You Should Recycle Soil From Dead Plants.

In the corner of your local nursery, tucked away in the back, a worker is piling up an endless stream of dead plants and tossing the plastic pot into the trash. It’s a bit like what you do at home, throwing out pots full of dead plants at the end of the season, with one notable exception: the soil at the nursery is recycled. You can do the same and save money by recycling your soil year after year by following a few simple steps.

Why You Don’t Usually Reuse Soil

All soil is soil, right? Unfortunately, there is a nuance here. The soil we buy in stores is made up of many components, including compost, topsoil, coir or peat, and various nutrients. Some of the soil is intended to be used outside in a large garden bed. This soil is not suitable for a small pot because it cannot retain moisture and requires more nutrients for the plants. So, the soil you buy for potting plants (potting soil) contains additional moisture retention components as well as slow-release fertilizer.

At the end of the season, this soil, as you may have noticed, becomes rock-hard and refuses to absorb water. In addition, nutrients are depleted. Therefore, nurseries always advise turning the pots over completely and renewing the soil by breaking it up and adding new fertilizers.

So why not just buy new soil? The main thing is the cost. Like any other sector, gardening costs have risen sharply over the past four years, driven not only by the recession but also by the sudden pandemic surge in gardening. Plus, every bag of soil means more plastic waste (and you’ll just have to lug the bag of soil home). Some money is lost because you literally throw away soil that would be perfectly usable if you took a few steps.

How to recycle soil

First, find a place to store a pile of dirt. This could be an area of ​​your yard that can accommodate a literal pile of trash, or you could use a composter or even a roll-off yard bin. At the end of the season, you will remove the pot and, if you can, recycle it. Now loosen the soil and toss it into the pile, plant and all—assuming the plant isn’t diseased in any way. If the plant shows signs of disease, throw this sucker in the garbage rather than in the city compost bin. Nobody needs your sick compost anymore.

Soak the compost and leave it for the season. Plant matter will decompose, which is the basis of compost, replenishing the soil with nutrients. This may attract worms, which is great. It should be stirred with a shovel or the compost stirred from time to time.

At the end of the season, you can go there, pull out some perfectly usable compost and use it again for either outdoor beds or potted plants, taking some out and carefully inspecting it to see if it’s suitable. you need vermiculite or another similar water-retaining additive. If you are unsure about using it on potted plants, take some to a nursery and they will advise you. You can also add a slow-release fertilizer such as Osmocote to the mix.

Some people sift compost, which is literally shaking the compost through a sieve, which acts like the sieve you would use in the kitchen, passing through homogeneous, finely sifted compost, but this is not really necessary.