How To Reuse Old Potting Soil - Geeky Greenhouse

hey there welcome back to geeky Greenhouse today I want to talk all about reusing potting soil so we get asked the question a lot can I reuse my potting soil what do I do with my potting soil at the end of the season the answer is yes you absolutely can reuse your potting soil there is no reason to throw it away it's not free it's not a renewable resource so it is important to try and extend the life of the potting soil that you have there are a few situations where you definitely would not want to reuse your potting soil for example if you grew anything that was diseased you do want to discard that potting soil and I would not recommend reusing it also if you're planning to start seedlings I would definitely use fresh soil because they're more sensitive and you want to give them the best chance plants were not diseased and you want to reuse your potting soil today I'm going to show you how to do that so the most important thing to remember is whatever you grew in that potting soil last year has used up all of the nutrients so you're just replenishing the potting soil for whatever you're growing in it this year now before you start working with the used potting soil you definitely want to dry it out and the easiest way to do that is just to throw it on a tarp in the sun on a couple of hot days make sure it's nice and dry before you start working with it this will make it a lot easier to work with and less messy [Music] so I have some pots here with some old potting soil and I'm just going to throw it right in the wheelbarrow now you don't have to use an actual sifter but you do want to sift through the soil with your hands and all you're going to do is break it up nice and fine and you're going to remove all of the large roots and any rocks or big surprises that you might uncover so I already removed the plant from this pot however you know there are some Roots left in here I'm just going to remove those you can throw them in your compost or any sticks or stems but you can do this by hand you don't need to use an actual sifter so this actually doesn't look too bad there isn't much in here and it is okay if some Roots get left behind now you can do this at the beginning of the Season or the end it's completely up to you so we actually do this in the spring and this soil was left Outdoors I'll talk a little bit more about storing the soil at the end of the video so as you can see I'm just kind of left with the slurry here of stuff we don't want in there anyways and I just want to make sure all the soil gets through that looks pretty good it's a good place to start all right as you can see here I am left with some soil and it just needs to be amended and replenished for this year now you can do this in a wheelbarrow you can do it in a kiddie pool you can do it in a large bucket you can do it on a tarp it does not really matter as long as you have enough room to work with it so I will look through it again make sure nothing went through there that shouldn't have it looks great so the next thing you want to do is just give the soil a little bit of a sniff kind of squeeze it make sure it smells healthy you want the soil to smell like Earth nice and healthy so at this point you want to rejuvenate the soil's nutrient content so all of the plants from last season used up the nutrients in the soil so I want to replenish it and give it all the nutrients for this year so next I'm going to add a little bit of compost and if you don't have the means to compost at home you can purchase compost but I highly recommend that you check with your town often the air is free compost available a good ratio is about a third so you know 20 to 30 percent compost to soil I'm sure you mix it up really well it's going to help Revitalize it compost is great for the soil structure it's organic it's slow release it's really just the best thing that you can add to your soil so next I'm going to add just some slow release fertilizer granules you don't really have to be exact about this I added a cup which is about half the recommendation for this volume of soil now keep in mind I can address the individual plants nutrient needs when they're in their final homes so if I'm planting Peppers or tomatoes they're going to be heavy feeders where flowers aren't going to require as much for nutrients so I can fertilize those plants individually in their pots or in the ground now at this point you could definitely add some coca-core or peat moss to fluff it up or add some bulk some people also use old potting soil at the bottom of their pots and then add fresh oil on top so the roots are getting access to that fresh soil and then eventually they reach the old soil at the bottom now it is best practice to rotate your crops so if you used the soil to grow peppers you'll want to use the soil for another crop family for this season this can help keep disease and pest populations that big now the last step peat moss is hydrophobic so I would definitely moisten the soil a little bit before using it and it's starting to rain so that's perfect so that's really it this soil is perfectly good to use and after it's a little bit more moistened up we're going to use use it for some potted plants so when it comes to storing your soil at the end of the season honestly we just leave it in the original pot and cover it and tuck it away the most important thing is that you want to make sure that there's drainage you want to avoid any instance of standing water in the pot and in the soil over the winter and honestly you don't even need to cover the pots you can leave them out in the rain as long as you have proper drainage now if you don't want to reuse your potting soil you do have other options some people do throw it in their compost you can use it to fill low spots in your yard or you can use it to add some bulk to your flower beds it really just comes down to the fact that there's no reason to throw it away you can definitely reuse your potting soil it's not inexpensive so buying it every year is not cost effective it's worth noting that there are multiple ways of replenishing potting soil and that's the great thing about gardening everybody does things a little bit differently so you can kind of learn some tips and tricks as you go along if you have any tips about replenishing potting so oil be sure to leave a comment below we would love to hear what you do thanks so much for watching we'll see you next time [Music]

Channel: Geeky Greenhouse

Views: 336,404

Keywords: gardening, plants

Id: M_pLJpJarX0

Length: 6min 56sec (416 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 02 2022