Thinking about using backyard soil for your container garden? In this video, we explore whether it’s a good idea, the potential risks, and how to improve your soil for healthy, thriving plants. Learn about soil composition, drainage issues, and how to create the perfect potting mix for container gardening success!
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Ashley has had a passion for plants since she was a small child. In the long summers as a child, she would garden alongside her grandmother and it was then that she realized her love for greenery. With years of great studying, Ashley had begun her post-secondary education at the University of Saskatchewan.
At first, her second love, animals, was the career path she chose but while doing her undergrad she realized that her education would take her elsewhere. And with that, four years later she graduated from the University of Saskatchewan with a bachelor’s degree in science and a major in Soil Science.
Some of Ashley’s interests are YouTube, in which she posts informative videos about plants and gardening. The focus of Ashley’s YouTube channel is to bring science to gardening in a way that is informative but also helpful to others learning to garden. She also talks about the importance of having your own garden and the joys of gardening indoors. Ashley continues to study plants in her free time and hopes to expand her YouTube channel as well as her reach to up-and-coming gardeners.
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38 Comments
At the farm where I grew up, we had a bluff of trees behind the house that had a wonderful humus layer built up, and I remember my Mom sending me to scrape aside the top layer, and dig into that layer to get it as an additive to our garden soil that we used as a basis for houseplants. I do seem to recall we also added perlite or vermiculite to that mix as well.
Genuinely love how you teach us kinda newbies to gardening/plants 💚 I've never used our own soil in raised beds, I always buy bags but I'd love to dabble in maybe mixing our own soil mix.
Thank you.
I live in the forest and love it. Yes it does have challenges, but you do what you can. 😊❤ I will look into this.
My property id devoid of leaves, yet heavy in conifers. Is it possible to create leaf mould from pine needles?
>Me, in my basement all winter, mixing peat moss & topsoil 😅
GICs I wouldn’t recommend ground soil in your containers ever. But if you had ground soil mixed with compost and solarized it, you could use this on a raised bed.
I'm confused why that layer of soil would have low nutrient content. I thought decomposing leaves and branches would be releasing lots of nutrients. In fact, I've grabbed bags of forest floor debris to use as mulch to fertilize some of my fruit trees 😂 (they're in large fabric containers, i just dumped the mulch on the top). Is the problem that they just need to decompose more before they start releasing nutrients? Thanks!
We have 22 acres, mostly forested. Can't check till spring. But we have heavy clay, Acidic soil. I'll be trying to make some wood fired pottery – ollas specifically- this year
I would love to have soil to put into my pots, however I live in an area that has heavy clay AND when our yard was landscaped by the builder, they used the soil from the basement they dug out next door. I can make my own top soil eventually with leaf litter/composting. The problem is what to do in the mean time. Thanks for all your great advice!
With regard to your comment suggesting that leaf litter from particular varieties of forest trees should not present toxicity/other problems for garden use, I recall that at least one U.S. state university or agency had a web-page cautioning against using the leaves of red maple in general garden applications. I don't know if the distinction between partially decomposed leaf litter and raw leaves makes a difference, but are you familiar with this cautionary advice?
As always, love your videos. I had the brilliant idea to use soil from a nearby forest. It was beautiful dark black, 💯 composted. Unfortunately, whatever bugs were in the soil completely destroyed my potatoes in said garden. The foilage was something to behold tho. Something to consider.
Soil in your back yard is called DIRT and just the way you see dirt growing trees and weeds and grass it will also grow your plants lol
I have a forest. 75% black spruce, the other 25% is mixed birch, poplar, maple, and ash…
Just tell me what ya would like me to do/ how much youd like me to try and collect.. i could try and do few small raised beds for comparison purposes if required…. Walls of beds would be done with the spruce.. (stacking logs "cabin" style)
PS finally found my spool of fishing line, going to try using it to help keep chickens contained this year…. LoL
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I have a wonderful little book about John Innes potting compost, a mix of composted turf, a certain grit size sand and peat moss, then pasteurized.
It had some fertilizer and ph, calcium additions.
