How To Recharge And Reuse Old Potting Soil

Welcome to the Simple Garden Life podcast, a program dedicated to keeping the yard
of gardening simple, fun and always rewarding. Now Here are your hosts,
Jim and Mary Competti. Hello and welcome everybody to another edition of Simple Garden
Life. I am your host, Jim Competti, along with my wife,
Mary Competti and married today we are in the middle, well I'm not the
middle, but the really start of true garden season. It's just May first
here as we record this episode for tomorrow's release, and I'm starting to get
excited, except that it's like, what thirty degrees outside? It's cold and
rainy right now. But that doesn't mean that we're not getting excited for gardening
this year. Oh absolutely, And we have a great post today about that,
because what we're talking about today is, you know, taking old soil
that's in your pots and your containers and can you reuse it? Now?
This is something that should be talked about in the fall. But let's face
it, and we'll get to this in a second. But life gets in
the way sometimes and we all walk out into our garage or maybe even to
our landscape and we see all those dead flower pots still with the soil in
them, right, And so sometimes right on your front porch you'll have a
pot that you took your flowers out, but you still have the soil sitting
in there. That's right. So we'll get to that in a second.
But as always, we want to take a moment to remind everyone that you
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So all right, so perfectly then to this as we talk about gardening,
and we talked about having those pots out. Potting soil can be one of
the biggest expenses of all I mean, you know, if you're purchasing your
potting soil, even if you're making your own at home, the materials just
keeps going up. I think what twenty dollars around here for a six or
a large bag of potting soil. Yeah, I can get quite costly,
real quickly, especially if you have lots of pots and hanging baskets. And
containers. Yeah, and like I said, even if you're making your own,
I mean, we like to use worm castings and all those things in
it, which certainly lessens the expense of potting soil. But nonetheless, when
you're filling all these pots up in the spring and you think you have to
get rid of that soil and can't use it again, you know, it
can be really cost prohibitive for people that like to grow a lot of things
in pots, especially if you're trying to grow some vegetables in there. Right,
this is a way to get your plants out and a budget friendly way.
Yeah. Absolutely, And that's what we talk about. Can you reuse
it? We get a lot of emails. I have all these you know,
pots and things sitting out front, what do I do with this soil?
Well, there's two ways to recharge and reuse that soil. And I'm
going to go straight from this. The best possible way, and we're going
to show you how to do this too, is in the fall, when
you can take all those containers, you can put them in their own compost
pile, their own specific pile, and recharge it to reuse it. I
mean, but let's face it, we're not in fall right now, We're
in spring, and you might be sitting there with a lot of pots and
like, well, what can I do? So before we get to that,
let's talk about why you have to recharge the soil into pots and why
it's so important. So, whether you grow annuals, whether you grow vegetables,
even herbs, and pots, they take a lot of resources from the
soil, right they do, and they deplete the soil of the nutrients.
So if you try to plant in them again without doing anything, your plants
are really going to suffer, especially if you're planting the same plant you planted
back into that pot. I'll use a great example here. Flowers matter too,
But let's say you grow tomatoes in a pot. You try to put
a tomato in that same pot the next year. You might grow up for
a little bit, but it's never going to produce like it did last year,
and most likely probably won't even make it through the entire season. Right.
That soil is just deplete all of its nutrients from the year before it
is. And then there's one more thing that's really important with potting soil that
happens to it over time, is it loses structure, And a lot of
people say, well, what structure, what does that mean? Well,
soil has a natural humus, and the more thickness is a bad word.
But the more structure that's in that soil, the better the roots can Expand
you'll know what I'm talking about. Anybody that's ever lifted out old potting soil,
what's the first thing it does? Good? Crumbles apart, just crumbles
apart, and it's dry and it's flaky. And that's soil that has no
structure. So if you're going to reuse that potting soil, you have to
definitely build that structure back into it. Last, but not least, we
have to talk about. You know, the soil also has a potential for
past and disease. If you just keep using it, that the likelihood of
it having issues becomes greater with every every year. Right, if you had
tomatoes planting in a pod and you had tomato blight or any type of pest
or disease on it, if you don't amend that soil your plans the next
you're going to have the exact same problem. Yeah, And if speaking to
that great point, because if you have tomato blight in a potted soil.
Do just get rid of that soil. Don't even don't even attempt it,
because if you don't, it's going to come back. It's just like in
a garden setting where it is. But Mary's absolutely right. The more you
reuse that soil to grow anything, the more likelihood if you don't amend it
that it's going to have issues down the road. Right. That's so why
it's so important to amend your soil before you pot. The year. Yeah,
so let's take let's talk about this, and we said there's two ways
we're going to walk you through. Both ways a spring way, which is
what we're all looking at right now, and you know, a fallway,
so you know we've all been there. I mean, it just happens.
