We Tested 14 Different Potting Soils...Here's What We Learned

purchasing the right potting mix can be a very stressful thing how do you know which one's better and which one's actually worth paying for well we decided to test that by growing 14 of the exact same peppers in the same containers under the same conditions but the only thing that we changed was that we used a different brand of soil in each bag and by the end of this video we're going to figure out which ones are absolutely not worth the money and which one's going to be the best value for you in order to get this experiment started I went to my local Big Box store the local nurseries and I tried to find as many different potting mixes as I could so we could get a proper test going we've made it to the first location today we're going into the Big Box store and we're going to see what they have in their Garden Center so for this experiment one thing we're going to avoid is anything called garden soil because it's designed to be used in ground only all right guys so the first store is complete we've made it to spot number two the next big box stor so it looks like the selection is basically the same there's a couple different ones like these pink organic guys so we'll grab some of that so actually end up getting 1 2 3 4 5 five different ones all right guys we're at location number three which is Walter Anderson's nursery I am a human I am biased I cannot help it and this is by far my favorite place to get soil so let's go inad and see what they have so if you guys watch me you already know that Happy Frog is probably my favorite soil that I use in my garden oan Forest is also great and I've had good experience with 420 and some of these local guys like EB Stone so let's just grab one of each so we have seven new contenders that have entered here today I already got one of them in the car there but basically we now have the premium lines which is the 420 mixes we have the Fox Farms mixes and then the most expensive by far is the Malibu Compass biodynamic so we have the full gamut now now it's just a matter of getting this home and setting up the experiment when we first came up with this experiment I never would have guessed that we were going to end up with 14 different potting mixes to test now the way I have them laid out in front of you right now is the most expensive bag on the right with the cheapest all the way down there on the left but every single bag of soil comes in a different size so I've controlled it by price per cubic foot so how much you're actually paying to get the soil that you're getting now what makes an expensive soil expensive well the most extreme example over here is the Malibu compost which is made with an organic based compost organic compost is expensive to produce to maintain and so it's going to just cost a lot more to put it in your potting mix as you work your way down to the middle you'll get into things like these Fox Farm soils which also have some added fertilizers and obviously that's going to just cost more money all the way on the far end on the cheapest end you have soils that are going to just be more Woody in nature it's just stuff that hasn't broken down so the nutrients might not be available to your plants right away and that's generally how they get so cheap so we have this full lineup how are we going to actually control and remove any sort of biases across these I have a pretty clever experiment set up right here in front of you so let me talk about how we're going to run it and what we're going to be looking for the way we're going to be running this experiment is by using 5G grow bags each one of these bags is identical and I fill them with an identical amount of soil and made sure to break up any clumps settled each bag they all have a full amount of soil now if you look around you'll notice something else is that they all have tags but none of them have names they've all been given a random number so that you don't know which one of these soils is which and also we're going to bring in Kevin later have him make some predictions see if he could figure out which one's which but he also has no idea which one of the soils behind me is actually in this bag and actually it's an interesting thing to look at when you see all the soils laid out before you they're quite variable this one here looks quite chunky there's a lot of peite in it it has really good drainage but it does have a lot of Woody materials but then you also have this really really crazy dark one here that it came pretty wet so that's one thing I couldn't control for is that each one of these came at a different level of moisture for example this one over on this side looks like it's basically made out of sawdust and it's quite dry overall though I am actually quite shocked that they look as different as they look cuz I thought some of these would just be rebranded soils from one company to another it's just very interesting to see how many different types of soil formulations you can make and whether all these different ingredients actually have an impact on the plant growth so we've controlled for size but how are we going actually control for plant growth well I chose something that I think makes the most sense and that is a pepper plant the reason why I chose a pepper plant is multifold first of all they fruit so I want to see if the soil can actually produce fruit in the end second of all they have less disease issues less maintenance issues than say like a tomato plant I would have to go with a bigger bag I would have to stake it I'd have to prune it Peppers I Could Just put in the ground and let them grow and see what happens so to me a pepper is the perfect way to test these kinds of container mixes now I want to hear from you guys in the comments down below which soil you think is going to