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Planting Your Container Garden

There are such lots of horror stories from beginner and experienced gardeners about using an incorrect soil mix for their garden planters and containers. Here is the best advice that we have culled from many sources, especially from those growers that specialise in container plants. Bagged commercial potting mixes are the comprehensive best choice for filling containers. These mixtures contain a variety of ingredients, including composted bark, sawdust, peat moss, perlite, vermiculite, or sometime real soil which is often pasteurized. Some container mixes also contain dung, and if you like your planters and pots to be organic, you may need to duck those. Though perfect loamy soil could be used as an ingredient for your house made potting mix, most ordinary garden soil isn't suitable.

It is too heavy and compacts simply in pots and planters and does not drain in the right way. These are some suggestions if you need to make your own container mix - one hundred % compost, 100% soil-less mix, 25% garden soil with 75% compost or soil-less mix and we have also seen 50% soil-less mix and 50 % compost.

There are plenty of variations; however, garden soil may contain weed seeds or pathogens that cause plant sicknesses. At first , you will need to get sufficient container soil to fill all your planters and urns, but you can cheat a little the next year and just replace half the soil from the year before and top-up for the successive year. This is going to be hypothetical economy and it's fantastic practice to replace all the soil every year and then you know that you have the best conditions for your new plants.

Just add the spent soil to the compost pile or the "old" soil to pot up those plant sale donations. Your massive planters and pots may be unwieldy to move around, so consider setting them in position before filling them with your potting mix. Even with the lighter pots, it is generally easier to fill them where they can eventually reside. Just move around with your container mix and plants and fill up your planters with those apartments of beautiful new flowers, herbs and evergreens. A long lasting container mix is the best medium for long term plants such as woody plants and evergreens. Use one part : peat moss, composted bark, compost, sand and perlite.

If your compost is too heavy, just add more perlite to promise good drainage. You can use additional compost for grown up plants ; however, it might be too rich for young plants and could damage their frail roots and stems. If you are considering Cacti and Succulents for your planters and containers this year, they use less water ; this is a soil mix that could be considered. Commence with five parts perlite, 4 parts bagged potting soil, one part coarse sand and a touch of rock dust. Once your plants are in, just top dress with tiny brook rock, gravel, aquarium stone or a fine grade of gravel to keep the crowns of the plants from rotting. To increase the bitterness ( succulents flourish in acid soil ), add a massive spoon of white vinegar to five gallons of water when watering. To sum up, always moisten potting mix before filling containers. Pre-moistening is vital, potting mix could be difficult to wet and you can finish up with pockets of soil that stays dry. This dry soil will just pull the water right from the plant roots and damage them.

Some gardeners even consider pre-soaking their plants before filling the pots and containers.