Organic Potting Mix
 (Read 500+ times)
By James J
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Let’s face it, gardening can be expensive. If you’re a container gardener or raised bed gardener, it’s even more expensive. I found one of the best ways to save money when container gardening / raised bed gardening is to make your own potting mix. When preparing your mix, do the research to know what nutrients your plants require.
Once the research is complete, it’s time to gather the components for your mixture. When selecting your ingredients, NEVER buy garden soil or top soil for your container plants. Garden soil, top soil, and native soil tend to have a large percentage of clay in them. The clay can cause poor drainage or prevent the roots from growing correctly. The roots of the plant should spread throughout the container with the correct type of mixture, but clay can cause the roots to stay in a tight cluster.
Container gardeners have found that the best type of potting mix is actually soilless. Soilless mixes are generally made with compost, peat, and hardwood fines (finely mulched hardwood chips). This mixture is lightweight, drains easily, and is free of soil-borne diseases. The ingredients in my mix are peat moss or coconut core, perlite, vermiculite, blood meal, bone meal, high quality commercially made compost, organic fertilizer, donkey manure, and pine bark or hardwood fines. Depending on what I am planting, I will also add cotton seed burrs and Texas green sand. I take all of the ingredients and mix them together in a large bucket or container. I generally use forty percent pine bark or hardwood fines, forty percent peat moss, and then add handfuls of organic fertilizers, blood meal, bone meal, vermiculite, and perlite.
If the research indicates that your plant likes a lot of “organic material,” then I would recommend adding compost and manure to the blend. When I add donkey manure and compost to my mixture, I add as much as I feel is necessary based on how rapidly the plant will absorb the nutrients from the mix. When in doubt, it is better to use more compost than not enough, since a high-percentage compost mixture will not hurt most plants. I have used as much as fifty to sixty percent compost in a potting mix with good results.
When all ingredients have been combined together well, water the mixture down to the consistency of a squeezed-out sponge. Fill the container halfway, packing down the soil frequently along the way. Then add the plant and fill in soil around it until the root ball is covered. Pack down the soil again and water thoroughly.
I have gathered this information over several years of experience and reading various blog posts, articles, and message boards. This may not be the best type of container/potting mix for everyone to use due to climate differences, but I find that in my area and at my level of gardening, it makes my plants very happy. My plants grow fast and flower heavily at the right time of year with this mixture.
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Author Bio Box: James J
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