Wednesday, March 7, 2012

Recycling potting soil?

Last year, the bulk of my garden expense was spent on potting soil - approximately 5 bags. I really do not want to replace all the soil because of the cost but also for the lack of space to dispose of last year's soil. I have one bag of composted cow manure and half a bag of fresh potting soil that I can use to amend the old soil. So I've been dumping the old soil in a bucket, adding some fresh potting soil/manure/crush egg shells/fertilizer, mixing it around and getting as much roots out as possible. I also think it is important to break up the old soil to loosen up the compacted soil. I bought a sieve from the garden store but it turns out filtering the soil through the sieve is A LOT of work. So I've resorted to breaking up the soil with my little shovel. Even this is really tedious and I do not look forward to dealing with the larger containers.
Stored egg shells crushed using a mortar and pestle to be added to the soil.
This green bucket is very useful for mixing the soil. 
My little seedlings are 10 days old and now have all sprouted. They're looking quite good.
Pak choi and Swiss chard seedlings.
Romaine lettuce seedlings

2 comments:

  1. What an awesome sunny window. I like how you store your eggshells until they're ready to be crushed.

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    1. This window gets great sun in the afternoon. To be honest, I'm just lazy with the eggshells:) But it works well for me!

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