My mentor was right about potting soil being a ripoff.

My mentor Linda told me 2 years ago that most bagged potting soil is just peat moss and perlite marked up 300 percent. I laughed it off until I bought a $15 bag from a big box store and found fungus gnats within days. She mixes her own with compost, coconut coir, and pine bark fines for about $4 per batch. Has anyone else switched to mixing their own soil and seen a difference in plant health?

2 comments

2 Comments

lucas_perez23d ago

Whoa wait, $4 per batch? That's wild. I just spent $12 on a bag of the cheap stuff and it had those gnats too, plus it felt like wet cardboard after a week. Linda's got it figured out. I never thought about pine bark fines for drainage, I just assumed all that stuff was too expensive to do yourself.

kevinc8423d ago

My buddy Dave used to buy the expensive bagged stuff for his tomatoes and always had sad, yellow leaves. He finally tried making his own mix after I nagged him for months and his plants went from surviving to actually thriving. Now he won't shut up about how much money he's saving, which is annoying but he's not wrong.