How To Recharge And Reuse Old Potting Soil

Jim and Mary walk listeners through how to recycle, recharge and reuse old potting soil.

Potting soil can be one of the biggest annual expenses of all for those who like to plant flowers and vegetables in pots, containers and hanging baskets. In fact, quite often, it can cost a gardener more for the soil filling their containers than the plants being potted in it!

Old potting soil can be lifeless and nutrient poor. Without amending it, you simply can't grow new plants well. See how to recharge your soil in the spring or fall with two unique methods, grow amazingly healthy plants, and save big on your gardening budget in the process!

Episode Transcript

(00:02):
Welcome to the Simple Garden Life podcast, a program dedicated to keeping the yard
of gardening simple, fun and alwaysrewarding. Now Here are your hosts,
Jim and Mary Competti. Hello andwelcome everybody to another edition of Simple Garden
Life. I am your host,Jim Competti, along with my wife,
Mary Competti and married today we arein the middle, well I'm not the

(00:23):
middle, but the really start oftrue garden season. It's just May first
here as we record this episode fortomorrow'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'tmean that we're not getting excited for gardening
this year. Oh absolutely, Andwe have a great post today about that,
because what we're talking about today is, you know, taking old soil

(00:45):
that's in your pots and your containersand can you reuse it? Now?
This is something that should be talkedabout in the fall. But let's face
it, and we'll get to thisin a second. But life gets in
the way sometimes and we all walkout into our garage or maybe even to
our landscape and we see all thosedead flower pots still with the soil in
them, right, And so sometimesright on your front porch you'll have a
pot that you took your flowers out, but you still have the soil sitting

(01:06):
in there. That's right. Sowe'll get to that in a second.
But as always, we want totake a moment to remind everyone that you
can always reach us via email atthe farm at owgarden dot com. We
love answering questions, We love toget topics for the podcast. People have
emails. In fact, this isthis topic came from a lot of emails
we've had in the last few weeks, so it's definitely a popular topic right

(01:26):
now. Absolutely, you can alwayssign up a loan at simple gardenlife dot
com to follow along or on Facebook. I think we're on almost all the
major podcast apps now, so youcan sign up there to follow anytime you
know, we drop a new anew episode. Also, we really want
to talk about our YouTube channel becauseit's grown a lot, but this is
the time where we're going to beposting a lot, right We have our

(01:48):
test garden that we have and we'llbe posting definitely videos about how to plant,
when to plant, when to fertilize, all those different topics. Yeah,
and we just do three four minutevideos. We just did one a
week ago on about a week anda half ago on how to put your
supports in for tomato supports and howto make some really good tomato supports.
But just little quick snippets that wehope can help people as they get through
their garden. Sea. Yeah,they're not long and lengthy, so just

(02:10):
a few minutes, just you know, if you want to learn more about
what we're doing here on the farm, you can follow us on our YouTube
channel at Old World Garden. Especiallyif we haven't board you enough in our
podcast, you can get some moreof us set on the YouTube channel.
So all right, so perfectly thento this as we talk about gardening,
and we talked about having those potsout. Potting soil can be one of
the biggest expenses of all I mean, you know, if you're purchasing your

(02:32):
potting soil, even if you're makingyour own at home, the materials just
keeps going up. I think whattwenty dollars around here for a six or
a large bag of potting soil.Yeah, I can get quite costly,
real quickly, especially if you havelots of pots and hanging baskets. And
containers. Yeah, and like Isaid, even if you're making your own,
I mean, we like to useworm castings and all those things in
it, which certainly lessens the expenseof potting soil. But nonetheless, when

(02:55):
you're filling all these pots up inthe spring and you think you have to
get rid of that soil and can'tuse it again, you know, it
can be really cost prohibitive for peoplethat like to grow a lot of things
in pots, especially if you're tryingto grow some vegetables in there. Right,
this is a way to get yourplants out and a budget friendly way.
Yeah. Absolutely, And that's whatwe talk about. Can you reuse

(03:16):
it? We get a lot ofemails. 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 rechargeand 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 thistoo, is in the fall, when
you can take all those containers,you can put them in their own compost

(03:37):
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 besitting there with a lot of pots and
like, well, what can Ido? So before we get to that,
let's talk about why you have torecharge the soil into pots and why
it's so important. So, whetheryou grow annuals, whether you grow vegetables,

