Gowing medium for pots

by Fate
(Fergus, ON)

Two days of thawing and I am imagining myself with dirty knees and hands already!

Pro mix is rather expensive these days if one has lots of pots. I have lots of peat moss already and know there is a "recipe" of what to mix in with it for the a good container mix. I wonder if you could kindly remind me what it is please.
Still loving reading all that you write, thank you so much.

Doug says there are a bajillion recipes for artificial soil. I prefer the soilless peat mixes even though they're a bit more expensive and I buy them in large bags - use the same soil for several years by adding compost to the mix in the spring. That cuts the cost way down.

I've also grown in a mix that simply peat (4 shovels of peat to 1 of compost) and that produced a decent basket although it didn't drain worth a darn. :-)

You can also use something like
4-6 parts peat
1 part perlite
handfull of lime

to give you a mix that will grow decent container plants.

You can vary the amount of peat to perlite. More perlite will give you a faster draining pot - less will slow down the drainage.

The problem of course in mixing your own is that you can't get uniformity. You wind up with some pots that are quick"er" draining and others slower. Your watering has to be that much better to handle these subtle differences. This is one of the reasons I prefer a uniform mix and why even I only use them for a few years before starting fresh.

But that recipe above would be your starting point (although I rather doubt it's going to be all that much cheaper than buying large bags of Promix) :-)