Every gardener knows it is important to grow your flowers, fruits and vegetable in quality soil. Quality soil will provide a good home for your plants to grow strong roots, hardy stems, large beautiful flowers and wonderful fruits and vegetables. Certain types of plants require specific types of soil, so be sure you read the seed packet or ask at your local nursery or garden center and adjust the recipe accordingly. For example if your plant of choice requires a sandy soil, increase the sand.

potting-soil is readily available at many stores from home improvement stores to gardening stores, but when you make your own potting-soil you have control over what exactly is added to it. You can also rest assured there are no pesticides, insecticides, weed killers or any other type of chemical additives. This is especially important if you are planning an organic garden. There is also the issue of expense, why buy potting-soil when you can easily and cheaply make you own?

To Make Your Own potting-soil


You will need a large clean garbage can or storage container and a bucket.

Add the following ingredients to your container:

1 bucketful of sand

1 bucketful of compost

1 bucketful of dirt (use the dirt from your yard or garden)

3 tablespoons of Epsom Salts

3/4 of a cup-of used coffee grinds

1/2 of a cup-of used tea leaves - if you are using tea bags, remove the tea from the bags and shred the tea bag itself into tiny little bits to toss into your potting-soil mixture.

1/2 of a cup-of dried crush egg shells - crush the egg shells as fine as possible. Place the egg shells in a zippered plastic bag and roll over them a few times with a rolling pin to crush into small bits.

Use a shovel to toss all of the ingredients well.

If your garbage can or storage container has a tight fitting lid, turn the garbage can on its side and roll it around to mix the ingredients thoroughly. Duct tape the lid in place or tie the lid in place, turn your corner end over end to mix.

You can adjust the ingredients by doubling, tripling, quadrupling or more depending on how much potting-soil you will need. If you don't need much potting-soil, cut the recipe in half or into a quarter. Add extra compost to give garden soil a boost.