Introducing Soil-Mates
This houseplant soil recipe is a great way to give your plants a solid foundation for healthy growth. The six sustainable and organic ingredients used to make this product will help ensure that indoor plants will grow big and strong, resulting in your home becoming your joy hub!
With its intricate structure, soil is essential to any healthy plant. It ensures that our plants can support themselves, get enough water, and all the nutrients they need to grow the happiest leaves and the brightest flowers. If you want healthy houseplants, try a good potting mix right from the start.
Can I Use Any Soil for Houseplants?
When houseplants are confined to their pots, they do not have the chance to gather nutrients from the earth and the extra moisture in the deep soil. Because of this, it’s especially important we plant them in high-quality potting soil, to ensure they have the best possible chance.
Did you ever notice how frequently you need to water your indoor plants? They tend to dry out very quickly, so they require a potting mix that will retain moister longer to keep them hydrated. Air circulation and drainage are also required by indoor plant roots. Hence, the right mix for your pot should achieve the appropriate balance between holding moisture, creating air pockets, and allowing excess liquids to drain freely through the drainage holes. There are three essential elements for an ideal potting soil structure:
- Water retention
- Aeration
- Drainage
Some of the key elements of indoor soil have nothing to do with the soil, but rather with what we put into it and how we use it. It is essential to provide plants with the space they need to grow and the nutrients they need to flourish.
The plants need enough space to grow, which means a large pot is needed.
Make sure your houseplants get the right nutrients by feeding them fertilizer.
Can I Use Outdoor Soil for Indoor Plants?
Considering how much I talk about how outdoor soil is essential for plant health, I might have misinterpreted your request to use it for houseplants as well. It’s important to remember that even though soil that is already full of nutrients is also full of microorganisms and soil wildlife (like worms and bugs). By bringing this soil into the room, you’re also introducing these organisms. Without the complete ecosystem available outside, the population of organisms can quickly get out of control in a negative way.
The reason you should keep critters out of your house is because they might bring pests like fungus gnats into your house. To take care of your houseplants, you can use a sterile recipe for houseplant soil. Add nutrients to it with indoor fertilizer. It’s absolutely amazing how healthy my indoor plants are when I use this houseplant soil recipe, as they get all the nutrients and moisture they need to grow and grow. Here’s a breakdown of the ingredients and how to prepare the soil for potting.
Preparing Soil Potting
Make Your Compost
It is extremely important to put compost in this recipe for houseplant soil, so make sure you do it properly! Compost contains microorganisms that add life to soil, and is made of organic matter that has been broken down. This material holds moisture and provides plants with nutrients; however, quality varies widely according to inputs and composting methods.
It is also possible for the compost in urban areas as well as farms to lack adequate nutrients and to contain undesirable materials like pesticides, herbicides, and plastic. Buy top-quality commercial compost, or make your own compost using a proper balance.
Sterilize Your Compost
Despite the fact that your compost is nearly ready to be brought into the house, it is still advisable to sterilize it before doing so and to keep bugs, fungus, and bacteria at bay. Many potting soils rely on properly finished compost that has been screened beforehand. Sterilizing it will slow down the growth of harmful bacteria (while keeping good bacteria), keep pests and diseases at bay.
My favorite way to prepare compost as soil for houseplants is to bake the compost in the sun for several hours. Alternatively, you can use the oven for at least 30 minutes at 180 degrees F (82 degrees C). Be careful though, the oven will get a little stinky!
Instead of sterilizing your compost, you can purchase a compost that has been processed. Any leftover compost can be stored in a sealed plastic container for future indoor and seed-starting mixes.
Except for compost, the other ingredients in this recipe do not have active biology, so they can be added at the time of purchase.
Best Houseplant Soil Amendments
You’ve got compost as your number one ingredient, right? But what else do you need? To make the best soil for your house plants, incorporate the right mixture of ingredients. All these ingredients make great amendments to your houseplant soil, but if your current mixture isn’t performing well, they are also ideal as houseplant soil remedies.
Sphagnum Peat Moss Alternative
The natural peat of Sphagnum and Hordeum shrubs is a moisture-retaining organic material that contains no pathogens, weed seeds, mineral salts, or heavy metals. It is important to consider that the harvesting of sphagnum peat moss involves numerous elements of sustainability.
The peat moss is harvested from bogs, which are excellent at absorbing and storing carbon to reduce climate change. However, harvesting them releases carbon.
In addition to this, peat bogs are also a breeding ground for many wildlife and plant species. Peat moss has been overexploited in many countries. Even sustainable harvesting methods are not able to repair it for many years even after fixing the the deforestation caused.
The peat moss of Sphagnum is more than just a sustainability issue. It is also extremely acidic and hard to rehydrate. A peat alternative is associated with environmental reasons such as an acidic pH, re-hydration issues, and sustainability concerns. If coconut coir is unavailable, woody materials such as sawdust, composted bark, or wood fibers can be substituted for this recipe.
Worm Castings
Vermicompost, often called vermicast, is made by worms consuming organic material, aka vermicompost. They contain nutrients as well as microorganisms. A worm casting’s main purpose is to retain soil nutrients and moisture, which makes them more available for plant uptake.
Worm castings are an excellent fertilizer for organic gardens because they filter out heavy metals and contaminants from the soil. I buy packaged worm castings instead of making my own to ensure it does not bring in bacteria, fungi, pests, or other organisms. In the summer I use my vermicompost to feed outdoor plants.
Perlite
In its natural state, perlite is a highly porous and lightweight volcanic glass. When heated, it is seen to puff up and resembles Styrofoam balls. This substance is a lightweight aeration material that will allow topsoil to drain properly, keeping soil light and freeflowing. It is perfect for cactus and succulent mixes, growing root cuttings in pots, and propagating cuttings.
Vermiculite
Vermiculite is a naturally occurring mineral, a piece of which may be processed into small pellets (chips), which hold and aerate groundwater. Its neutral pH makes vermiculite a common ingredient in seed starting mixes. When using vermiculite as a potting soil, only horticultural quality vermiculite should be used.
Sand
The presence of sand in soil can alter its structure and make it insoluble. Too much sand can create problems for drainage. When choosing a potting mix ingredient, look for play sand or horticultural sand as beach sand can contain salt, plastic, and glass.
Instruction
Make sure you blend your soil ingredients well. When potting houseplants, moisten the soil prior to planting. Water plants thoroughly and again when they have dried out.