(03:59):
even herbs, and pots, theytake a lot of resources from the
soil, right they do, andthey deplete the soil of the nutrients.
So if you try to plant inthem again without doing anything, your plants
are really going to suffer, especiallyif you're planting the same plant you planted
back into that pot. I'll usea great example here. Flowers matter too,
But let's say you grow tomatoes ina pot. You try to put

(04:20):
a tomato in that same pot thenext year. You might grow up for
a little bit, but it's nevergoing to produce like it did last year,
and most likely probably won't even makeit through the entire season. Right.
That soil is just deplete all ofits nutrients from the year before it
is. And then there's one morething that's really important with potting soil that
happens to it over time, isit loses structure, And a lot of
people say, well, what structure, what does that mean? Well,

(04:40):
soil has a natural humus, andthe more thickness is a bad word.
But the more structure that's in thatsoil, 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'sflaky. And that's soil that has no
structure. So if you're going toreuse that potting soil, you have to

(05:02):
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 justkeep using it, that the likelihood of
it having issues becomes greater with everyevery year. Right, if you had
tomatoes planting in a pod and youhad tomato blight or any type of pest

(05:23):
or disease on it, if youdon't amend that soil your plans the next
you're going to have the exact sameproblem. Yeah, And if speaking to
that great point, because if youhave 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 goingto 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

(05:46):
that it's going to have issues downthe road. Right. That's so why
it's so important to amend your soilbefore 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 thinkfor us people kind of think, oh

(06:08):
well, they probably know we're reallyregimented on everything. We're just like everybody
else. Life gets in away forus. Last year, I think it
was a fall wedding. Yes,yeah, we are a little busy with
our daughter's wedding, but we actuallydo 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 theyear all around for the wedding, and
we had some other potted plants,more than we normally would. Um.

(06:29):
It got late in the year andyou know, lo and behold, here
we are with about I think fifteenor sixteen pots of soil that I'm really
ashamed to admit this, but we'rereal people. The moms were still in
them too, they were out backand they had died off. We took
care of those, Yeah, wetook those out. So we also have
our three tier planter box. Yeah. And so we have a lot of
soil. Yeah, a lot ofsoil this spring that we have to take

(06:49):
out. So the question is,you know, what do you need to
do. Do you have to throwit 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 wecall like to call like a quick charge
and get in there. So firstthing you want to do, and we
just talked about that is to getthe plants out of there. So if
you have any plants doing those potsthat are decayed, and then you know,
take them out, get rid ofthem, put them in your compost

(07:13):
pile. Unless it's a tomato plant. Everything else can pretty much go in.
We don't put our peppers in ifyou happen to do that, but
just you know, mow them over, shred them up, throw them in
your compost pile. If it's likeus, by this point, that plant
is pretty well gone right, probablyjust break off and be so brittle exactly,
it really does. And so nowyou are left. And what we
like to do. It depends onhow much soil you have. I like

(07:34):
to dump all the soil out atonce. If you have a few pots,
a wheel barrel works great for this. If you have a lot of
pots, like us, we takea tarp. Just put it down on
the ground you don't want to loseit, 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 leaveit in the pot, is what we're
trying to say. Leave it inthe pot and trying to add some soil
in it just not the way togo. Now. You need to be

(07:55):
able to mix it much better thanthat. Plus, you know, if
you're pulling your plants out, oldplants out, there's roots in there.
You want to take those out andthrow 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'regonna pile all this soil up, however
much or however little you have inone area, and you're gonna need three
things. You're gonna need some compostand you want it to be finely shredded

(08:15):
or screened. If you don't havecomposts, go buy some bag composts.
There's plenty now in stores. It'sit's really neat to see. The last
five to ten years. The twoof the things that we use the most,
really three here are all almost availablereadily at most big buckstores, and
that's compost and worm castings and perlight. You can also get them online.
We'll have links on our Simple GardenLife podcast article for this. But

(08:39):
you need these three items. Wormcastings, Marry, we can't say enough
now. We use them everything thatwe plant. Yeah, they're just an
all natural power source that can rechargethe soil. And most importantly we talked
about that structure. They really adda lot of structure to soil, as
does compost. Those are two ofthe biggest things and then the per light
that's going to loosen it all.Yeah, and when you go to these,

(09:00):
make sure you really read the labelsbecause you know you'll find worm castings,
but it's not one hundred percent wormcastings, so you really need to
take a good look at the labels. And the same thing with composts.
They may have different additives and chemicalsin there, so just make sure you
read before you purchase. Absolutely.So, we have our three ingredients,
we have our dirt. We're goingto take a quick break, and we're
going to come back and tell youhow to recharge that soil with what ratios