I mean, Mary, I think for us people kind of think, oh
well, they probably know we're really regimented on everything. We're just like everybody
else. Life gets in away for us. Last year, I think it
was a fall wedding. Yes, yeah, we are a little busy with
our daughter's wedding, but we actually do have some soil that we did get
compost the last fall. Yeah, so we had a lot of moms that
we had at the end of the year all around for the wedding, and
we had some other potted plants, more than we normally would. Um.
It got late in the year and you know, lo and behold, here
we are with about I think fifteen or sixteen pots of soil that I'm really
ashamed to admit this, but we're real people. The moms were still in
them too, they were out back and they had died off. We took
care of those, Yeah, we took those out. So we also have
our three tier planter box. Yeah. And so we have a lot of
soil. Yeah, a lot of soil this spring that we have to take
out. So the question is, you know, what do you need to
do. Do you have to throw it away? Do you have to wait
until next year to use it? No, we're not going to We're gonna
We're gonna do what it's called we call like to call like a quick charge
and get in there. So first thing you want to do, and we
just talked about that is to get the plants out of there. So if
you have any plants doing those pots that are decayed, and then you know,
take them out, get rid of them, put them in your compost
pile. Unless it's a tomato plant. Everything else can pretty much go in.
We don't put our peppers in if you happen to do that, but
just you know, mow them over, shred them up, throw them in
your compost pile. If it's like us, by this point, that plant
is pretty well gone right, probably just break off and be so brittle exactly,
it really does. And so now you are left. And what we
like to do. It depends on how much soil you have. I like
to dump all the soil out at once. If you have a few pots,
a wheel barrel works great for this. If you have a lot of
pots, like us, we take a tarp. Just put it down on
the ground you don't want to lose it, or you can put it on
a bear soil if you want, but just somewhere where you can work the
soil. You don't want to leave it in the pot, is what we're
trying to say. Leave it in the pot and trying to add some soil
in it just not the way to go. Now. You need to be
able to mix it much better than that. Plus, you know, if
you're pulling your plants out, old plants out, there's roots in there.
You want to take those out and throw those in the compost pin. You
don't want to leave them in there. Again, a lot of chances for
things to pass through. So you're gonna pile all this soil up, however
much or however little you have in one area, and you're gonna need three
things. You're gonna need some compost and you want it to be finely shredded
or screened. If you don't have composts, go buy some bag composts.
There's plenty now in stores. It's it's really neat to see. The last
five to ten years. The two of the things that we use the most,
really three here are all almost available readily at most big buckstores, and
that's compost and worm castings and per light. You can also get them online.
We'll have links on our Simple Garden Life podcast article for this. But
you need these three items. Worm castings, Marry, we can't say enough
now. We use them everything that we plant. Yeah, they're just an
all natural power source that can recharge the soil. And most importantly we talked
about that structure. They really add a lot of structure to soil, as
does compost. Those are two of the biggest things and then the per light
that's going to loosen it all. Yeah, and when you go to these,
make sure you really read the labels because you know you'll find worm castings,
but it's not one hundred percent worm castings, so you really need to
take a good look at the labels. And the same thing with composts.
They may have different additives and chemicals in there, so just make sure you
read before you purchase. Absolutely. So, we have our three ingredients,
we have our dirt. We're going to take a quick break, and we're
going to come back and tell you how to recharge that soil with what ratios
and then how to go about using it. Okay, we are back talking
about redoing potting soil in the spring that's been left over. We talked about
dumping it out. You want to have it all there again. Make sure
you have all those little root balls that are out of each plant. You
don't want to leave those into soil. They bind it up, they'll make
it tougher. You want to make sure that's just all potting soil that's in
there. And then we're going to take our three ingredients now, compost,
worm castings, and per light and mix them into this pile. So the
rate is really important because you want to build up structure and nutrients in this
soil that is more lifeless because of what's been taken out. First way to
do that is compost. Right, we want to add about a third of
composts to your pile. So if you have a big, large poltic about
a third of that and add that's how much compost you want to add.
