I'm Diana from the fruit grove and this is my homemade potting mix
There are a lot of really great potting mixes available commercially that you can buy either at the garden center or you can order online
and they're going to do a great job for you. They're going to be perfect for growing fruit trees and pot
The problem is when we're talking about planting full trees and pots
they get pretty big and you're going to need a lot of soil and that adds up
And so just making things a little bit more cost effective is always going to be a goal of mine
Now, admittedly, when you buy all of the individual ingredients for the potting mix
initially, your investment might be a little bit more. It's going to cost you a little more than just buying a single bag of potting
mix. But you're going to be able to make a lot more potting mix with all of the ingredients that you've bought
You're going to be able to make it stretch a lot further. But the main reason that I prefer to make my own isn't actually
the money, although that helps the main reason is that I can customize it to be exactly what I need for whatever I know I'm
going to grow. For example, the tree I'm going to be potting up later is a fig tree
Now, fig trees, they're Mediterranean plants. So they love a really well drained soil
very light mix. Nothing that's going to get soggy or hold too much water
The roots of a fig tree are really vigorous. So the soil needs to be light and airy to give the roots room to do
what they need to do. So all of these things I know, so I can customize my mix to be nice and light to have
a little extra of those aerating ingredients. And I know I'm providing what my plant needs
The other thing you can do is customize what things you add to it. For example
fig trees and many other fruit trees need a little bit more acidic environment
So you can add a soil aci iffier to make sure the acidity of the soil is just right is ideal for growing whatever you're
going to be planting. I also like to add in my own slow release organic fertilizer
When you buy those potting mixes from the store, you never know exactly what fertilizers are in there
A lot of them contain high nitrogen fertilizers which although that promotes beautiful leafy growth of many ornamental plants for
something like fruit trees, that's not necessarily what you want you don't necessarily overly want to feed the plant with nitrogen so that it becomes
leafy. You want to also provide the things that it needs to produce fruit
Any good potting mix is going to be made up of a variety of ingredients
And they basically fall into three categories. You've got the things that aerate the soil and allow water to drain more freely through
You also have ingredients that hold water and retain it. So that way it doesn't dry out too quickly
And then finally, you have ingredients that are sort of additives. The things like fertilizer
compost to provide nutrition, acid fiers or other specialty ingredients that you might be able to customize for the needs of your
plant. Now, the main thing to figure out is the balance of the water retaining ingredients and the draining
or aerating ingredients. So, like I said, in my case for fig trees
I want it to be fairly lightweight. I want it to drain really
really well. On the other hand, I do live in a hot climate and in the summer
those pots dry out really fast. So anything that I can do to help that at this stage is a good idea
So I do want to make sure and include things that will hold on to the water
So the base of my mix is starts with these pine bark mulch
You can also find this as pine bark fines, which is basically what it sounds like a finer mix
If I was making a potting soil for house plants or just smaller plants
I would definitely want something finer than this. But these larger pieces are pretty good from going to be potting up a tree in a
big pot because again, that's going to help with aeration, that's going to help the water to drain
So I'm looking for pieces probably roughly between a half inch to one or two inches is kind of what I want
When I dumped this out, I picked out a few of them really larger pieces to get them out of the way
But for the most part, that's what I have here. I'm going to do about 3 to 4 parts of that
That's about half this big bag here. This is a two cubic foot bag
I'm going to use about half of it for my mix today. The next thing I'm going to add is my Pearl light and I
like to do about 11 to 2 parts of pearl light. So that would be a quarter to a half as much as I put
in a pine bark in here. And for me, I'm going to start with about three quarters of a bag and I'm going to see
kind of how that works out. And if I'm happy with the final result, the next thing I'm going to add is some manure
some composted manure. And again, this falls more in the water retention side of things
But it's also going to provide some good nutrition for my plant to feed on
So that goes next, I'm doing about two parts of manure, 1 to 2 parts of manure
The last sort of base ingredient I'm going to add is Spang peat moss
about 1 to 2 parts and peat moss is super lightweight. When you buy it
it comes packed together in a giant brick. It's actually quite heavy
but it fluffs up and that's going to really help lighten and aerate the soil
But peat moss also retains some moisture when it's damp. So it kind of works in both categories depending on how you look at it
but it's going to help retain some moisture. It's going to help just lighten the overall mix
Now, I'm going to add in my granular fertilizer. I'm estimating I've got probably about two cubic feet of mix here
So according to my package instructions, I should use about one cup of fertilizer per cubic foot
So I'm going to put about two cups in. Now give it a good mix and see if you're happy with the results
If it seems a little clumpy, you might want to add extra pearl light or a little bit more pine bark
Um If it seems like it's too loose, um or it could be too aerated
I guess you could say you can always add a little more compost. This is also the time when you can add in those other
ingredients. So if you know your plant needs specific nutrients, benefit from extra calcium or something like that
you can add different kinds of compost, you can add bone meal
mushroom compost, anything like that, that's going to enhance this mix. But that's your basic
basic proportions you want. So, here we go, I'm happy with this
I'm going to do a PH test and test my acidity. See if I need to adjust it with that soil
acid fire. But I think my fig tree is going to be pretty happy
Now, the great thing is I've made a pretty good amount of mix. This should be more than I need to pot up my fig
tree and I certainly can make more. I have extra ingredients. So I might actually make another batch
But with the extras, I like to just keep it in a plastic bin in my shed or in my garage
And that way I've got potting mix ready to use. If I want to pot up cuttings that I've made or if I just happen
to come home from the nursery with another fruit tree which has been known to happen
then I'm ready to go and I have my potting mix potting mix all ready to go
So that's it. That's my homemade potting mix that you can customize to whatever you need
Um get out in the garden and give it a try