hold on stop right there before you toss out last year's potting soil like it's yesterday's garbage let's talk because seriously gardeners are literally throwing away gardening gold and it's got to stop first because potting soil ain't cheap and it's basically made of organic stuff you know things like Pete moss cocoaore and bark those are things that belong in your garden not in a landfill so if you've been dumping soil every season stick around because I'm about to save you so much time money and give your plants a serious boost so let's address this dirty little myth up front the idea that you have to start with brand new potting soil each season who started that rumor well I guess it would be a profitable marketing plan so perhaps it has been gardening centers that are pushing bags of soil but here's the truth soil does not have an expiration date now sure nutrients get used up and the texture changes but that soil is still very much alive and usable and I truly get it for example if you had a container that grew a sad scraggly plant you might eye that soil with a sight of suspicion and maybe you saw some mold or you're worried about bugs or disease these are all valid concerns but none of them require tossing your soil think of your soil like a phone battery when it's drained you don't throw the whole phone away you just recharge it so here's the scoop that old potting mix actually has some hidden advantages first you have information that that soil is alive wait what yep if you've grown in it the chances are high that it's no longer inert fluff from a bag because it's been colonized with beneficial microbes and fungi that help plants thrive your soil any soil is going to develop its own tiny ecosystem of helpers like microorganisms and earthworms so why throw that away second organic matter in the soil doesn't vanish it just breaks down into teeny tiny particles and the best way to think about this is like old roots that decompose right there in the pot and those bits continue to provide nutrients and contribute to soil structure this is absolutely true and you've likely seen this in action in your own garden for example have you ever pulled out last year's roots and seen that white fuzzy stuff or found earthworms in your soil then congratulations your soil is alive and kicking that white fuzz is completely harmless and in fact its job is to help to decay those roots and essentially turn it into plant food and worms are basically the free labor force of the garden they ariate and fertilize the soil as they wiggle around now let's talk about money and sustainability too because buying bags of potting soil is expensive so reusing potting soil saves you a trip or five to the garden center and it keeps perfectly good organic material circulating in your garden instead of rotting away in a plastic bag and reusing potting soil isn't just smart for your wallet it's eco-friendly too and finally I want you to consider this that some gardeners swear that old potting soil when cared for actually grows better plants than new potting soil and that's because it's not sterile fresh potting soil can be a blank slate but used potting soil has character a bit of hummus a dash of microbes maybe some microisea forming networks the best I can describe it is like sourdough starter the longer you keep it going with regular feeds of organic matter the richer it gets now I know you're trying to hear me out on this but the question you may have in your mind right now is "Okay so if my soil is so great why do my plants look so miserable last year?" Fair question there are a few things that can happen to potting soil over time but we can fix each one one of the issues you may be having is nutrient depletion because plants are hungry those roots are constantly sipping up nutrients from the soil but watering your garden washes some of that out and especially in containers because water flushes out those nutrients through the drainage holes and so by the season's end a lot of that easy access food in the soil is actually gone and that's because it's either been used by plants or it's just leeched away and the solution to that is to just add nutrients back and hang on tight because I'm going to get to that in the next section so just remember that spent soil is only truly spent if you never refuel it but in my garden I refuel things like a NASCAR pit stop now another thing that can happen with your soil is compaction and texture changes so over time your soil particles are going to settle and the fluffy bits like Pete and coor actually break down into even smaller particles and that's how your once light potty mix starts to get dense and it's always the usual suspect so you'll either start to notice that water is sitting for longer on top of your soil or it looks like the soil level is dropping by like an inch or two but again this is normal because as organic matter decomposes volume reduces and another thing to note is that if you were using initially a petebased mix these over time as they completely dry out can actually start to change into being hydrophobic meaning that they start to repel water and the fix is just to loosen things up and to add some fresh bulk so you're just going to grab one of these but quite honestly I just use my hands and you're going to crumble that soil apart okay okay so here's the fun part we're going to play soil scientist in your own backyard so here's what I do and what you're