Yeah, you're not removing any part of the potting soil, you're just taking
that in addition to So it's perfect. If you have three wheelbarrelfuls of potting
soil there, you're going to add one more wheelbarrowful of compost to it and
mix it in thoroughly. Make sure you get you know, ho break anything,
and just mix it in there by hand. Just again, it's going
to depend on how much you have and how much you're using. So that's
going to re energize that soil, it's going to give it a lot of
new nutrients. It's going to build some structure into it, but not quite
enough. And that's where the worm castings come in. Right, We're gonna
add about two to three cups of worm castings for every five gallon bucket of
old potting soil. Yeah, and again this isn't You're not baking a pie
here, so it's not going to mess up if you don't follow these exact
If you think your soil is more lifeless, if you've had it for a
few years, you can put a few a little bit more in, but
this is the minimum or a good amount to reach that soil. Like she's
like Mary said about two to three cups. I like airing on the side
of three cups for every five gallons worth of soil you have, and really
mix it in. It's really important to mix this in. Yeah. It
really adds incredible energy and power to the soil and a nice, slow,
steady release of fertilizer and nutrients throughout the growing season. Yeah, if you
don't use worm castings, get in the habit of using worm castings, and
everything you plant, you know, a half a cup or a cup and
every whole planning hole just does wanders. It gives them that low and slow
energy and it really revitalizes. It helps hold moisture in and you know,
with potting soil as it gets old, we talked about that flakeyel that's what
you want to bring back to it. You want to have it have life,
and don't worry if you don't have a lot of container plants outside.
You can also use worm castings on your indoor plants, Christmas cactuses, anything
everywhere. Yeah, absolutely, So, Okay, what's left is per light.
We've talked about pear light on this show before, or if you want
to vermiculate, these are soil lightners. Per light is volcanic glass that is
heated to extremely high temperature and it explodes into that popcorn Like everybody thinks it's
styrefoam, but it's not. There's white little specks and s potting soil.
So how much do you put in? Well, here's the thing. It
really depends did your prior potting soil have some in it? Because per light
never goes away. That's what I love about it. It doesn't break down.
It's going to keep that soil light. So if you had a lot
of those white specks in there, you may not have to add as much.
But you know, for us, I mean it really depends we take
a look at the pile. We always put it in ours, but I
still like, you know, putting a cup or two per every five gallon
you know of soil. Right, it just adds a lot of life to
the soil and lightens things up a little bit, so it's not so dense
when you plant, so you know you have this mix. You mix it
all up. Look at the consistency again. Don't be afraid if you think
it still looks a little weak and dry. Add some more compost, add
some more castings. But in general, this is going to give you some
really good soil. Now you're going to have more soil this year than you
had last year because you've added to it. But then when you take the
plants out and you take the roots out, it ends up being really close
to giving you back what you need. People say, well, can I
just add new potting soil? Yeah, you can. You can take an
equal fifty fifty mix of new potting soil to old potting soil. But you're
not getting I would still add the worm castings, I would still add some
compost. And you're going to save a whole heck of a lot of money
doing it this way versus adding more potties. Right, you really need to
add the nutrients to your plants to let them grow beautifully. Throughout the year.
Yep. I think this is a great time for the question of the
week, which is one of the reasons we did this podcast. Mary,
I know you're always the question readers, so you'll ride ahead. So this
question is from Mallory Jones and she's from Jackson, Mississippi. Her question to
us, I grew tomatoes in ten five gallon buckets last year. I took
my plants out, but the buckets are still full of soil. I know
tomatoes can carry a lot of disease, but is there any way I can
reuse the soil. I hate trying to purchase new soil every year from my
buckets. It's exactly what we're talking about. Yeah, Malorie, great question,
and Mallory, great job, because you're recognizing that tomatoes are a little
bit different in this and that's why we we selected this question for the podcast.
So good news and some bad news. If it were me, Mallory,
I do not like using the same soil to grow tomatoes in ever,
not not for that year. I would rather put that in the compost pile
and reuse it or or recharge it, but use it for some annual flowers,
use it for you know, some kind of you know, herbs,
things like that, but avoid the tomatoes. Hopefully you have some other potted
plants that you can draw from for some soil. But if you have to,
if your tomatoes had zero disease last year and they were good, yes
you can. But it's what seiled. Same play with fire, right,
because soil from tomatoes. Soil from tomatoes is just so different. Tomatoes just
takes It'd be like if you're trying to grow corn and buckets. It just
takes so much out and there's so much chance for disease that I really don't
like to do that. We don't do it here in any of our buckets.
But one thing you can do, Mallory next fall is take those buckets
out in the fall, put them into you, you know, their own
in the compost pile, recharge that compost, and you're going to have a
much better chance to reuse it more in a stands because it got to be
composted. Where this is springtime, and I like to call it like you're
kind of like cold powering the soil. There's no ability to rehabilitate it through
a compost pile at this point. So long story, Shure it is.
I would try to avoid it short stories. If you really want to and
your plants did well last year, you can probably get one more season maybe,
but I would I would definitely add a lot more compost and castings to
that. So if you have to do that, right, it's the same
same concepts, but we do as corp rotation in our garden. We never
plant tomatoes in the same area they were the previous year. Yeah, And
this is why we try to be real advice. I you know, I
hate there's never a chance to say no, you can't, Yes you can.
