes flat and all the air was out of the sphagnum.  I had to share this.

Don't ask me what type of an attachment is on the end or what type of a drill that is because I have no idea.  I do know it works like a dream and I was able to get enough mixed to have an entire garbage can of planting medium to set aside so I wasn't making a mess every other day.   

And yes, this sand was rinsed before I added it to the mix.  I still don't have the guts to do a "fizz" test.  

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Yikes.  I've seen nurseries use power tools for stirring potting mixes and have always believed it's time to scale back if I ever start thinking about doing it.  If you pour ingredients into a garbage can or drum of whatever size you prefer, you can mix them pretty well by tipping it and rolling it on its edge.  Stirring it up with a stick helps immensely.  Without any high pitched electric whine.
 
My dad has a modernized version of one of those. Don't think he'll let me mix soil with it though
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thats a mixer alright.
we used it to mix groute (sp?) for the tile we were laying.
thing works great alright, expecially for those that have a large amount of soil to mix.
 
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