How to make your own potting soil for home gardening? A gardening expert teaches you the method

Love life, love growing flowers. Life needs joy, and growing flowers needs watering. Growing flowers lets people feel a sense of achievement and satisfaction at harvest time, and also makes people love life and feel the joy of living.

There are two ways to grow flowers at home: in the ground and in pots. Because the volume of a flower pot is limited, to meet the needs of flower growth and development as much as possible, you must mix potting soil by hand. Today let's learn a simple method for making potting soil.

Materials for mixing potting soil

Garden soil (vegetable garden soil, field soil): This is ordinary cultivation soil. Because it is often fertilized and tilled, it has relatively high fertility and good granular structure, and is one of the main raw materials for mixing potting soil. The surface sandy loam soil from land where vegetables or legume crops have been grown is best.

Leaf mold (humus soil):

A potting soil made by mixing various plant leaves and weeds into garden soil, adding water and human waste, and then piling, fermenting and decomposing it; it is acidic. It must be sun-dried and sifted before use.

Mountain soil:

This is a natural humus-containing soil, loose in texture and acidic. Compared with black mountain soil, Huangshan soil is stickier and heavier in texture and contains less humus. It is often used as the main cultivation material for acid-loving flowers such as camellias, orchids and rhododendrons.

River sand (plain sand):

It has good drainage and air permeability. Mixed into sticky heavy soil, it can improve the soil's physical structure and increase the soil's drainage and aeration. It can be used as a material for mixing potting soil, and can also be used alone as a cutting or sowing medium. When sea sand is used as potting soil, it must be rinsed with fresh water, otherwise the salt content is too high and affects flower growth.

Plant ash:

The ash left after burning rice straw or other weeds, rich in potassium fertilizer. Added to potting soil, it makes drainage good and the soil loose, and increases the potassium fertilizer content; it is alkaline.

Bone meal:

A fertilizer powder made by grinding and fermenting miscellaneous animal bones, containing a large amount of phosphorus fertilizer.

Wood shavings (sawdust):

It has all the soil conditions required by potted flowers: loose and airy, good water retention and water permeability, strong heat preservation that can reduce the temperature difference inside the pot between day and night, and it is light in weight and clean and hygienic. It is neutral to slightly acidic. When used alone it cannot hold plants in place, so it is mostly mixed with other materials.

Once your homemade nutrient soil is ready, mix in other soils and media (such as sand, perlite, etc.) and you can plant flowers! Everyone go try it!