Don't throw away the old soil after repotting your potted plants - treat it this way and you can use it again

0066. Don't throw away the old soil after repotting your potted plants - treat it this way and you can use it again!

Potting soil for growing flowers is always a headache, especially since you have to repot every year. When repotting, a large amount of old soil is discarded, and then you have to go to great effort to get new soil, thus entering a vicious cycle. So is there a way to reuse the old soil that has been replaced?

Actually, old soil isn't unusable - it just needs a bit of treatment before use. If used directly, there is a potential risk of pests and diseases, and the fertility will also be insufficient.

How to treat old soil

There are usually two ways to treat old soil. One allows quick reuse, and the other takes longer but can restore the old soil's fertility and turn it into new soil.

1. Sun exposure for sterilization

If you want the old soil to be quickly reused, you can remove the roots, weeds, etc. from the old soil, then spread a plastic bag on the ground, spread the old soil onto the plastic bag, and put it in the sun to bake.

During the sun exposure, you can turn it over frequently to ensure even exposure. After two or three days of sun exposure, some pathogens, insect eggs, and some weed seeds can be killed.

However, old soil treated this way has insufficient fertility and is not suitable for use alone. When using it, it should be mixed with new soil. The ratio of new soil to old soil can be 6:4 or 5:5. At the same time, decomposed organic fertilizer should be added to increase the organic matter content in the soil and also boost fertility.

2. Make leaf mold

If new soil is relatively plentiful, Lanyao still suggests using the old soil you replaced to make compost soil, so it can be used again the next year.

This is how Lanyao composts old soil: prepare a large vat or bucket - Lanyao built a small pool - pour all the old soil in, then each time weeds are cleared out and dried in the sun, put them in too, and sometimes also pour in some rice washing water.

After weeds rot, they all become fertilizer, but letting weeds rot naturally takes quite a long time, so Lanyao also bought some earthworms and put them in.

This way, the earthworms eat the rotting weeds and then produce worm castings. Over time, the old soil naturally becomes fertile compost soil.

Do you have any better suggestions for how to improve old soil? Feel free to leave a comment below.

To see more knowledge about growing flowers and vegetables, please follow Lanyao's WeChat public account: Lanyao Garden (ilanyao)