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Urban gardening or small-space gardening in containers is on
the rise! And the number of people growing plants indoors is also on the rise.
The most important aspect of container gardening is the potting medium used,
because this, along with light and moisture will be the most important factor
to help your plants grow healthier and disease free.
I never use the commercial potting mixes available, which are infact too expensive.
I rather prefer to make my own homemade potting mix recipe for both my indoor
and outdoor plants
Now, lets start looking at the ingredients we use to prepare our indoor soil mix, one by one. We will list out the formula or the recipe with the proportions of each ingredient used, shortly.
Now quickly, before the formula
or recipe, lets know the difference between Potting Mix and Potting Soil.
Potting Mix is simply a mixture of all the above ingredients minus the garden
soil. That’s means it is a soil less medium. On the other hand, Its called
Potting soil when you use garden soil in the mixture. That’s simple! But most
often these two terms are used synonymously.
Well, here in this recipe, considering the importance of plant anchorage, we
will use garden soil too but in small quantity.
Now lets look into the actual recipe of this indoor potting soil.
Optionally you can add 5 percent bone meal plus neem cake powder.
Let me start with the 3 P’s of Successful Gardening.
1. Planning your Garden
2. Potting Mix Preparation and
3. Planting
So, Today we will discuss on the second P of gardening, that’s Preparing the best potting Mix for your plants based on some useful scientific concepts. Please watch the video till the end. First we will discuss the Criteria for the best potting soil for your plants and then the formula or the recipe for the best all-purpose universal potting mixture for your gardening.
Well, You need to Understand this Point: Why cant I just dig up the ground and use this soil for my plants? This is because we have two major limitations of this:
1. Compaction or hardening of soil – mainly with clayey soil which can suffocate the roots.
2. Lack of Nutrients in the soil- that’s the Major NPK elements (Nitrogen, Phosphorous and Potassium) and also the minor trace elements.
Hence, the need to prepare your own potting soil arises.
Hold on friends, some more important concepts to learn before I disclose my recipe. A few criteria you should be taking care while preparing your potting mix.
1. DRAINAGE: We all know, too much water can rot your plants. So a well draining soil that quickly drains out water within a particular duration of time is important for all plants. This is the most important criteria for growing succulents and based on this you adjust the proportions of stuff like sand, perlite and other stuff.
2. WATER RETAINING CAPACITY: This is quite opposite of the first factor. So we have to add materials in such a way that the water should neither drain out too quickly nor it should stagnate in the container.
3. NUTRIENTS: This is a very important criteria in container gardening. We have to add certain nutrients into the potting mix so that your plant can produce flowering or fruiting at right time and grows in a healthy manner.
Having said that, Now Lets Start making our Potting Mix with the best and easily available ingredients.
I am showing you two formulae, One you can use purely for teres gardening which is very light weight and will not have any compaction. This can also be an ideal seed starting mix so that the seeds can push the light weight ingredients in its germination process and also to some extent sterile.
And the second one is our all purpose mix for most of our plants. You can change the proportions as per your requirement, but generally this mix will be useful for any plant. So the formula is:
1. Good quality Garden Soil about 40 percent (by good quality I mean, it should not have large stones or other large sized stuff in it).
2. Cocopeat or Peat Moss: 30 percent. If you do not have this, you can use about 10 to 20 percent River Sand. Adding more sand may result in too fast drainage which might be useful for succulents and cacti.
3. 20 to 30 percent Compost like decomposed cowdung powder or Vermicompost or leaf compost or a mix of these. These first 3 ingredients should be the minimum for your plants.
4. You can further fortify this with 5 percent of any of these or a combination of these, that is Bone Meal powder for flowering and fruiting + Neem Cake or Any oil cake Powder for anti microbial and antifungal effect for root protection.
5. Then you can also add Trichoderma or pseudomonas powder and also some beneficial fungi called Mycorrhizae. You can watch a detailed video on these useful soil fungi from a link at top right corner of this video and also in the description.
The Second Formula of Potting Mix is a light weight mix suitable for roof top gardening and also as a great seed starting mix. Here you do not use garden soil, but only
1. Cocopeat or peat moss (50 percent)
2. Compost like decomposed cowdung powder or vermicompost (30 percent)
3. Perlite or Vermiculite about 20 percent (You can check out my detailed video on the differences and benefits of Perlite and Vermiculite from a card link at top right and also from description.
4. You can optionally add the same 5 percent ingredients like bone meal, neem mix, mycorrhizae etc as discussed earlier.
Before I start with the ingredients to make our All purpose Cactus Mix or Succulent Potting Mix, You need to remember one simple basic concept. Succulents need to be planted in a soil that holds enough water for them to absorb what they need but for a short duration of time and it should drain out quickly so the roots won’t rot. Hence Soil with the best drainage is crucial for succulent survival.
Now coming to the ingredients and proportions to make the best Potting Mixture for Succulents and cacti. You can use this mix for growing both indoor as well as outdoor succulents.