going to do now too now full disclosure I've already revived all of my planters for this season but I do have footage showing you what they looked like before and I'm going to model the process using this sad little pot right here so the first thing that I like to do is dump and inspect and you'll do this by either dumping your potting mix into a wheelbarrow or a large tub so this is the step where I can start to break things up and to see what's what and this is the part where you want to pull out any big roots or sticks or any other random debris so I highly recommend using a soil sifter and this is the one that I have it's meant for compact spaces which I love and so this actually comes with four different uh sifters of different sizes that you can use because I use this not only for soil but also to harvest my worm castings so there's just a little rim inside of here that you're going to set your tray on top of and then it's good to go and then you can just take your soil and you'll just shake it see how easy that is now there are other people that instead of kind of shaking it back and forth if you just take your hand like this and you apply pressure you're still going to get out a lot of those kind of bigger chunks see what I mean so just about a minute later here's what we're left with right some of the bigger chunks that are that haven't broken down we've got some old roots you know that are here again this is what's left so I'm just going to add this back to the pot because I am going to add this to the compost pile so it can break down even further i mean you can already clearly see the difference so this area right here is what we just sifted through and you can already like I can feel this but you can already feel how light and fluffy it is all right y'all so this is our after i mean look at that this took me just a couple of minutes and so at the beginning of my planting season I just usually allocate a couple of days to do a few tiers of my grain stock vertical planters and in no time you really start to see how fast your soil can rejuvenate so remember our issue with compaction now's the time to fix that so this is the part where you're going to break apart any hard chunks and if your soil is bone dry or acting like a brick now is a really good time to just sprinkle it with a little bit of water first it's going to be easier to work with and way less dusty now this is also the stage where I'm going to mix in a generous amount of [Music] perlite perlite is a natural soil amendment that loosens heavy soil and improves drainage and promotes root growth and the mixture ratio is usually one part perlite to two parts of your cocoa core if you're using perlite to seed start your cutings you're going to want to mix equal parts perlite and cocoa core for a very light soil mixture um Pete Moss can also be used in place of cocoa core fiber yeah that's looking good now as I go into my spring garden this combination would be enough we are going to add a few more um organic inputs that we'll get to in a bit but because this mixture is what I'm going to be using for my summer garden which is going to be experiencing very high temperatures and will be drying out a lot quicker i am actually going to go ahead and add some Pete Moss to this mixture just to improve uh that moisture retention so do you know that home cook who makes amazing recipes but yet never writes anything down like she can never tell you the exact measurements for any of her recipes hi that's me but that's kind of what you want to do with this recipe these your hands your fingers provide excellent information in fact they tell you everything you need to know because essentially you want the texture to be light and crumbly healthy potting soil feels light and fluffy between your fingers so if it still feels dense add more fluffy stuff until it's soft so now it's time to replenish the nutrients your plants ate up a lot of the buffet so we need to restock it now there are a few ways that you can do this and I often use a combination welcome to my unfinished basement we are in the laundry room which just also happens to be the location of where I store my favorite nutrient boost now this is a free continuous supply of worm castings that's right in this 10gallon tote there is worm poo and they are amazing for the soil there's a reason that they call this black gold and that's because they contain concentrated nutrients and plant available form and beneficial bacteria and for something that packs such a punch you are never going to overdo it and so I'm constantly just throwing handfuls of worm castings into my garden i mean worm castings alone are one of the easiest ways to add amounts of NPK or nitrogen potassium and phosphorus along with a host of trace minerals to your garden and just to be clear getting started with and maintaining a worm bin is super simple which is why I do it and you're also getting a superior product than what you're going to find at a garden center they turn your kitchen scraps items which you have already used and don't have utility for into something that you can repurpose for your garden and they do all of the work and worms in your house are great guests i mean they don't make noise a well-care for worm bin doesn't smell the hardest thing about keeping a worm bin is that you just have to make sure that you don't overfeed them or overhydrate them now if you don't have a worm bin you can also use compost