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Can i use garden soil for potting


What is the best soil for potted plants?

Going to the garden center to purchase potting mix can be a little overwhelming. With many types of products to choose from, it can be difficult to know which one will be best for the plants you intend to grow. Some are meant to be added to the garden or used to fill raised beds, while others are suitable for growing in containers or pots. Garden soils are typically intended for use in the ground and contain minerals and organic matter. They are not a good choice for containers because the soil can quickly become compacted and waterlogged, reducing air space around the roots. This can lead to poor or stunted growth. Garden soils can also contain weed seeds, insects and diseases if they haven’t been pasteurized.

Potting mixes (also called soilless mixes), on the other hand, are specifically made for growing potted plants. They are lightweight, retain moisture, and they supply plenty of air space around the roots. Air space is actually one of the most critical aspects of potting mix. If the roots don’t have enough air, a plant usually doesn’t survive. Although the ingredients tend to vary, good mixes always contain an organic component (peat moss, compost, bark), vermiculite or perlite (to help retain moisture), sand, nutrients and limestone. Some contain fertilizer or moisture-retaining treatments, usually indicated on the label. Knowing what is in the potting mix is key to determining whether it will be a good match for the plants you are trying to grow. General potting mixes will work fine for most annuals and vegetables grown in containers, but they may hold too much moisture for orchids, succulents or cacti. Specialty mixes are sold for these plants and, while not absolutely necessary, can provide benefits.

Potting Mix Ingredients

Peat is a special type of organic material that comes from decomposed plants in bogs. Most peat comes from sphagnum moss, hence it’s other common name, “peat moss. ” Peat is a major component of almost all potting mixes because it retains moisture without becoming waterlogged, is lightweight, and does not become easily compressed.

Compost is occasionally included in potting mix for added nutrients. It can reduce air space in the soil and should be used sparingly for potted plants. Compost should make up no more than 1/3 of a potting mix.

Bark that has been ground and partially composted is often incorporated into less expensive potting mixes in place of peat. Bark provides good aeration but dries out more quickly than peat, requiring more frequent watering.

Coir is a fibrous material from coconut husks that is sometimes used in place of peat. It is similar to peat in that it retains water without becoming soggy.

Vermiculite is the product of heating mica chips. It is a gray, spongy material that increases water retention in mixes. It also holds on to nutrients and thus keeps fertilizer available for the plant roots for a longer period of time.

Perlite is a white volcanic rock that is reminiscent of Styrofoam. It is light weight and porous and is used to improve the drainage and aeration of potting mix.

Sand is another common component of potting mixes. It can improve drainage and is often added in large quantities to mixes intended for cacti and succulents.

Fertilizer is sometimes added to potting mixes, usually in a slow-release form that breaks down gradually over time when it comes in contact with water. Thus, small amounts of nutrients are released over the course of weeks. Eventually this initial source of nutrients will be exhausted, and potted plants will require additional fertilizer.

Moisture retaining treatments come with some potting mixes and are meant to reduce how often you need to water. These “hydrogels” or “water storing crystals” are polymers that have the ability to absorb large amounts of moisture and slowly release it as the soil dries. Their effectiveness diminishes over time, and eventually the potting mix dries out as any other. Potting mixes with moisture retaining treatments are suitable for potted annuals but are a poor choice for succulents or other drought tolerant plants.

The best potting mix for potted plants may vary slightly depending on what you are trying to grow. However, all quality mixes will be lightweight, fluffy and dry, and contain peat, coir, bark, perlite, or vermiculite. Avoid products that are compost-based or seem overly heavy – these won’t provide enough air space for roots. When in doubt, choose a peat-based general purpose mix, or make your own potting mix by combining the ingredients above. Many potting mix recipes exist online, and you can adjust the ratios of the added materials according to the needs of the plants you’re growing.

Got questions? The Ask UNH Extension Infoline offers practical help finding answers for your home, yard, and garden questions. Call toll free at 1-877-398-4769, Monday to Friday, 9 a. m. to 2 p.m., or e-mail us at [email protected].

 

Can You Use Garden Soil For Containers

Home › Special Gardens › Container Gardens

Container Gardens

By: Laura Miller

Image by gkrphoto

“Can I use garden soil in containers?” This is a common question and it makes sense that using garden soil in pots, planters and containers should work. Unfortunately, there are many good reasons not to use this money-saving approach. Here’s why:

Can You Use Garden Soil for Containers

For the most part, garden soil can be the ideal medium for growing plants in the ground. The native soil in your backyard has a natural ability to drain off excessive amounts of rainwater, yet it can also retain moisture during dry spells. It’s full of beneficial insects, fungal colonies and even burrowing rodents to aerate and break down organic matter.

All these things work well together to provide in-ground plants with the things they need to grow and flourish. Yet using garden or topsoil in containers often has the opposite effect. Potted plants grown in garden soil typically languish. The main reason this happens is because garden soil is much more dense than media formulated for containers. 