(09:22):
and then how to go about usingit. Okay, we are back talking
about redoing potting soil in the springthat's been left over. We talked about
dumping it out. You want tohave it all there again. Make sure
you have all those little root ballsthat 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 makesure that's just all potting soil that's in

(09:45):
there. And then we're going totake our three ingredients now, compost,
worm castings, and per light andmix them into this pile. So the
rate is really important because you wantto build up structure and nutrients in this
soil that is more lifeless because ofwhat'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 ifyou have a big, large poltic about

(10:07):
a third of that and add that'show much compost you want to add.
Yeah, you're not removing any partof 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 addone more wheelbarrowful of compost to it and
mix it in thoroughly. Make sureyou get you know, ho break anything,

(10:28):
and just mix it in there byhand. Just again, it's going
to depend on how much you haveand 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 buildsome structure into it, but not quite
enough. And that's where the wormcastings come in. Right, We're gonna
add about two to three cups ofworm castings for every five gallon bucket of
old potting soil. Yeah, andagain this isn't You're not baking a pie
here, so it's not going tomess up if you don't follow these exact

(10:50):
If you think your soil is morelifeless, if you've had it for a
few years, you can put afew a little bit more in, but
this is the minimum or a goodamount to reach that soil. Like she's
like Mary said about two to threecups. I like airing on the side
of three cups for every five gallonsworth of soil you have, and really
mix it in. It's really importantto mix this in. Yeah. It

(11:11):
really adds incredible energy and power tothe soil and a nice, slow,
steady release of fertilizer and nutrients throughoutthe growing season. Yeah, if you
don't use worm castings, get inthe 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. Ithelps hold moisture in and you know,

(11:33):
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 havea lot of container plants outside.
You can also use worm castings onyour indoor plants, Christmas cactuses, anything
everywhere. Yeah, absolutely, So, Okay, what's left is per light.
We've talked about pear light on thisshow before, or if you want
to vermiculate, these are soil lightners. Per light is volcanic glass that is

(11:58):
heated to extremely high temperature and itexplodes into that popcorn Like everybody thinks it's
styrefoam, but it's not. There'swhite 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 soilhave some in it? Because per light
never goes away. That's what Ilove about it. It doesn't break down.
It's going to keep that soil light. So if you had a lot

(12:18):
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. Wealways put it in ours, but I
still like, you know, puttinga 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 alittle bit, so it's not so dense
when you plant, so you knowyou have this mix. You mix it
all up. Look at the consistencyagain. Don't be afraid if you think

(12:41):
it still looks a little weak anddry. Add some more compost, add
some more castings. But in general, this is going to give you some
really good soil. Now you're goingto have more soil this year than you
had last year because you've added toit. But then when you take the
plants out and you take the rootsout, 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

(13:05):
equal fifty fifty mix of new pottingsoil to old potting soil. But you're
not getting I would still add theworm castings, I would still add some
compost. And you're going to savea whole heck of a lot of money
doing it this way versus adding morepotties. Right, you really need to
add the nutrients to your plants tolet them grow beautifully. Throughout the year.
Yep. I think this is agreat time for the question of the
week, which is one of thereasons we did this podcast. Mary,

(13:28):
I know you're always the question readers, so you'll ride ahead. So this
question is from Mallory Jones and she'sfrom Jackson, Mississippi. Her question to
us, I grew tomatoes in tenfive gallon buckets last year. I took
my plants out, but the bucketsare 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 tryingto purchase new soil every year from my

(13:50):
buckets. It's exactly what we're talkingabout. Yeah, Malorie, great question,
and Mallory, great job, becauseyou're recognizing that tomatoes are a little
bit different in this and that's whywe 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 samesoil to grow tomatoes in ever,

(14:11):
not not for that year. Iwould 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, somekind of you know, herbs,
things like that, but avoid thetomatoes. Hopefully you have some other potted
plants that you can draw from forsome soil. But if you have to,

(14:31):
if your tomatoes had zero disease lastyear and they were good, yes
you can. But it's what seiled. Same play with fire, right,
because soil from tomatoes. Soil fromtomatoes is just so different. Tomatoes just
takes It'd be like if you're tryingto grow corn and buckets. It just
takes so much out and there's somuch chance for disease that I really don't
like to do that. We don'tdo it here in any of our buckets.

