Lesson 4: Tools of the Trade: Care and Feeding of your Indoor Garden
Potting Soil
Oops! You dropped your plant and there's soil all over your carpet. Or you want to transfer some plants to larger pots, perhaps? If you need new potting soil, but aren't sure what to buy, read on!
What you do need to know, right off the bat, is there are certain potting soils required by different plants.
You CAN use the basic soil mix from Home Depot for repotting all your plants, but for best results I like to have several kinds of pre-mixed soils on hand.
- Miracle-Gro Potting Mix. This is one of the the most commonly-used multi-purpose mixes in the US for foliage plants, but you can find a basic potting mix anywhere you buy houseplants. Have at least a 10-quart bag on hand and consider it your 'default' soil for repotting.
In other words, if you are not sure what soil to use, go with this.
- Cactus Soil. Use with succulents and cacti. This soil closely mimics the sandy, well-drained desert substrate these plants adapted to in the wild.
- African Violet Mix. The temperamental violet will grow and flower more readily for you if you give it the peaty soil it likes best.
- Orchid Mix. This one is hardly even a soil - there ain't no dirt in it. Mostly it's a substrate for the roots to attach onto and large pourous pieces of bark and mulch, which increases the general humidity of the plant's microhabitat.
Along these lines, orchid mix works quite well for Bromiliads.
- Spagnum Moss. Useful for top-mulch to keep your plant in a more humid microclimate. Also used as a single-purpose soil in terrariums, for such moisture-loving plants as the Venus Fly Trap.
- Additives. Perlite and Vericulite are nice to mix with your basci soil. They are quite inexpensive. Not only do these fillers save you money by extending the amount of soil you add to pots, but the grains typically expand to store water, increasing the soils' moistness for a longer period of time.
