Re: Container Soil
- To:
- Subject: Re: Container Soil
- From: M* T*
- Date: Sun, 18 Apr 1999 01:06:09 -0400
IMHO, no questions to do with gardening are ever dumb!
I dump my spent potting soil from any kind of plant and always use new mix
for new plants. Sometimes I'm a good girl and wash out the pots and
sometimes, if I'm in a rush, I don't.
I use my spent soil to build raised beds or otherwise amend beds when
replanting. Of course, if I know something died of some nasty disease, I
don't use that bit...but most of my plants that die do so from my neglect
or stupidity.
If you fertilize potted plants a lot, the salts can build up on the pots -
you see this as a white sort of stain on the inside rim, most of the time.
That does need to be scrubbed off - and it's sometimes hard to get off of a
clay pot - because - so I have read - it can cause damage to the plant in
the pot...I've never left it on to see what would happen.
What happens, esp. if you use peat based bagged potting soil, is that the
peat deteriorates over time and gets sour and packs down. I've got some
rather huge pots I use for annuals, and sometimes they survive the winter
in the greenhouse. When they do and look worth keeping, then I dig out as
much soil as I can without damaging them too much and replace it, so you
can do that for about 2 years without too many problems; but I make my own
potting mix and use bark fines, rotted woodchips, compost and grit, so it
doesn't tend to get as mucky as peat based mixes can do.
Marge Talt, zone 7 Maryland
mtalt@clark.net
Editor: Gardening in Shade
current article: Hellebores - Part 3
http://suite101.com/welcome.cfm/222
All garden topics welcome page:
http://www.suite101.com/welcome.cfm/3425#top5
----------
> From: Miles, Curtis <miles@hspower.com>
> Date: Saturday, April 17, 1999 5:11 PM
>
> This sounds like a dumb and somewhat OT question, but I'll forge on...do
you change the soil in your annual containers from year to year, or just
improve it a little and replant in it? The same question would apply for
perennials in pots which didn't survive or which were moved elsewhere. I
didn't know if the fertilizers added were building up something undesirable
over time...
>
> Thanks in advance for advice,
> Barb in SC
> Zone 7b
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To sign-off this list, send email to majordomo@mallorn.com with the
message text UNSUBSCRIBE PERENNIALS
