If you search this forum using searchwords compost and reuse, you'll have enough reading material to keep you busy for a good long while.

Al

I mix my own for my tomatoes.

I start with a shopping spree to Home Depot. A bail of Pro-Mix (that expands to 4 cu. ft), three 40lb bags of Cow Manure and three 50lb bags of Sand. I also pick up a couple of bags of Worm Castings.

For each of my 5 gallon containers I mix 10lbs of the Cow Manure with 10lbs of Sand and mix that with the Peat Moss until it comes to the top of the container and mix well. Measure out a couple of pounds of Worm Castings and mix well.

Ideally you should replace Peat Moss each year or at least ammend it, but if you cannot afford to keep buying Peat Moss every year at least buy a couple of bags of Compost or Manure and mix that in to feed the plants.

Best Wishes
Amino-X

Just a different perspective: I often mention my contention that manure, sand, and compost have no place in container soils and offer the reasoning by which I arrive at the conclusion. I can expand, if you wish, but it would be a repeat of what's scattered throughout the forum. I also use micro-nutrient sources, other than castings, that have no effect on drainage.

Al

Does a farmer replace his soil every year?

Just reconditioning it works. I personally use screen sandy loam from my property adding peat and some form of compost. For flowers I use a slow release fertilizer; for veggies an initial top dressing of good fertilizer and applications of a water soluable fertilizer thru the growing season.

Why would you draw a comparison between container soils and in situ (farm/garden/etc.) soils? They are very dissimilar.

Some folks are perfectly happy with things that work, and have no desire to investigate further. It's relaxing to be that laid back, and I envy them. Others are looking for growing options that work better, and are willing to investigate & put forth some effort to get there. Still others, are very inquisitive, willing to study and explore options/experiment based on logical input instead of flip questions. These are the folks in search of what will work best. ;o)

My turn now, to ask you a pertinent though rhetorical question, Rain. From which group might you suppose the probability of learning something new and/or helpful is greatest?

Al

Al I will search this forum for more info, if u dont mind explaining i would be happy. Actually i am new to gardening, so everything sounds greek and latin to me. i have a small deck with medium sunlight where my tomatoes and pepper survived last year and this year i want to add few more pots. very small scale.

Amino.. regarding mixing my own soil, i just need to fill up 4 to 5 containers, and no time to do it all on my own with a 3 month baby. so have to buy soil or mix up little soil which would be enough for 5 to 6 pots. /i dont have storage place to store the remaining soil.

thanks for the help.

Nilaa. In your shoes, needing to reuse your soil, I would buy a single bag of pine bark fines or fine mulch ($3-5) & mix it about 50/50 with your old soil. A little perlite would also likely be in order. It should give you a very serviceable soil for the upcoming growing season. Here is a partial reply I posted to a thread some time ago:

"First, plants really aren't particular about what soil is made of. As long as you're willing to stand over your plant & water every 10 minutes, you can grow most plants perfectly well in a bucket of marbles. Mix a little of the proper fertilizers in the water & you're good to go. The plant has all it needs - water, nutrients, air in the root zone, and something to hold it in place. So, if we can grow in marbles, how can a soil fail?

Our growing skills fail us more often than our soils fail. We often lack the experience or knowledge to recognize the shortcomings of our soils and to adjust for them. The lower our experience/knowledge levels are, the more nearly perfect should be the soils we grow in, but this is a catch 22 situation because hidden in the inexperience is the inability to even recognize differences between good and bad soil(s).

Container soils fail when their structure fails. When we select soils with components that break down quickly or that are so small they find their way into and clog macro-pores, we begin our growing attempts under a handicap. I see anecdotes about reusing soils, even recommendations to do it all over these forums. I don't argue with the practice, but I (very) rarely do it, even when growing flowery annuals, meant only for a single season.

Soils don't break down at an even rate. If you assign a soil a life of two years and imagine that the soil goes from perfect to unusable in that time, it's likely it would be fine for the first year, lose about 25% of its suitability in the first half of the second year, and lose the other 75% in the last half of the second year. This is an approximation & is only meant to illustrate the exponential rate at which soils collapse. Soils that are suitable for only a growing season show a similar rate of decline, but at an accelerated rate. When a used soil is mixed with fresh soil after a growing season, the old soil particles are in or about to begin a period of accelerated decay. I choose to turn them into the garden or they find their way to a compost pile.

