As a gardener, soil in your containers contracts or remains uncompacted, making it difficult for you to grow herbs and veggies. The reason why your soil compacts is because of the amount of water within the container. There are many substances that can help prevent this from happening, such as perlite (which is best at doing just this) or vermiculite. These substances add air to your soil mix and allow the necessary airflow to allow nutrients to be absorbed into their root system. We work with all of these substances in order to create the perfect potting mix for your needs!
Planting is only one of the three essential aspects of successful kitchen gardening: preparing pots, planting seeds and learning to water them. If your vegetables and/or herbs don’t get enough watering as they grow, then it’ll likely impact your harvest’s quality for one reason or another. So when you’re ready to start growing your own food, go ahead and make sure you have everything you need before planting!
Healthy soil, a living organism, is teeming with earthworms, microbes, termites and a plethora of microorganisms that break down organic waste and decompose leaf litter back into nutrients that trees or plants can absorb. In the ground, earthworms drill and churn the earth to ensure it remains soft and friable for roots to spread. Plus in the ground, there is ample room for roots to roam about searching for nutrients even when the tree is quite large. But planting them in containers presents two limitations:
Abridgement – Due to the lack of worms or other subsoil fauna to carry out nature’s own form of tilling, the soil becomes hard.
Lack of nutrients – This is due to the limitation of space for roots to spread into.
Therefore, there is a need for potting mixes to recreate some of the soil conditions that exist naturally on the grounds. They help in overcoming problems of compaction and lack of nutrients. An ideal potting mix should be light, airy, long-lasting, moisture-retentive and rich in diverse nutrients. Let us understand them in detail:
Great Drainage
Ensure water passes easily through the mix, like streams passing through the mountains, penetrating and fertilizing the soil rather than pooling up.
Capacity to Ratain Water
To avoid overwatering and to encourage both strong root growth and the ability for water to escape. Potting mix is a great solution, however, water your plants by hand rather than with an automatic watering pipe, for a better watering experience. Also, this helps your potting mix function better.
Aeration
Roots need oxygen to live, so it’s important to create air pockets for them to breathe, and that is what your potting mix does for you!
NUTRIENTS
The only way to grow great plants is to provide nourishment through all the processes involving several lengths of different stages and steps. The potting mix helps you greatly at all the steps of your plant nourishment.
MICROBES AND WORMS
To enrich the soil where seeds are planted, thereby benefiting root systems so that plants can discover greater amounts of nutrients and survive transplantation better.
Stability
With the right proportion of potting mix and all the nutrients it helps the plants absorb and use, the plant gains good strength to be able to stand with stability.
Things to keep in mind while using potting mix
When you’re planting a plant, the first thing that you should always do is make sure it has proper drainage in the pot. The container should have holes smaller than your finger or fist; if not, line them with something like coconut husks and fill up with something like soil so that water can drain out of the pot but not cause any of the nutrients in the potting mix to wash out. This is important because plants will more readily wither when they have been sitting in stagnant water for too long.
Carefully add your compost and nutrients to the container, making sure there is enough space still remaining in the pot. This will leave room for more compost and nutrients later on. Don’t pack too tightly or else you might end up leaking stale water onto your plant roots. Once you have added all of these ingredients, fill the rest of your pot with water!
Creating and maintaining a healthy, nutrient-rich potting mix is key to creating a sustainable garden, one that will last for years to come! This article on Potting Mix is just the beginning when it comes to exploring many aspects of urban agriculture.
