Does anyone have a receipe for really homemade potting soil?

[enjoy the ride]

I have composted horse manure, crushed eggshells, compost, and wood ashes. I think they can be used but will be short on Phospherous? Anyway that you can think to make this work? I don't want to use bonemeal as it takes a lot to dry and grind bones I think.

 

[roosmom]

Hi, I do not have any help for you except that I would try looking online and seeing what natural thing contains phosphorus. Maybe it will be something you use everyday. I like the show Gardening by the Yard on hgtv with Paul the gardeing guy. He likes homeade and natural stuff also. But it sounds like you have a good start.

 

[patandchickens]

You know what, as long as you are making decent-textured well-rotted compost from a reasonably balanced and diverse suite of sources, you will be basically fine.

Remember that Actual Soil In The Ground is made that way...

What do you want this for? Starting seeds? Outdoor container plants? Houseplants? A reasonable sort of generic mix would be something like 1 part WELL COMPOSTED compost, run through 1/4" hardwarecloth to seive it into only the fine particles (use the rest elsewhere), 1 part your actual soil (again, seived), and 1 part coarse sand unless your soil is already really sandy. Adding a peat analogue (like fairly well-composted shavings or shredded bark) would help if you happen to have such a thing around.

Then fertilize the plants regularly with as balanced a fertilizer as possible.

My experience with homemade potting soil has annoying enough that I don't use it anymore -- in particular, I will stick with storeboughten soilless mix for starting seeds unless it were actually unavailable by hook or by crook -- but I have certainly grown houseplants and balcony windowboxes ok in the sort of mix described above. If your soil is clayey, you have to watch out for the whole thing hardening into a brick; and the more organic material you have in the mix, the more important to avoid overwatering, b/c IME the homemade stuff seems to be more apt to have 'soggy spots' than storeboughten mix. (It is possible that I was just not careful enough in homogenizing it, I dunno).

If you want the fertilizer to be homegrown too (as opposed to buying fish emulsion or things like that) it is going to be hard to get as good plant growth, though, IMO. There is a *reason* why some of these things are sold

JME,

Pat

 

[enjoy the ride]

Actually I can make a homemade fertilizer if the receipe I have is good but the trouble is that my soil is not just claylike , it is brick weight clay surrounding rocks.
I can amend the outside soil by putting manure and wood ashes on it and covering with newpaper or corregated card board then redwood bark- doing this every year makes for good growing but shallow ...............
Just as I was typing this, I had an idea- I think I will go check under the manure pile where I compost the horse poops- it's been composted there about three or four years and may be just what I need.....hmmmmm..............
Anyway what I need is soil for potting up things that don't overwinter here like some herbs, ginger and some other sensative things I really like. I was going to explain that I couldn't use my native soil because I have never been able to incorporate it into anything- in pots it just forms nasty clay balls surrounded by compost that floats away.
I will look up phosphorus heavy plants and see it I can do something there-

 

[patandchickens]

the trouble is that my soil is not just claylike , it is brick weight clay surrounding rocks.<snip> Anyway what I need is soil for potting up things that don't overwinter here

The soil from the very underneathmost part of your manure pile sounds like a very good prospect.

Another possibility is to just go get soil from somewhere else, since you only need a little bit of it for potting up ginger etc. Is there any forested area around you where you could get a bucketful of good forest loam (I am not advocating anything illegal, ask permission of course, but on such a tiny scale it is not like you would be stripmining the woods or anything )

Good luck and have fun,

Pat

 

[enjoy the ride]

Pat- that startled me- forest loam... I had forgotten that other places with deciduous trees have soil. Redwoods (with the occasional Doug fir) have a shallow, matting root system. Those big trees are held up with roots about 15 feet deep at the most. The result is there is no loam at all- the trees spread the roots out so thick that you can't even dig down near a tree and use every little bit of nutirient on the surface under them. I think that is why the coastal redwoods must be by the ocean- they don't have long roots to look for moisture but rely on the non-stop rain in the winter to survive along with whatever fog they can trap. The topsoil at my place is a couple of inches deep naturally. And pretty pathetic top soil at that.

But those worms do have at it under the manure so I think I will go black gold mining today- get it before the rains make it too heavy to lift.

I just find the cost of potting soil in the bag very irritating- $7-8 per 2-3 cubic feet. I begrudge it more than anything else because I should be able to make it myself. Really I should-lol

 

[patandchickens]

LOL - there, I have learned something I've been to redwood forests as a kid but obviously did not pay enough attention

Have you thought about a worm bin? I would *think* that worm castings would be a very helpful addition to potting soil, although I have not actually tried it. (Every now and then I think about trying ot start worms in the basement and my husband goes 'Euuuuww! No!' and it goes onto the back burner for a while longer )

Pat