The first step in repairing damaged soil is to begin adding nutrients and structure back into the ground. This will take you from “dirt” to real “soil”. Some of the best and easiest soil amendments are compost and aged manure (just don’t use cat or dog feces).

Compost is a mixture of decomposed plant parts and animal waste. The key benefit of composting is that it increases soil organic matter content. Organic matter improves the soil fertility, the soil structure and its water holding capacity. It also sequesters carbon in the soil.

7 Simple Strategies to Improve Garden Soil

1. Compost. Turn your kitchen and yard waste (leaves, grass clippings, etc.)
2. Manure. I call our composted animal poop ‘black gold’.
3. Mulch.
4. Cover Crops.
5. Vermicompost.
6. Natural Amendments.
7. Raised Beds.

Organic materials, the key ingredients for healthy soils, abound. You can add fallen leaves, garden debris, kitchen scraps, and even apples raked from beneath fruit trees to soil. Chop organic material directly into the top 2 inches of soil with a heavy bladed hoe and cover with mulch.

Improving Garden Soil Adding organic matter in the form of compost and aged manure, or using mulch or growing cover crops (green manures), is the best way to prepare soil for planting. Adding chemical fertilizers will replenish only certain nutrients and do nothing for maintaining good, friable soil.

Garden soil is made of natural topsoil or sand blended with relatively inexpensive, bulky organic material. Meanwhile, potting soil mix contains no natural soil. It is a specially formulated mix made of peat moss, ground pine bark, and either perlite or vermiculite.

Potting soil can be mixed with garden soil for particular cases such as raised beds, but it’s not a good mix for containers. Learn more about these different types of soil and how to use them in various types of gardens.

Garden soil can be used as the base of a homemade potting mix, but it should never be used straight in outdoor pots. Using any soil in a potting mix is not ideal, though. You are much better off using potting mix to make sure that you have the right balance of aeration, drainage, moisture retention and nutrition.

If you accidentally used garden soil from your backyard for growing in pots, you need to repot your plant. Don’t throw the garden soil away! If it is of a good quality, you can easily amend it and turn into a good potting mix. All you need to do is mixing peat moss, perlite and garden soil.

planters

1. Plastic Bottles. Recycle your plastic bottles by using them at the bottom of your big containers. Your flowers and plants will love the extra breathing room inside.
2. Packing Peanuts. Reuse your Styrofoam packing peanuts as filler for large pots.
3. Wood Chips. Don’t have enough of the previous two ingredients?
4. Landscape Rocks.

Miracle-Gro potting soil is safe for vegetables. Scotts Miracle-Gro is the brand name of a line of potting mixes and fertilizers formulated for a variety of plants. Container gardeners often use potting mixes like Miracle-Gro potting soil.

Multi-purpose compost is the best choice if you’re planting small patio pots, hanging baskets, herbs, leafy salads and flowering bedding plants. This Organic All Purpose compost is 100% natural, so is perfect for your plants and gentle on nature.

Seeds carry their own nutrients, so they don’t need an enriched potting compost to germinate. Sow into firm compost or soil. Whether sowing indoors or out, prepare the soil by making sure there are no large lumps and firming it down.

With thoughtful handling, you can reuse potting compost in next year’s containers, or use it to solve other gardening problems. Old potting compost need not be bone dry when you store it, but too much moisture can create cushy conditions for unwanted mouldy microbes. Dry soil weighs less, too.

Potting composts Potting compost in bags is usually lighter in texture than homemade garden compost. It is created for growing plants in containers – not as a soil improver – and there are particular mixes for seed sowing, cuttings or ericaceous (lime hating) plants.

Use your compost-enriched potting soil for bedding plants or seedlings. Mixing compost with potting soil allows gardeners to stretch expensive commercial potting soil without sacrificing the health of their plants. Don’t allow compost to account for more than approximately one-third of the volume of your potting soil.

Growing plants in pure compost can cause problems with water retention and stability as well. So while it may be tempting, planting in pure compost is not a good idea. That’s not to say you shouldn’t plant in compost at all. Just an inch or two of good compost mixed with your existing topsoil is all your plants need.