I use some of my garden soil in 'my mix' for plants that will end up being planted back in the garden (with the thinking of some of the micro biom would help the plantsbc they're going to be growing that same soil). I have other souls for pots only and really have 4 different mixes. Pots only, Lite Mix, Hybrid mix for plants headed back to the garden eventually and a heavy mix with more broken down compost comprised of home scraps I've made which is really used as my worm house.
I live in town but near our town is a small river with a walking trail. .I go down with a trowel and 5 gallon bucket. I dig around near the trail in the bush area and bring home the bucket of " wild stuff". I put this into my compost pile to inoculate it . Building a lot of my own soil over the years.
😂 editing Ashley @ 3:28
I live near a forest…
We have lots of forest around our home. LFH layer is good where we are. … The only thing that we are not sure of is, the pests. We have deer, rabbits, porcupines, raccoons, etc. … Things that we worry about is deer ticks, flees, etc. in the forest setting. … But I guess solarizing the soil will help with that. … Thanks for the information
Vancouver Island, BC. Since actual top soil is at a premium in my area, most of the 'soil' in my garden… beds and containers..is made. But i have had great results using the area in the back of my yard (under fir trees) mixed with everything else i could find or source (purchased and homemade compost, aged manure, leaf mold…although most are used as mulch and disappear into the soil quite rapidly…then adding peat moss and/or perlite, coarse sand, and amendments depending on what the mix looks and feels like 😂). Not very scientific but pH and temperature checks, as well as observing the plants, seems to work.
So not just garden soil for containers but soil and 'forest fines' as a base. Everything is sieved for containers.
Blessings 🌞❤️🔥
I live on 5 acres and 75% or more is forested. I could totally harvest some soil, and loved this video. New ideas to consider
I have this same question but about houseplants! 🙋♀️
Wouldn’t dare try removing leaves from public land in my area… already problems with thieves digging up rare plants.
Wouldn't the forest's natural seed bank be some cause for concern in a potting mix, as well? Thx.
Thanks for the awesome advise!! If you have lots of Juglandaceae (walnuts, pecans, heartnuts, butternuts, etc) trees you might want to be careful too, somethings do not care, others definitely do!!
I just thought about doing just that the other day there is a old grove of oak trees that a developer didn't take out yet, great video now i know what to look for. would it work to add to a bioreactor?
Could u use coconut core mixed with worm casting dirt bought at a gardening sore?
i use my heavy clay dirt from my backyard and mix that clay with other things like sand, perlite, peatmoss lol . 50/50
I've been collecting leaves for leaf mould for years, turns out all that work was unnecessary. Last year I finally thought of stepping down into one of the many ditches on my property with a shovel. Leaves has been collecting and kept moist in those ditches for the last 100+ years. The wind is so much better at collecting leaves than me with a rake.
💚💚
YouTube channel, I Am Organic Gardening, has a couple of great videos on making your own leaf mold.
So….walnut….I'm pretty sure if someone does this using this layer from around walnut trees, it would turn out drastically horrible. Walnut toxicity is a thing.
The video links don't seem to have taken
Hi Ashley I read through the comments and don’t see this so: depending on location (unfortunately many in US even in Maine) there are now invasive jumping worms. I brought them into my garden in leaf litter from the neighborhood. They multiply exponentially. They are not earthworms like I grew up with. They literally jump if disturbed. My garden is full of them…… and they don’t tunnel through my clay. Top 3 inches and eat a lot. I had a visit from state of California who confirmed
I filled all my raised beds with my forest "top soil"… Yeah, I used a tractor lol. It's free but a lot of work especially if you want to screen all the forest chunkys out. But yeah, amend accordingly 👍
Ashley, when you start getting your seeds out can you show us how you set up your cold frame for seed starting? I want to move mine to the greenhouse and I’d like some pointers so I don’t destroy my starts lol
We do live in a forest. Finding enough sun is a challenge. Last fall I started a leaf meeting of w dried leaf layer from woods and included raking up the underlying soil. It had those white fungi (??) already present breaking down material. I be never used this, it will be an experiment.