Try this little experiment: Fill up a medium to large container with a commercial potting mix and an identical container with an equal volume of garden soil. Notice how the one with garden soil is heavier? This is because garden soil is much denser than bagged potting soil. Dense soil is not only heavier, it has these qualities that make it undesirable when using garden soil in containers: 

In addition to these issues, using native topsoil in containers can introduce harmful pests, diseases and weeds to your potted plants. Native soil can also lack necessary nutrients or have less than ideal pH levels for the type of container plants you wish to grow. Amending small amounts of soil is more difficult, as exact measurements are required to balance nutrient and pH levels. 

Alternatives to Using Garden Soil in Pots

Purchasing bagged potting soil is the easiest alternative to using garden soil in containers. While the initial outlay can be more expensive, the extra labor and cost of replacing plants can outweigh the purchase price of bagged soil in the long run. Additionally, premium potting soil can be reused providing you had no disease or pest issues.

Another alternative to using topsoil in containers is to make your potting soil. These mixes can be custom blended for seed starting, cacti and succulents, orchids or any type of plant you wish to grow. Here are a few ingredients that can be used when custom blending your own potting soil:

The growing medium you choose is the lifeblood of any container plant. If you opt for the best you can afford, you’ll give your plants the best chance for success. 

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Garden soil for indoor plants and seedlings - FloweryVale.

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Garden land

We continue the theme of earthen mixtures for indoor plants. We examined the composition of purchased earth mixtures in a previous article. Now let's see if garden soil can be used for sowing seeds for seedlings and for transplanting indoor plants?

Of course, garden soil can be used not only for indoor plants such as clerodendrum, chlorophytum, pelargonium and many others, creating kokedama, but also for growing seedlings of vegetable crops such as tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, eggplant, you first need to know a few rules:

1. Do not use land treated with various herbicides, such as Roundup. If in the garden, under the influence of external factors, the action of herbicides decreases, then in a flower pot such soil will oppress indoor plants and even destroy them.

2. For indoor plants, take the land from a clean fallow, it must be well cultivated, without weeds. If there are any, first remove all plant residues. Pick up pebbles and weed roots from the ground. Otherwise, the weeds will grow in the flower pot and start to oppress the plants planted in this land. Especially carefully choose the land for seedlings. Otherwise, pulling out the grass (and it always sprouts first) can damage delicate thin sprouts of seedlings or small roots.

3. Be sure to inspect the land selected for indoor plants for live insects and other living organisms: enchitreus, earthworms, centipedes, mower larvae, scoop caterpillars, nematodes, mealybug larvae, wireworm, Maybug larvae. And even visually making sure that there are no worm bugs, this land will need to be disinfected. The larvae of many pests are not visible to the naked eye, for example, what are thrips, whitefly, or even an ordinary earth mosquito worth! Freezing the soil gives a low effect, since many pests are perfectly preserved in the upper soil layer and begin to occupy our beds in the spring. Therefore, spill the earth intended for indoor plants with a solution of potassium permanganate. You can also steam the garden soil in a water bath, but this is too much additional trouble.

4. Some houseplants grow best in acidic soil. If you limed the soil on your site, then you will have to add more high-moor peat.

5. And even if you have fulfilled all the conditions, it is better not to use garden soil in its pure form. Depending on the choice of a houseplant, garden soil can occupy only a fifth or a third part in the earthen mixture. The rest of the additives should be turf or leafy soil, sand, expanded clay, high-moor peat, humus, pine bark.

Seedling land

Very often, for growing seedlings of flowers and vegetable plants: cabbage, tomatoes, peppers, we take the same land - the one that is at hand or we buy the first soil mixture that comes across, the one that is cheaper. Meanwhile, each type of vegetable needs its own land for seedlings.

For seedlings of early ripe varieties of white, cauliflower and Brussels sprouts, it is better to take land containing up to 5-7% mullein.

Peppers, eggplants and tomatoes prefer high-moor peat with mineral fertilizers or humus.

Cucumber seedlings are best grown on sod-leaf land. You can prepare it in the nearest forest even in winter. But experienced gardeners cut layers of sod for these purposes even in the fall where white clover grew.

Before sowing seeds, the sod is turned over, cut into pieces and seeds are sown in them. If you take into account the tastes of all the vegetable crops that you are going to grow, then your seedlings will turn out to be strong and hardy. After all, already in "infancy" she received all the necessary substances for good development.

So that the earth does not cake when growing seedlings, you can add sawdust doused with boiling water to it. They make the soil more loose, breathable, and besides, it is not very compacted after watering. At the same time, seedlings are developing successfully.

