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Gardening Basic: Potting Soil Mixes Using a few simple ingrediencts, you can create your own potting soil recipe. From "Dirt On Gardening" episode DDOG-113

Horticulturist Ellen Zagory talks with Kristine Hanson about soil mixes.

If you're a gardener, you've likely heard stories from your gardening cohorts about that "special mix " they use to make their roses red and their poppies pop. What's their secret? Well there's probably really no secret to it--but you do need to know the basics when it comes to selecting soil.

Ellen Zagory, director of horticulture with University of California, Davis talks with Kristine Hanson and offers tips on what ingredients make for good potting soil.

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Potting soil ingredients may include compost, peat, perlite, vermiculite, sand and crushed lava rock.

Pottings Soil: Ingredients and Mix Ratios

Good potting soil usually contains some organic matter, like peat moss or compost, that holds water to adequately irrigate the plants' roots. Other ingredients maintain "space" in the soil, helping to keep the soil and roots well aerated.

Higher proportions of peat moss and vermiculite help hold more water in the soil, which is good for plants--like African violets--that thrive best with lots of water.

Using higher concentrations of "dry" ingredients like sand, perlite or lava rock is preferred for plants--like cacti--that thrive better in drier soil.

Here's a list of basic ingredients that may be included in commercial potting or "container" soils:

top soil
wood compost
peat moss
perlite
pumice
vermiculite
sand
fir bark
charcoal
macronutrients and micronutrients

Many gardeners do create their own potting mix. Here's a do-it-yourself basic potting-soil recipe:

Equal parts soil, sand, vermiculite, peat moss and compost. And be sure to add an all purpose fertilizer.

The Real Dirt on Recycling Potting Soil

It's perfectly okay to re-use last year's potting soil from an old container, provided that the plants that formerly inhabited that container did not suffer from disease. Simply mix the old soil with a little new potting soil, and add in a little all-purpose fertilizer. You'll be good to grow.

Figure A

Dirt On Gardening Viewer Tip: Battling Slugs and Snails

Bill from Antelope, California prefers not to waste his beer on trapping slugs using the well-known technique of placing a shallow dish of beer in the garden. Instead, he simply sprinkles the lawn and garden with water to draw snails out in the early evening. He then goes back in the house, enjoys a beer, then comes back out with a flashlight and spray-bottle containing a solution of 10 percent household ammonia and water. He uses the spray solution to kill the slimy, leaf-eating pests.

Another way to help control snails is to form a tube of rolled-up newspaper (figure A) and place it in the garden. Snails will crawl into the enclosed space of the newspaper for the cool and dark. The next morning, you can simply pick up the newspapers containing snails, then dispose of the snails by dumping them into a bucket of soapy water.

Go to next article in DIY's "Gardening Basics" series.