Potting Soil Recipes
Save money and grow healthy plants by making a potting soil mixture yourself. Read ahead for easy-to-follow recipes, and make them in batches to be used at your convenience.
Sheetal Mandora
Last Updated: Jan 12, 2019
Recipe #1: Organic Mix
This is an organic soil based mix that gives heavy soil than other peat mixes and has better drainage. To reduce root diseases, compost encourages healthier soil mix. You can use perlite and add the fertilizer at the base.
Ingredients
- ⅓ screened mature compost
- ⅓ sharp sand
- ⅓ garden topsoil
Recipe #2: Orchid Mix
You can add this mix to most of the orchids like phalaenopsis and oncidium. Although it's a very good idea to repot orchids every one or two years as it improves the health of the plants, and helps them bloom.
Ingredients
- 6 parts fir bark
- 1 part peat moss
- 1 part medium grade charcoal
Recipe #3: Organic Substitute Mix
This next recipe's formula was concocted by the Farm and Garden Project from the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Ingredients
- 10 lbs bone meal
- 5 lbs blood meal
- 5 lbs ground limestone
- ½ cubic yard sphagnum peat
- ½ cubic yard vermiculite
Recipe #4: Prick-out Mix
This recipe is used when you are planting seeds, and then transferring them into the ground when the plant reaches its transplant size.
Ingredients
- 2 parts sand
- 2 parts aged manure
- 2 parts leaf mold
- 6 parts compost
- 3 parts soil
- 1 part pre-wet and sifted peat moss
- 1 6 inch pot bone meal
Recipe #5: Tipi Produce Mix
All plant material that comes into any gardens, nursery, or greenhouses can be grown in this mix.
This next recipe works well for small and medium plug trays, and can grow 1020 flats of peppers, tomatoes, lettuce, squash, cucumbers, and many flowers. You can also fertilize them two times in a week with fish and seaweed fertilizer, which is dissoluble.
Ingredients
- 4 cubic ft. bales sphagnum peat moss
- 1 bag coarse vermiculite
- 1 bag coarse perlite
- 5 parts dolomitic limestone
- 10 parts kelp meal
- 10 parts blood meal
- 15 parts steamed bone meal
Recipe #6: Shade Mix
To grow plants in the shade, follow the recipe to yield an ideal soil. Cover both the humus and soil to wipe out roots, clods, and formation of large rocks.
Ingredients
- 1 part humus (compost)
- 2 parts loamy soil
- 1 part sand
Recipe #7: Cacti Mix
To plant a Christmas, orchid, and any epiphytic cactus plant, take a look at this simple formula.
Ingredients
- 3 parts organic potting mix
- 1 part sand
- 1 part perlite
Preparing these recipes at home is always better than buying it from the store and risking if it will work or not. Always select top quality ingredients to make the soil yourself, and let your garden prosper. The only difference between a store-bought kind and the homemade mix is your blossoming garden.