which is like a multivitamin for your soil and compost is excellent because it has a little bit of everything you're going to get your macro and your micronutrients along with beneficial bacteria and microbes and organic matter and just like worm castings your compost is going to immediately improve the soil structure and fertility now outside of my worm castings or compost I actually make all of my garden amendments yeah you heard me right straight from kitchen scraps because once I realized in nearly everything I was buying at the garden center I could make at home using inputs that I already had that was a game changer so I'm going to give you some homework since you're already watching this the video that you need to follow this up with is where I show you how to make I think it's like nine or 10 of the most common fertilizers that you're going to find in a garden supply center i show you how to make your own fish meal your own bone meal your own blood mill an allpurpose fertilizer and like six other ingredients all right y'all so here's what it looks like inside of the bin the worms do not like light so they're going to burrow underneath everything but I need to go ahead and actually harvest a lot of the castings from here but since I just need a bit for now I'm going to go ahead and scoop some up and put it in this container our work here is done so let's go back outside okay y'all so now what we're going to do is harvest our worm castings so we're just going to pour everything in here and you are going to notice let's see if I can see a friend here you are going to notice that I do have some worms that are here and that's okay because after I sift them out they'll be on top and I will just add them back to my worm bit so see what I mean these are the particles that still need some time to break down these are my wormy friends so let me go ahead and return them to the bin hey y'all so just pointing out real quick that these are all of the amendments that I'm going to show you how to make in that video and I just restock them every year so since we're towards the tail end of spring and we're coming up on the summer planting season I'd like to go ahead and make just an entire batch of this mix so it's ready when I kind of turn things over so I'm going to transfer what we've made here so far into a larger container that I actually keep up here when I'm about to turn things over and then I store it underneath of my deck and then I can return this bin to being like my working bin i mean sometimes I'll also use like a cardboard box to just protect my deck or a tarp most of the times I just like to use a bin so now I want to talk about some other things that I might mix and match to this base so in this version I initially started off with a base of the perlite and perlite is great for drainage and ariation and breaking up hard compacted soil but you might also see something in your garden center that's called vermiculite and this is really great for retaining moisture and so if I was going into the spring planting season I might not add vermiculite to this mix but it is something that I do enjoy bolstering with my kind of rejuvenation base as we're going into the hot months of the summer moisture retention is everything so this is going to add a slightly denser texture to the mix it almost feels like micica okay okay so now we're just going to mix this up basically until it looks like um brownie mix with sprinkles so you want this mix to smell earthy uh and it shouldn't have any foul odors but if you do smell anything that smells sour or like ammonia that is a sign that something is off and in that case you just want to add more compost to inoculate the good microbes and let it breathe so congrats you did it i told you it was [Music] easy hey friends so we are just underneath my deck and I just store everything right beside my potting bench i love that this thing is on wheels if you're a container gardener like me reusing your potting soil is a gamecher and the containers that I use are vertical planters called grain stalks i mean I'm growing over 200 plus herbs and veggies on a deck i mean these vertical planters allow you to grow a minimum of 30 plants in just two square feet i mean green stalks are like the high-rise apartments of the container gardening world and by the way I have a $10 off link for Greentock in the pin comment and description box below but I remember when I got my green stock planters thinking "Oh my goodness am I going to have to refill this with planting soil every year?" I mean that would be a lot because a green stall can take multiple cubic square feet of potting soil so instead I reuse it every tier just gets fluffed and fed i add my worm castings and homemade amendments and guess what my green stalks are thriving and y'all I grow everything in these planters tomatoes peppers nearly every kind of herb greens lettucees root vegetables and the only time that I am buying new potting soil is when I get a new planter but my oldest potting soil is as old as my first planter and this is going on six growing seasons now and so oddly enough my planters feel like old friends now i know the soil i replenish it and it rewards me with healthy plants so as you see here the ratio of what I use to keep my soil healthy are inputs that I already have it's the potty mix that I originally used in my planters and I'm continuously adding these organic inputs that are coming from