do best and which one you think will do worst I definitely have my biases but I'd love to see what you guys think before we actually find out which one does best so the experiment as set up is going to get one pepper plant in the center of each grow bag planted the exact same way and then I'll talk a little bit more about lighting watering spacing and things like that every pepper has been planted and they're all the exact same pepper and they're pretty much the exact same size the other things I'm going to control for is laying them out so they get equal Sun they're all going to go on drip irrigation so they get the exact same water equal treatment across the board now I want to bring Kevin in he has no idea which one of these soils is which and see if he could predict which one will do the worst and which one will do the best all right jack looks like you've been busy on something here what is going on very busy this is a true blind these are all different potting mixes with the exact same controls I kind of want you to just walk around give it a Fel see if you could identify which one you think is going to do best which one's going to do worst or whatever you think I see these three here looks like there's like a decent amount of Pete or coconut core perhaps in these cuz they're all kind of this lightish brown I see something I do not like I don't know what this one is but what is this number three lot of wood product in this very dry what's this you know what is this a big old log this looks pretty promising to me but I can't tell it's a little dark uh maybe just cuz it's there's some water in it yeah some of them came a little bit wet then I look at these ones with a decent amount of perite in them to me I feel like if they've added the perite maybe they've also added some fertility so I would put anything with perite maybe somewhere in the middle but I would say that's probably going to do the worst number three 14 is probably my number one pick okay so three worst 14 best we'll see what happens yeah it's now been 3 weeks since we set up this experiment and we have irrigation fully installed all getting equal water they're space out enough they should be getting plenty of sunlight I want to highlight a couple of the main things that I'm seeing here so let's start off with these four over here number 10 9 and three to me look pretty equal pretty good and happy and healthy two looks really quite sad there's very little branching the leaves look yellowish and they're curled up I'm not too pleased about that if I was growing that I'd feel bad now four also is a little bit interesting it's kind of tall has some branching but the leaves are looking nutrient the icient to me it's looking a little bit stressed a little bit yellow there's a lot of like tightness on the leaves so that I'd say is like maybe in the middle of the pack 11 might not be the biggest but the growth looks really good it's very green it looks Rich the branching is happening all along the plant and so to me that's a quite successful pepper 13 as well no issues there maybe a little bit of yellowing but it's branching it's nice and Tall the leaves look big five over here is another one where I'd say it's quite sad it's uh the leaves just don't look very good it's not branching very aggressively and they're also a little bit yellow seven over here that's the one that I thought was interesting because the main growth looks good but it's not branching very much so my current working theory is that it's one of the nutrients that's available I'm not sure which one cuz I don't remember but it's looking overall good I wouldn't be mad about that one eight also to me looks quite ideal no major problems here the leaves look pretty dang good nice branching happening six on the other hand to me seems stunted it looks kind of like dwarf in its growth and the leaves are very folded in they have a pale green to them but it is actually branching a very small amount one also quite sad I'd say one and two are probably the saddest of them so far they have basically no side growth the leaves do not look very good and they're not really growing very tall either then at the very end we have 14 and 12 12 I'd say might be tied with like number three 9 and 10 is the best looking peppers and 14 looks okay it doesn't look amazing but it looks fine it looks like it's starting to catch up a little bit I'm seeing side shoots happening with decent Siz leaves so I think that one was a little bit slow at the start this one had quite wet soil at the beginning but now it seems like it's evening out and it might catch up but they are starting to actually have real apparent differences and in the next 3 we update we'll start to see more fruit and flower development and to me that's where it's going to get really interesting so we'll check back in about 3 weeks maybe a month and we should see some Stark differences across the board it has been 6 weeks now since we set up this experiment and there are some clear standouts across the board here let's take a look at these four on this side first 10 nine and three here look excellent if I had these pepper plants right now I'd be very happy in the garden they're branching nicely they have very thick stems nice green leaves and they're already starting to set flowers and even probably some fruit already so those three I'm extremely happy with I'm also quite pleased with uh number 11 13 7 12 and actually even eight over here is not too bad all of those peppers are doing just fine that would be the growth that I expect to see at this point in the season and we have a couple that are sort of in the middle maybe not the worst but I would be certainly okay with them being in my garden number two and four in particular are the ones that are sort of in the middle here they're not terrible but they're