See also:
Formulation of soil mixtures for indoor plants
Composition of commercial soil mixtures and substrates for indoor plants
Hydrogel and plants

P. S. Is your house (basement, cellar) threatened by flood waters or is there a piece of land with a high level of groundwater? Then you just need a Grundfos sump pump. Grundfos drainage pumps are small, easy to operate, reliable, capable of pumping even polluted water with silt and plant particles up to 5 cm in size. Grundfos silent pumps can be installed right in the house to eliminate a household emergency.

Land for seedlings: how to cook with your own hands

Recently, gardeners have been complaining more and more often: soil in bags is disgusting! Why? All these soil mixtures are based on peat. It dries up very quickly, turns into a dense lump that is not easy to soak. For seedlings, this is detrimental. In addition, purchased substrates contain fibers that, when decomposed, release substances that slow down seed germination.

And manufacturers often hack around, pack the soil from greenhouses in bags. Waste that needs to be thrown away. This soil is full of pathogens and pests. So it's time to go back to basics and prepare the land for seedlings yourself.

How to prepare soil for seedlings with your own hands

For growing seedlings, you can use ordinary garden or garden soil (1). But it's better to mix. There is a universal option that is suitable for any seedlings: turf, leafy soil and sand. All components must be thoroughly mixed to obtain a homogeneous loose mass.

It is important that the seedling soil contains a lot of humus - decomposed plant residues. This is the basis of soil fertility. In addition, humus makes the soil loose, crumbly, permeable to moisture and air (2) - this is exactly what seedlings need.

Where to collect soil

Sod land. If everything is done according to the rules, then somewhere in the meadow you need to cut layers of sod (a layer of soil with grass and roots), put them grass down in piles and leave to ripen for 1 - 2 years. But who will do it?

Therefore, you can make it easier: dig a layer of sod and shake the earth from it - it is loose, crumbles easily. Another option is to recruit it from molehills. It is very similar in composition to turf.

If this is not possible, ordinary soil from your garden will do. It is poorer in composition, but in combination with other components it will completely serve as a basis (humus can be added to it for nutritional value). It is better to dig it where legumes grew in summer - peas or beans. They enrich the soil with nitrogen.

Leaf ground. In a good way, it also needs to be prepared - collect the leaves in autumn, put them in heaps, and after 2 years you will get a nutritious soil. But even here you can simplify the task - just collect land in the forest. There, the leaves rot annually, and the top layer is literally saturated with nutritious humus. But remember: you can not collect land under pines and firs (it is sour), under oaks and willows (it is of poor quality).

Sand. It is best to use river sand as a component of seedling mix.

How to prepare the soil

There is no point in bothering, because at first almost all seedlings have the same needs.

The simplest recipe is to mix three components in equal proportions: soddy soil (garden soil), leaf soil (from the forest) and sand (1:1:1). It is useful to add ash to this mixture: 1 cup per bucket is a good top dressing for seedlings, in addition, ash partially disinfects the soil and protects plants from diseases.

How to disinfect the soil

In the soil for seedlings collected in the garden, meadow and forest, there are always pests and pathogens. If you do not get rid of them, they will damage the seedlings. Therefore, the earth must be disinfected.

There are several ways.

Freeze. In winter, at a temperature of -15 - 20 ° C, a bag of earth is taken out to the balcony for several days. Most pests and pathogens will die during this time. But not all. Therefore, the bag will have to be brought into the house for a week - the surviving pests and weed seeds will wake up in the warmth. And then the soil must be taken out again in the cold. And so 2 - 3 times.

Ignite in the oven. In this case, the soil is poured onto a baking sheet with a layer of up to 5 cm, slightly moistened and placed for 30 minutes in an oven heated to 70 - 90 ° C.

Steam. A very effective method, which also saturates the soil with moisture. The earth is poured into a colander and, stirring constantly, is kept over a pot of boiling water for 7-8 minutes. But this method is best used immediately before sowing seeds for seedlings.

It is also advised to shed the soil with potassium permanganate, but it will only get rid of pathogens. It will not kill pests and weed seeds.

All methods of soil disinfection give good results, but there is a problem: beneficial microorganisms die along with pathogens. Therefore, after the shoots of seedlings appear, such soil must be enriched. This will help preparations containing live bacteria, for example, Baikal, Vozrozhdenie, Vostok EM-1, as well as Ecostyle brand organic fertilizers containing soil microflora.

Popular questions and answers

We talked about the soil for seedlings with agronomist-breeder Svetlana Mikhailova.

Should humus be added to the soil for seedlings?

If you use turf and leaf soil for the mixture, you can do without humus - they have enough organic matter. If you collected land from the garden, and it is clay, then it makes sense to add humus. The mixture should be as follows: garden clay soil, humus and sand in a ratio of 1:2:1.

Do I need to add mineral fertilizers to the soil for seedlings?

It is useful to add double superphosphate to the soil mixture - 1 tbsp.

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