I have several pots in which I have grown vegetables over and over for many years. I am often asked if a gardener can reuse potting soil. In this video I will show you the easiest way to reuse your potting soil year after year after year. I’m going to plant some lettuce and herbs and talk about the simplest secret to reusing potting soil almost indefinitely.
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Black Gumbo shares our suburban, backyard, sustainable gardening efforts. We work a small-scale teaching garden, much like the typical Zone 9a backyard garden and raised beds, the kind of gardening accessible to all. We tend to take the slice of life approach and hope you will enjoy our family, our dog, our cooking, our adventures, and occasionally some commentary and advice. We love family, joy and friendship, and we invite you to enjoy these things with us!
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39 Comments
Absolutely! It will be biologically active and ready for action. Only concern is it maybe semi acidic so lime may help a bit.
Scott, it's people like you that make it possible for a gardener to get through the cold, gray winter months before we get that spring fever that motivates us to get back out into the garden for another season. Something positive about social media.
Thanks for the tip! I save my pots every year.
I love the smell of fertilizer in the morning. Smells like…… victory garden. 😎🕊️🙏💖
5th
this was a really nice video for you to share i like your method.
Have you added rice hulls over the years or is that all four years old?
You planted that lettuce and I thought “that I is ready for the salad bowl” 😂🤣
Awesome.. I'm going to re use my 3 Year old potting soil after watching this video thanks very much for the information
Beautiful color on your muscadine leaves as they're closing up shop.
How do you deal with the ants?
I do exactly that. At the end of every season I empty all my pots and put the soil in my raised beds. I'm in N.Y so I use alot of mulched leaves on the bottom of my pots before I put my soil in to save on soil.
Thanks for the information. Good to know!
Hey, it's ALL dinosaur dirt. All any of it needs is a little TLC by way of amendments to turn it into "soil". Add a composter and a cement mixer to mix it around and you're golden.
My best performing containers are the older soils .side by side comparison it's clear fungal activity in used potting soil definitely makes added nutrients/fertility better available.
Fire ants in gumbo or pots do not like 1 teaspoon peppermint or rosemary oil with 2 teaspoons Dr Bronner's Soap or Dawn to 1 gal. water–They WILL be gone the next day…works every time without poisons. Our zone 9 seems to be where fire ants love to go!
Hi Scott. Thanks for all the great information you give to make growing more understanding.
I use a flame thrower to sterilize my weedy potted soil by putting it in a metal wheelbarrow and flaming it. It kills all the weed seeds, turns the old roots to carbon, and kills any mold or whatever. You are going to need to fertilize it to use it anyway so why not. Been doing it for years works great saves money.
Sometimes we need a wetting agent due to the soil going hydrophobic.
Good to know. I have blood meal. I want to grow greens in some recycled compost blue bins. There's already soil and a few plants left in there. You've given me my first step for the spring👍
What kind of baged compost do you like. I use some from Lowes. But it looks like mulcb. Im a littl afraid of.
Yeah there's no doubt that you can't grow in Old potting soil like that I do it all the time
I grow plants in 250 million year old soil. I'd say 5 years is fine.
there arent enough phoebe comments ! i love corgis, shes nice and plump too 😂
Years don't matter. For forty years we have tilled three acres and never fertilized but every lear we rotated the lines. God always blessed us.
Great video. Blessings
I pull the mulch back off my container blueberries and add compost and fertilizers annually. They are two years old and it seems to be working so far!
Always reuse my potting soil and amend also. Thanks for the video
I'm not throwing my old soil out anymore. Using it for something. Thank you for this video.
This will save some money! Thank you for sharing!
I reuse my soil as well, but sometimes I just toss it in my compost bins.
Cutest little scene-stealer ever 🙂
Great video! Used to think I had to use new soil, now I know, what a money saver!
Thanks so much for what you do. I’m a neighbor on the Texas coast and I get my rice hulls for free locally. Should I worry about pesticides on them?
Scott I grow in bags have all my cabbage etc. now, once I harvest I dump bags all together and add 7-7-7 & dolemite(lime) with “Black Cow” compost if needed and refill then replant each season. Add organic fertilizer intermittently during growing. In same zone so. La. coast as you. What your thoughts too much, not enough??Also do same with raised beds
I don't grow much in pots because if the heat in central Florida. I do use for flowers and plants on my porch. I throw used soil in compost and it seems to speed up the process.
Good video for beginners Scott. I would swiftly go broke if I had to discard all my used potting mix each year with my very large container garden. I amend it each year. Next summer will mark the 5th season growing in the oldest soil. It will also be my first year that I will not have to buy compost. You video's put me on the path to not buying it. I built two super large leaf mold bins last fall and filled them. After turning it into an empty compost stall I refilled them for the following year. Last falls should be done in early spring. I also add pelletized chicken manure, garden lime, and some peat to replenish any thats broken down. Gardening doesnt have to be expensive.
Potting soil is a pretty big expense since I have a couple dozen pots filled with annual flowers and veggies during any given summer, so no way am I throwing it out.
I just dump everything from the pots on a tarp the following spring and mix in my own compost and leaf mold, maybe 50/50 old to new, and it's ready to go. This year I will probably add a couple bags of pearlite. If I don't feel like dealing with pots that are really root bound, that soil goes into the compost bins. I've learned over the years (thanks to youtube videos like this) that nothing in the garden should go to waste 😊
Good stuff, I think I like mixing soil, composting, and making beds more then actually getting stuff to grow hahah I only grow stuff to use up the soil!
This is why Phoebe loves gardening too. She is a little stinker stealing all the attention! Thanks for sharing.