certainly not competing with this guy over here but we do have four that are starting to look quite miserable and I'm not even sure if they'll make it to the end of the experiment the first one is right here with number five then we got number one six and 14 the thing that I don't like about these plants is that first of all they're tiny I don't actually think they've grown any taller since I put them in the ground the leaves do not look healthy they have spots on them they're yellowing there's no branching overall I just really don't think they're going to make it now remember all of these plants are getting the exact same treatment this one's just as heavy as this one it's not that one's getting more water less water than the other so what's coming into play here to make that pepper look so much better than even say this one well some of these bags so soils said feeds for 6 months feeds for 9 months and what that means is that they have fertilizer in the actual soil at the beginning so that soil is now been activated starting to feed the plant and that is where you're seeing those differences come into play so the fertilizer added at the beginning might make some difference but maybe we'll touch on that towards the end of this experiment we'll check back in 3 weeks and maybe we'll have a pepper on the plant itself and some of these might not even be alive we'll just have to wait and see you know which ones I'm talking about the time has finally come to reveal the results of this experiment I am personally shocked by the results there's clearly some losers and some winners here but let's bring Kevin in cuz he made some predictions I think he's going to be sorely disappointed with what he said all right Kevin the time has come what do you think dude I'm actually shocked oh yeah I am too I'm shocked so the first thing there are some pretty good Peppers absolutely these four are atrocious these are atrocious I'd ask for my money back if that was my I still don't have no clue what is what I know what's in there now and I'll tell you I'm not surprised really yeah okay we'll see we'll reveal that in a second when we get to this one shck I would say I'm not happy I'm not happy if that's my pepper when I get to here at least I have a sizable pepper right I got one little guy here I start getting a little more Peppers here but you're even noticing like a difference in the level of green the density and the Darkness of the green so to me I go this is nice and Lush this is a little more green and then obviously over here you got some really killer ones so what do you think should we start revealing losers to Winners I think that we just need to get right into it all right jacqu we are going to start with losers row here yep hit me starting with the worst one number five all right so we have EB Stone potting mix Kellogg's patio potting Kellogg's raised bed mix and then the most expensive soil and the one that you said would do best Malibu's baby boo right here really that okay that that I actually can't believe because that is by far the most expensive soil of all the 14 so these are the worst and they they really are bad like you don't even have a pepper except for on at least us theyed but why do you think this happened so I think what happened was that at the beginning all of this was so Woody it got wet and the nutrients basically got locked out so it got stunted on the lower quality end of a lot of soil mixes you find a lot of wood material in them which inherently means that you're going to get some nitrogen tie up cuz when wood and soil connect yeah it starts to break down and it locks nitrogen out and nitrogen is one of the most important nutrients that plants need to grow and if you see you see not a lot of foliage I was going to say and they're also not green they're not green and uh yellow pale sort of foliage a lot of the times is low nitrogen and so this though is really surprising so this one is surprising on paper but when I opened the bag on this one it was really wet like it was soggy so honestly not the best representation maybe if it wasn't absolutely damp at the beginning it might have had a better chance okay so who knows but a little not super promising right there all right let's move on to the mids we're into the middle of the pack shock starting with number four and number four was your other number one pick you're at least consistent you're right to terrible predicting that is starre potting mix then we have near Source potting mix Prix premium organic Fox Farms Happy Frog Fox Farms ocean forest and then the 420 potting mix okay I mean that's not entirely surprising we use Fox Farms a lot here at Epic it's middle of the pack but here's what I would say out of these starting with four and going on over to number eight over here I'm only really super mad if I get number four yeah this one I'm not really happy about it's yellow there's one small pepper honestly I I'd actually put number two in here too I only have one pepper after many months doesn't look as bushy every single one of these from seven to all the way over here to eight right here you've got a good amount of peppers you've got good height you got good branching and you got okay greenness I would say these are a little paler than I'd like and as you get over here gets a little bit a little bit more green so across the board with these they're mostly organic especially on this side the Fox Farms the 420 they have miza they have a little bit of organic fertilizer but nothing major it's like a little bit of bagano maybe a little bit of kelp so enough to like get things going and I think that's what you're seeing here like you do have fruit set you do have good bushiness but like I said overall I'm totally happy with any of these especially given that they are in a grow bag and the moisture retentiveness