our kitchen scraps so maybe about 20% of what's new in my garden are the amendments like the perlite and vermiculite but certainly not the majority and that's what keeps my garden affordable so yeah I'll normally just kind of top my planters off with some of the newer things that I'm buying but outside of that yeah I am happy to report that gardening is no longer an expensive hobby and I say all this because container soil once fresh is as good or better than fresh things like fertility handled texture handled pests mitigated in fact the combination of growing and grain stock vertical planters which gives you a competitive edge over in the ground gardening combined with how I refresh my soil and use organic inputs really is making my garden easier to manage every year there are only two things that I am doing right every year to consistently get the results that I'm getting as a gardener again someone who maybe is slightly intermediate and here's what it is i leverage my soil and systems i'm leveraging the design of Greentock vertical planters which don't take tools or much time to put together but are designed to give your plants exactly what they need in terms of delivering water and nutrients to your plants and I do what I call seasoning the soil with my homemade garden amendments you are not going to find a cure all at a garden center so just stick with the products that really give you the results okay so that was the gist but now I want to tackle some common questions and concerns you can check out the coordinating blog post but I anticipate that these questions may appear in the comments so let me go ahead and address them now maybe you had a bout of fungus nats and some insect eggs or fungal spores could be in your soil but before you panic and toss it remember that this happens in nature too but we don't scorch the earth and toss it the key here is to just be selective if a plant clearly died from a soilborn illness don't reuse that soil for the same type of plant instead you can dump it in your compost or in your flower bed where different plants won't be affected now you can also sterilize it if you're hardcore but more on that in a sec and you know even if you had a pest infestation in one particular pot you can still take precautions so for example for fungus nuts what you're going to do is just let that soil dry out completely for a couple of weeks because those eggs will absolutely die without moisture and on top of that you can also mix in a little bit of dietenacious earth or neem cake to deter pests but to be honest I rarely have a pest problem carry over after a winter's freeze or a good long dry period and I am not a gardening expert i am just your regular Jane but for sure always check your soil before you go to reuse it especially if you see those like weevils if you do just pick them out of the soil and here's a tidbit if you have chickens they love them and are a great source of protein so there's the bottom line again unless your soil was terribly diseased there's still not a reason to throw it out and that's where the importance of rotating your crops or differentiating what you have as a companion plant really matters so even if you grew tomatoes in it last year grow lettuce or flowers in it next because most plant diseases are plant specific even in your containers you've got to rotate especially if you're gardening for the long term now many of y'all have seen the garden that I've kept for well I guess over six years now on the internet and while I mostly grow the same thing every year I am intentional about adding you know new varieties of you know this or that from a particular plant category and this is one of the reasons why and while I note each year where I'm planting what I just don't have like one specific planting guide that I follow for my garden instead I'm thinking about it in terms of like a three-year kind of prototype of like this is a garden profile A B and C so that I'm always kind of interchanging even if it's just subtly like the rotations that I have even as a vertical planter so here's the takeaway if you're a soil caretaker it will live many lives season after season as long as you give it just a little bit of love in between crops so the next time you finish a harvest and you're staring at that empty pot or pocket of dirt resist the urge to trash it instead think about all the potential that's still packed in here waiting to be renewed refresh it reuse it and reap the rewards your plants will thrive and your wallet will thank you and you're also developing the sustainable soil one of the things that I appreciate so much about understanding the value of the soil that I'm growing here is that one day and we're still a few years off but it is my husband and I's dream to have a small homestead and I know that immediately I can start planting and having a garden because I have premium soil here that I'm not leaving but that I can take with me and start growing rich abundant nutrient-dense food from day one and honestly it feels pretty empowering to know that I'm not dependent on a collection of products from the gardening center to grow food so are you convinced i would love to hear what you do with your old potting soil and if you found this helpful click like and subscribe for more punchy gardening tips and I've got the green stock gardening code linked below for $10 off your order i'll see you in my kitchen or garden soon take care friends