Unless the reasons are economical, I find it difficult to imagine why anyone would add garden soils to container soils. It destroys aeration and usually causes soils to retain too much water for too long. Sand (unless approaching the size of BB's), has the same effect. I don't use compost in soils because of the negative effect on aeration/drainage. The small amount of micro-nutrients provided by compost can be more efficiently added, organically or inorganically, via other vehicles.

To boil this all down, a container soil fails when the inverse relationship between aeration/drainage goes awry. When aeration is reduced, soggy soil is the result, and trouble is in the making."

Al

Thanks for the info Al. This is the first I've heard of any of this so my soil experience has been strictly trial and error. I use sand to loosen and airate the soil, I've never heard anyone say anything bad about it until now, except that nemotodes like it. Strawberries, on the other hand, can be grown in almost pure sand which is why I started adding it to my mix for other plants.

My problem is definately economical as I am stuck on the second floor of an apartment building and am forced to use containers. No place for a compost pile either and since I have a very limited number of plants to put in I figure if I'm going to spend big bucks refreshing my soil every year I might was well just spend the $4.00 a pound for the tomatoes at the grocery store.

Best Wishes
Amino-X

No big bucks required, just a bag of bark & a little perlite to add to what you have.

Growing in pure sand in the earth is much different than growing in sand in containers. The culture types and soil physics are quite different. Sand in containers definitely does not loosen soils, it creates compaction and reduces air porosity substantially, depending on volume used.

When you decide on a soil, first be sure that it has nothing toxic to plants in it and second, that it will retain air for the intended life of the planting. You can easily manipulate the other "cultural importants" of water, light, and nutrients, but what to be done about aeration after the soil is created & plant planted? Air is just as important as water to plant vitality.

Good luck, A-X.

Al

If you look further thru the many pages you will see this question ask many times with a variety of replies, read and read again, then make up your own mind as to what you can afford....here are a couple posts on this subject with many replies.

1. Thumb down page 1 and find a post titled "Container soils & water in containers. Long post and many replies.

2. Tumb down on page 3, find post titled "Used container soil"

My husband is a retired farmer and he has said many times, "I didn't replace the soil in my fields every year."

Last year I mixed soil for my containers by Al's recipe and it worked great....right or wrong this year my plans are to use it again and rejuvenate it abit....

Well darn, I wish I'd known this before I bought all that manure. I don't own a car and getting out to Home Depot is a once-a-year propasition.

Thanks for the info Al, I can find Fines, Mulch, Nuggets and mini-nuggets. Which would be best for tomatoes?

Best Wishes
Amino-X

Try:
5 parts pine bark fines
1 part peat (sphagnum, not reed/sedge/Michigan peat)
1-2 parts perlite (probably 1, in AR)
Garden lime
Controlled release fertilizer
Micro-nutrient source (seaweed emulsion, etc.)

Shirl - of course your husband is right, but he grows in a soil with a 95 - 99% mineral content that breaks down over eons (basic structure, not tilth). We grow (usually) in a 95% organic soil that breaks down in a heartbeat, by comparison. They are two very different cultures.

Al

Al, I'm likely one of the biggest experimenters around. However I was responding to a specific question about re-using the MiralceGrow soil (which I do use).

Now with all the containers such as fuschi, you can't really take all the soil out and replace it. Others, such as the DIY earthboxes, use a special mix that only requires minimal replacement.

Last month we had a huge windstorm that blew two truckloads of fir branches in my yard; still chopping those up, collected bags of leaves from the parking lot at work, and use every scrap out of the kitchen. I do buy fresh sterile stuff for starting seed, but have found good amended dirt with a kiss of fertiliser keeps the plants happy.

And I do buy perlite in the huge bag. I have favorite plants that I spoil the heck out of :~)

Thanks a lot for the info Al. I will buy fine mulch and perilite to add to my old soil. I am also going to search for ur recipe and save it, i can use it later when i have a big garden.

Thankyou Shirl, will try the search.

Nila