You can always try things. I mean we always learn things. You've
got to try things out. I just like to tell you know the best
way it possible, what's going to be successful and what might not be in
why so I hope you understand that, Mallory and why we say that.
But hey, good luck with the tomatoes and the pod and it's a great
way to grow. It's just hard on that soil, so you've got to
really recharge it, right, absolutely, So I think that takes us to
the other way, which we talk about what to do in the fall,
and it's really I mean, of the two, there is no doubt.
This is a better way. We like to do this. This is the
way to recharge. And it's really what you're doing is you're you're allowing it
to build its own natural resources over the course of a winter time so that
you can use it again. So again, it's our favorite method, and
like said, even works with vegetable plants. Yeah, especially tomatoes. This
is the best best method if you grow tomatoes and pots, is to recharge
its soil in the fall. And again saying that that meaning that your tomato
has had no issues with that potted soil. So okay, so any type
of thing in the fall. What you want to do is you want to
have an extra bin or an extra area, could be a corner of your
garden, and you want to dump all of that soil. And here for
this one, you know, I don't I wouldn't put plastic down. I
would let it have natural you know, in a bin or just in the
corner of the garden, but put some type of structure around it, loose
fence, anything to make this all stay in the same area and dump all
of your soil in. What you're doing is you're creating a podding soil compost
pile. That's exactly what you're creating here, So it's best to do it
in the fall, just because you have so many other items you can add
to it naturally. Yeah, and for starters, you can add all those
plants that were dying within them, unless they're tomatoes, just chop them up
with your lawnmower fine as you can, just like a regular compost pile.
With the more fine the ingredients you're adding, the better put it all in
the pile. Then you know, when you're mowing your yard a few times,
if you don't use you know, chemicals on your lawn, all those
grass clippings, start throwing them in that pile. Well as well on the
fall leaves, Oh, if you with all the fall leaves falling down,
you know it's best to add add shredded leaves to the compost pile. I
mean, you know, don't add holies because they don't break down as well.
But if you have shredded leaves, you can just again run your lawnmower
over it, put them in your pile, and it's great structure. Yeah,
everything that goes into this pile because you're gonna be using it in the
spring and it doesn't have a lot of time needs to be shredded. So
Mary's right, get the lawnmower out with a bagger, or if you're riding
mower, just throw mow over them, shred them down, and then on
top of it, you know, while fall is progressing into winter, take
those coffee grounds out of you, out of your coffee maker in the morning
and go out and throw them in that pile. Pulverize those eggshells down again.
Pulverize them, pulls them with a coffee maker so they're ground down into
a fine powder, and put them in there and turn that pile, you
know, the green grass clippings, the shredded leaves, the soil that's already
in there. Don't be afraid. I love to do this. Add a
little compost into that pile. Why we do that because it has all those
active enzymes and everything else that can activate that pile and make it break down
quicker. Yeah, it's kind of like a yeae starter it is. I
mean, compost is great for that. And so blend those in there and
do it until the end of you know, you can't do it so for
us that's usually December because it doesn't really freeze. Our pile does not freeze
until you get to the cold of January. But by then it's composted down.
It's almost all ready to reuse again. And what happens here comes the
springtime again, start putting some coffee grounds in there, put a little more
compost in to reactivate it. Quickly, turn that pile every few days,
and I'm telling you by April first, by met you're going to have some
great unless you live in a last comp I apologize that because it probably doesn't
get that warm yet, but you're going to have some great potting soil to
reuse. And it's really the best way to do it. It really is.
And if you live in a really dry climate, it's the best to
water down the compost pile as well. Absolutely you want to keep a little
bit moisture. And it's just like a regular compost pile. As Mary says,
it's going to help activate that pile and get it going. So hey,
let's I think we've talked about this. So if you have those baskets,
get out there, don't throw them away. And at the very least,
even if you don't want to reuse it, throw all that soil in
your compost bin right now, because it's going to be fantastic for it.
But you can indeed reuse that potting soil this year, even if it's at
all winter. You just got to amend it with that first recharging. The
quick recharging method again, fall composting is best spring recharging to work, but
requires a bit a bit more working materials, certainly worth it. And then
obviously best not to regrow any the heavy feeders like tomato plants, right,
So get out your composts, get out the worm past things right per light,
and you can get those pots planted this year. That's right. And
remind everybody with this we're into May now, so our podcasts go to once
a week. We're excited about. That's exactly exactly, so I think it's
time Mary, all right, and remember whatever you do, find the fun
and gardening and grow something beautiful. Until next week, everyone, happy gardening.
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