HEALTHY SOIL HAPPY PLANTS 🪴 🪴
Just as creating a healthy soil environment is crucial for your inground plants, providing a suitable growing medium for your container plants is a key factor to success. Most gardeners do fine with bagged container mixes available at the nursery, but these one-size-fits-all options might not be the best options, especially if you are growing plants with specific soil needs.

Making your own container soil might sound like a lot of unnecessary work, but it can improve your plants’ performance. And because these mixes have the optimal amount of nutrients and proper drainage, they reduce the amount of time you spend feeding and caring for your containers.

Each of the following recipes can be mixed in a wheelbarrow or garden cart and tweaked based on your needs or what is available to you. You can also save time and money by purchasing the items in bulk and making large batches to set aside for a later date or to share with your gardening friends.

Learn more about the ingredients mentioned in these recipes.

BASIC BLEND

Simple ingredients make this adaptable mix easy and affordable for everyone.

The Recipe
1 part peat moss
1 part perlite
1 part compost
1 part good garden soil

Optional
A handful each of:
Garden lime
Soybean meal
Rock phosphate
Kelp meal

Moisten the ingredients to make mixing easier. Place a ½-inch mesh screen over a garden cart or other large container, and sift all ingredients to remove any large particles. Mix thoroughly.

The handfuls of garden lime, soybean meal, rock phosphate, and kelp meal (any of which can be omitted) provide extra nutrients that enable this mix to feed plants for a year or two without additional fertilization.

WOODY PLANTS AND PERENNIALS

This long-lasting mixture is the perfect medium for long-term plants.


The Recipe
1 part peat moss
1 part composted bark
1 part compost
1 part sand
1 part perlite

If the mix clumps together and the compost you use is heavy, add more perlite to ensure good drainage. Use extra compost or bark when growing more mature plants, but don’t make it too rich for young plants—it could damage their delicate roots and stems.

ANNUALS

High in nutrients, this mix pumps out the flowers without extra feeding.

The Recipe
1 part expanded slate
1 part composted chicken manure
1 part worm castings
1 part composted pine bark
1 part coarse river sand

Because the worm castings and chicken manure provide enough nutrients to last throughout the season and the pine bark continues to increase fer­tility as it decomposes, this mix requires little or no extra feeding on your part.

Low fertility and a top-dressing of grit is best.

The Recipe
1 part expanded slate or shale
1 part bagged potting soil
1 part bagged playground sand

Alpine plants are adapted to survive in the bare minimum of soil conditions, so many store-bought mixes high in organic matter won’t work. This recipe makes a lean soil that alpine plants love, but make sure the potting soil you use has no added synthetic fertilizer.

Mulch the surface of the soil with small pebbles or grit to keep the crowns of the plants from rotting.

The best blend has high fertility and the right pH.

The Recipe
First, mix together:
2 parts composted bark
2 parts pure pine bark
1 part rice hulls

Add a handful of charcoal pellets.

Then combine:
3 parts above mixture
1 part peat moss
1 part perlite
1 part calcined clay

Though tropicals are a diverse group of plants, they generally prefer a loose, acidic, well-drained, fertile soil high in organic matter. Common tropical plants, like cannas and bananas, will grow in any good soil, but this mix will help them attain optimal growth.

SUCCULENTS



Perfect drainage makes this recipe succeed.

The Recipe

5 parts perlite
4 parts bagged potting soil
1 part coarse sand
Pinch of rock dust

Top-dress the container soil with small river rock, gravel, aquarium stone, or a fine-grade roofing gravel to keep the crowns of the plants from rotting.

To increase acidity just slightly—something all succulents like—add 1 tablespoon white vinegar to 5 gallons water when watering.

Horticultural Applications for Pumice

When it comes to growing vibrant plants and turf, it’s all about the quality of the soil. The root systems of plants require a continual supply of oxygen, and the carbon dioxide respirated by the roots must be able to leave the root zone. This all-important exchange of gases is key to a good growing medium.

That means the soil must resist compaction, yet be able to retain water and hold onto the nutrients necessary for plant growth. Adding pumice to garden soils and growing media can help meet those critical requirements.

Pumice as a Soil Conditioner

Pumice is an excellent soil conditioner, as it is highly porous, giving it excellent water and air holding properties. Advantages of using pumice in potting media and garden soils include:

—the porous nature of pumice allows it to hold vital nutrients in the microscopic surface pores, which helps regulate fertilizer feedings. It can even be supercharged with nutrients before it is added to the growing medium.

—excellent conditioner for soils that need increased aeration and drainage, as when growing cacti, bromeliads, succulents, or when rooting cuttings.

—loosens the density of heavy clay garden soils, letting in the air and water plants need.

—increases water retention in light and sandy soils.

—makes tillage easier.

—reduces crusting, cracking, flooding and shrink-swelling.

