How To Use Compost To Make Your Own Potting Mix

A trip to the hardware or garden centre is not complete without picking up a couple of bags of potting mix. We go through heaps of it at my house because we have lots of plants in pots! We are often planting seeds, transplanting seedlings or simply transferring established plants to larger pots so it is not hard to use up quite a bit of potting mix.

Buying all this potting mix ends up being quite expensive too. The cheaper brands don’t tend to have the quality required to produce strong plants so inevitably we end up shelling out for the more expensive ones just so we can give our plants a good start.

When I started composing recently I was initially just looking at having a good source of mulch to put on my garden. However after looking online for other uses for my compost I was pleased to find that I could use it as an ingredient in potting mix. It was the Burke’s Backyard website (below) that started me thinking about other ways that I could use my compost.

Burke’s Backyard website: How to use compost

Potting Mix Recipe

Once I knew that it is possible to make your own potting mix from compost I started to look around to see what other information was out there about the subject and to see if I could get some more detailed instructions on how to do it.

I came across the following link that provided very good, easy to understand information that made me more confident that I could make up my own potting mix. The Micro Gardener website contained a post that pretty much answered all my questions about making up my own potting mix. The benefits were explained as well as what ingredients to use and why. I highly recommend this website for anyone who makes their own compost and also uses potting mix.

The Micro Gardener website: Easy DIY Potting Mix Recipe

I have now just made and used my first batch of potting mix using the above link as a guide. As suggested I used 2 parts compost to 1 part coir peat and one part vermiculite. Since I was making up just enough potting mix to pot up my tulips I added some bulb food to the mix as well.

The potting mix ingredients before they were combined

Some of my homemade potting mix

There are many other websites available that share recipes for making your own potting mix but I found that The Micro Gardener was far more thorough in explaining what you need in your mix and why. Not only does this website provide a recipe and instructions for how to make your own potting mix it also provides a raft of information about potting mix in general as well as lots of useful tips for anyone using potting mix. I also like that this website considers safety and the environment. For example many other websites advocate using peat moss in homemade potting mix which is less environmentally friendly that using coir peat.

I hope that you find the link that I have shared today as useful as I did.