DIY potting soil with only 3 ingredients? you bet! This is a homemade potting soil recipe that your container garden will love.
Homemade potting soil recipe with 3 simple ingredients
Today, you will learn how to make DIY potting soil using only 3 simple ingredients. If you do not have these 3 ingredients, I will also provide you with alternative ideas for homemade potting soil.
My DIY potting soil recipe
If you want to see how my potting soil ingredients work, here is a video I created to illustrate the process:
First, you need a place to work.
I like to spread a tarp on the grass and use it as my mixing area, but you can work on any solid surface. The tarp is easy to roll back and forth to help you mix, but homemade potting soil is not rocket science-and you can really do it anywhere.
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Second, collect materials. My recipe has 3 main potting soil ingredients.
1. rotten wood
Fresh sawdust consumes a lot of nitrogen in the potting soil mixture and may cause plants to struggle. Rotten wood does not cause this problem, and it retains moisture and adds a loose and airy texture to the mixture.
As you know, if you read my bestseller Compost everything: a good guide to extreme compostingG, I will not throw away or burn logs and sticks that fall in my yard. Instead, I use them to feed the soil.
Leaving a pile of brushes and logs in the corners of your property to rot over time will provide a ready source of rotten wood for your DIY potting soil.
If you haven’t started doing this, go for a walk in the woods, take a bag of fluffy, fragile wood, and drag it home.
2. Aged cow dung
Since the fresh cow dung was too “hot”, I collected the manure from the neighbor’s cow, then put it on a piece of metal, aged and dried it in the sun for several months.
If my home baked fertilizer It sounds too weird, pile it up in a compost pile somewhere, and put it there for a few months. This will leave a pile of nutrient-rich and organic-rich good things in your homemade potting soil.
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Note: Manure in the United States is often contaminated by long-term herbicides, which can damage your garden and potted plants. Read Karen’s story here and learn more about the danger.
3. Screened soil/gravel
I let my chicken do a lot of compost for me, like this:
I enter the chicken house or chicken house, sift out gravel, soil and compost, and use it in my homemade potting soil.
However, you do not need to do this. No chicken? no problem.
I sift out gravel from the local river bed and sometimes add it.I also just added good garden soil, old potting soil mix from expired plants, or even ordinary old soil sand.
Mix it up
Now all you need to do is mix.
Break the rotten wood into small pieces, break the beef patties, and pour the gravel. I use one part of rotten wood, one part of old fertilizer, and one part of gravel/soil as my potting soil ingredients, but don’t think too much. If it looks loose and feels good, the plant will be happy.
You will notice in my video that I often leave quite large pieces of wood in my homemade potting soil. Potted plants seem to like them very much, they act as water reservoirs and soil loosening agents.
If you need finer homemade potting soil to start seeding, just crush the mixture or pass some Hardware cloth Filter it.
7 alternative potting soil ingredients
No cow dung?
Try goat or Rabbit dung. Both work very well. Homemade compost is also great, although I can never seem to be able to satisfy all the things I want to do. It is also usually full of seeds, so be careful unless you want the pumpkin to grow from your potted begonias.
No gravel/sand?
Vermiculite or Perlite Both are easy to use, although you have to buy them.
Is there no rotten wood?
Use sphagnum moss instead or Coconut shell. I prefer coconut shell fiber because it seems to repel water less. You can also use leaf mold selected from the local forest. It is great and contains the added benefits of beneficial bacteria and fungi.
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“Compost meat, dairy products, bones and human feces!”
In addition to these excellent choices, I also added ashes, crushed charcoal, coffee grounds, old potting soil, peanut shells, and even moldy cocoa nibs.
When I ran a nursery business, I often mixed the soil I purchased with rotten wood chips obtained from a local tree company to expand my potting soil budget. I set aside the mixture for many years to decompose.
Just make your homemade potting soil soft and fluffy-mix various ingredients-and your plants will grow well.
What do you think?
What is your favorite DIY potting soil recipe? Do you use other creative potting soil ingredients not mentioned here? Let us know by leaving a comment below!
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This is an updated version of the article originally published on February 22, 2019. The author may not be able to respond to comments at this time; however, we encourage our community members to join in sharing their experiences and answering questions!
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