(14:54):
But one thing you can do,Mallory next fall is take those buckets
out in the fall, put theminto you, you know, their own
in the compost pile, recharge thatcompost, and you're going to have a
much better chance to reuse it morein 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

(15:16):
a compost pile at this point.So long story, Shure it is.
I would try to avoid it shortstories. 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 adda lot more compost and castings to
that. So if you have todo that, right, it's the same
same concepts, but we do ascorp rotation in our garden. We never
plant tomatoes in the same area theywere the previous year. Yeah, And

(15:39):
this is why we try to bereal advice. I you know, I
hate there's never a chance to sayno, you can't, Yes you can.
You can always try things. Imean we always learn things. You've
got to try things out. Ijust like to tell you know the best
way it possible, what's going tobe 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 thetomatoes and the pod and it's a great
way to grow. It's just hardon that soil, so you've got to

(16:02):
really recharge it, right, absolutely, So I think that takes us to
the other way, which we talkabout what to do in the fall,
and it's really I mean, ofthe two, there is no doubt.
This is a better way. Welike to do this. This is the
way to recharge. And it's reallywhat you're doing is you're you're allowing it
to build its own natural resources overthe course of a winter time so that
you can use it again. Soagain, it's our favorite method, and

(16:26):
like said, even works with vegetableplants. Yeah, especially tomatoes. This
is the best best method if yougrow tomatoes and pots, is to recharge
its soil in the fall. Andagain saying that that meaning that your tomato
has had no issues with that pottedsoil. So okay, so any type
of thing in the fall. Whatyou want to do is you want to
have an extra bin or an extraarea, could be a corner of your
garden, and you want to dumpall of that soil. And here for

(16:48):
this one, you know, Idon'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 putsome type of structure around it, loose
fence, anything to make this allstay in the same area and dump all
of your soil in. What you'redoing is you're creating a podding soil compost
pile. That's exactly what you're creatinghere, So it's best to do it
in the fall, just because youhave so many other items you can add

(17:10):
to it naturally. Yeah, andfor 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'readding, 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 inthat pile. Well as well on the

(17:33):
fall leaves, Oh, if youwith all the fall leaves falling down,
you know it's best to add addshredded leaves to the compost pile. I
mean, you know, don't addholies 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 yourpile, and it's great structure. Yeah,
everything that goes into this pile becauseyou're gonna be using it in the
spring and it doesn't have a lotof time needs to be shredded. So

(17:55):
Mary's right, get the lawnmower outwith 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 inthat pile. Pulverize those eggshells down again.
Pulverize them, pulls them with acoffee maker so they're ground down into

(18:15):
a fine powder, and put themin 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. Whywe do that because it has all those
active enzymes and everything else that canactivate that pile and make it break down

(18:37):
quicker. Yeah, it's kind oflike 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 youknow, you can't do it so for
us that's usually December because it doesn'treally freeze. Our pile does not freeze
until you get to the cold ofJanuary. 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 coffeegrounds in there, put a little more

(19:02):
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 lastcomp I apologize that because it probably doesn't
get that warm yet, but you'regoing to have some great potting soil to
reuse. And it's really the bestway to do it. It really is.
And if you live in a reallydry climate, it's the best to
water down the compost pile as well. Absolutely you want to keep a little

(19:25):
bit moisture. And it's just likea regular compost pile. As Mary says,
it's going to help activate that pileand 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 themaway. And at the very least,
even if you don't want to reuseit, throw all that soil in
your compost bin right now, becauseit's going to be fantastic for it.
But you can indeed reuse that pottingsoil this year, even if it's at
all winter. You just got toamend it with that first recharging. The

(19:48):
quick recharging method again, fall compostingis best spring recharging to work, but
requires a bit a bit more workingmaterials, certainly worth it. And then
obviously best not to regrow any theheavy feeders like tomato plants, right,
So get out your composts, getout the worm past things right per light,
and you can get those pots plantedthis year. That's right. And
remind everybody with this we're into Maynow, so our podcasts go to once

(20:11):
a week. We're excited about.That's exactly exactly, so I think it's
time Mary, all right, andremember whatever you do, find the fun
and gardening and grow something beautiful.Until next week, everyone, happy gardening.
We hope you've enjoyed this episode.Subscribe to the Simple Garden podcast on
iTunes, Apple Podcasts, Spotify,or most of your favorite podcast apps.

(20:32):
You can also head over to simplegardenlifedot com, where you can listen and
read all of the show notes toevery episode and if you have any questions,
any ideas for show topics, orif you want to share your favorite
garden tip, email us at theFarm at owgarden dot com. Until next
time, Thanks everyone,