—holds moisture in the soil, reducing watering requirements, yet pumice will not compact or become soggy.

—pumice is inorganic, so it will not decompose or compact over time, meaning it functions continuously and can be recycled and reused.

—pumice is pH neutral.

—pumice does not attract or host fungi, nematodes, or insects.

These advantages can be realized with as little as a 10% addition of pumice to the soil or growing medium.

Pumice Aids Turf Management

For the same reasons detailed above, pumice is a high-performance addition to a soil when preparing a quality seed bed for new turf areas. Pumice-enhanced soils can solve issues with native soils being susceptible to compaction or having a poor water and nutrient retaining structure.

Public parks, sports fields and golf courses—which receive a lot foot and cart traffic and have extensive water and fertilizer demands to remain attractively green—benefit greatly from the enhancements imparted by pumice in the soil. In arid regions, the water-retaining porosity of pumice will decrease irrigation demands.

Pumice can also be used with existing turf as a top dressing after aerification on heavily-trafficked lawns or greens to restore or maintain proper soil structure.

Reclamation and Runoff Mitigation with Pumice-charged Soil

Roadside vegetation is critical to keeping the soil locked down and to prevent damage to roadway drainage ditches, embankments, steep-cut slopes and other areas sensitive to severe erosion. The vitality and vigor of that vegetation will greatly benefit from the horticultural enhancements (air exchange, water and nutrient retention) provided when pumice is present in the soil. The growth-supporting quality of the soil is particularly important when effort and expense is put into seeding and mulching these engineered areas, especially in drier climates.

On the same principle, for engineered drainage channels and ecology embankments along roadways and runways, pumice can be liberally mixed with dense, heavy native soils with poor water-handling properties to enhance drainage, absorption and retention, thus reducing water-related problems along maintenance-intensive transportation corridors.

Pumice Performs Similar to Perlite as a Soil Amendment

A 1992 study done by the Department of Horticulture at the University of Illinois found the physiochemical properties—and hence, the performance value as a soil amendment—to be similar to those of perlite. Perlite enjoys a well-documented and successful place in potting soil formulations, but perlite is not as cost-effective as pumice for large-scale soil-conditioning projects such golf courses, urban parks and green belts, sports field complexes, high-value crops on limited acreage, ecology embankments, and reclamation projects.

Other Horticultural Uses for Pumice

Landscaping Mulches with Pumice Stone. Coarse-grind pumice makes an excellent and attractive mulch for flower and shrubbery beds. The soil beneath the mulch stays moist longer and is less likely to compact from watering. Weed problems are minimized with a couple of inches of pumice mulch. Pumice does not break down, so does not need to be replaced. Our white pumice can also be color-dyed if necessary.

Pumice as a Packing Medium for storing and transporting tubers, roots and bulbs.

Specialty Growing Applications. Lightweight pumice is ideal forhydroponics, aquaponics, cutting propagation, and other high-efficiency soilless growing applications. We package and distribute a pumice grow media specifically for the soilless growing industry—Hess ’Ponics Pumice Grow Media (see left; linked).

Pumice as a Seed Coating. Seed coatings are necessary when the natural state of the seed needs improved so as to be more compatible with precision seeding equipment and practices. The customized seed coatings possible with pumice produce seeds that are ideal in size, weight, shape and uniformity. Because of the highly absorptive nature of pumice, a pumice-blended seed coating can also serve as a kick-start nutrient carrier. Once sown into the soil, pumice also works as a long-term soil conditioner.

Pumice as a Chemical-to-Soil Delivery Medium. Pumice is chemically inert and extremely absorbent, making it an ideal host for delivering useful agricultural chemicals such as herbicides, pesticides, fungicides, fertilizers. And once pumice has given up its chemical rider, it remains to condition and improve the soil.

Ecology Embankments. Designed as an effective and affordable solution to filtering runoff water along roadways, ecology embankments that include pumice gainfiltration performance as well as improved soil quality to support vegetation and biomass growth.

Pumice in Rooftop Gardens. A significant amount of the soil needed for rooftop gardening and green-roof applications can be replaced with lightweight pumice. Not only does pumice-soil cut the overall weight load on the roof system, pumice, as detailed above, provides real value to soil function as well.

Growing Tips

Our indoor vertical garden systems are designed to keep your walls and home clean without the mess that accompanies planters with drainage systems. Follow our recommendations below for best results.

Pumice

Use a layer of pumice stones at the bottom to manage water drainage and aeration.

Soil

Your plants will need a good home to set down their roots. A healthy soil that fits your specific type of plant is the key to a lush indoor garden.

Plant

Choose plants that do not require a lot of water (or any at all!) We love succulents and cacti. Air plants are great too!

Water

When you water, apply just enough to wet the soil to the bottom of the container. Be careful not to over water, as there is no place for the extra water to go!

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