of the mix I think might account for some of what you see here cuz they got the same amount of water but they are in grow bags and you're going to lose water quicker out of mixes that just don't hold on to as much water perhaps that's even what you saw from some of these like the woodier it is the more porous it probably will be but the interesting thing to me cuz Fox F tends to be a it's like above average price that was going to be like my predicted number ones basically those were your picks the recipe 420 though is a bit cheaper yeah but performed the same or slightly better I found that to be very exciting cuz they're basically a knockoff of these guys and then the interesting thing for me is the recipe 420 is very similar in style and composition to the fox farm but quite a bit cheaper per cubic foot and it performed as well or better yeah so I'm pretty happy with that there you go now we need to go to the top four top tier okay starting with number 12 Jac right here all right so that is Miracle Grow moisture potting mix okay and then we have Miracle Grow organic container and then we have Big Grow potting mix and basic Miracle Grow potting mix the the most basic bee of Miracle Grow is right there yeah that is wild to me okay so here's what I want to do these are these are the ones that objectively on a growth performance perform the best as a pepper but now we want to talk about why that might be the case the first thing it's jumping to mind is there's a lot more darker richer green except for the Vigoro here yeah this does not look as healthy from a leaf tissue perspective but it's got good height it's got a lot of peppers setting and it's still pretty decent and you could probably fix that with like your own fertilization if you wanted to absolutely but I think the here's what I'm saying that's our organic right right here number 11 is organic yeah these have synthetic components and what you're going to get with synthetic components is faster acting and you're going to get it probably tapering off after you use it once so when you grow the pepper out fully if you were to do this again whereas some of the or iic mixes down here I feel like they's slower release cuz you're getting that nutrient from B guano from compost from manure so it takes a while so that's probably why these are a bit slower this is faster but the price you're paying is that it's probably not going to last as long if you were to want to reuse this so I don't know I mean what do you think I mean this is like 12 per cubic these are like 16 and this is eight this is $8 a cubic yeah so so it's kind of hard to compete now of course if you're somebody who's an organic grower and you had to choose the organic option it's obviously going to be this one here it did really well it's very green has a lot of peppers and it's probably going to continue to do well for a little bit of time so the Miracle Grow container mix no this is the miracle yeah the organic container mix the organic container mix so the other thing that these claims is that they would grow Twice The Bounty Twice The Harvest twice the actual fruit okay let's put it to the test let's count so I'm going to count I'm going to count this one here to be honest I actually don't think now that we've stacked this up shock that number 12 is that good it's definitely higher but in height but it's not setting as anywhere near as much fruit there's one pepper here and there's a lot more peppers and sizable peppers in this middle range but I think this is set up for more Peppers cuz there's a lot more flour a lot of flowers I think it looks probably the healthiest overall yeah roughly yeah not too bad so this one has like 10 to 12 Peppers of various sizes I've got seven on the organic container mix and I've got about eight on this one okay now compared to the ones down there though these are basically double these are basically double but they're smaller maybe there's more on the way it's hard to say at this point but the thing that's for sure is that all four of these did really well these all did really well you're going to pay for it compared to even like a recipe 420 which is I believe $4 or $5 cheaper per cubic foot and I believe organic and perhaps maybe just more to your ethos obviously some people have preferences for some Brands this is not a sponsored video and the thing that I know we're going to get in the comments is you didn't do a double blind 74 pepper study of course so these are the same variety of pepper but who knows maybe one of these just genetically was more vigorous and that's part of the results that you see but to me I think this is really informative now the thing I'll say is you could if you're a budget grower jock you could be playing down in this cheaper range and you could do some personal amending which is what I honestly will always recommend if you're GR in a container especially something that's going to be in there for months yeah I would always put some amount of fertilizer organic slow release and you'll probably end up smoothing out these results pretty substantially yeah so the next experiment we're probably going to run here is a test in which we do some sort of amending and see if that fixes a lot of the variants that you see but if you found this interesting we have a ton of gardening experiments on the channel check those out there you can shop for either the grow bags or seeds to grow these Peppers out or 650 other varieties at Botanical interest.com our Seed Company good luck in the garden and keep on growing

Channel: Epic Gardening

Views: 101,908

Keywords: epic gardening, potting mix, potting soil, potting soil comparison, container gardening, potting soil mix, container garden, soil test

Id: o-iIvfD47Aw

Length: 19min 54sec (1194 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 08 2024