DIY Potting Soil Recipe to Save Money
The Almanac Garden Planner - Use It Free for 7 Days!
Plan your 2025 garden with our award-winning Garden Planner.
Learn how to make your own soilless potting mix at home! Commercial bagged soils are pricey, and if you use a lot, can add up to significant costs. They also vary greatly in quality and, in some cases, their fertilizer strength can be toxic to plants and cause burns to plant roots. It’s satisfying to make your own mix to give your plants a healthy start—and it leads to fewer headaches. Here’s our basic DIY potting mix recipe.
Containers are great for several reasons—they’re versatile and space-saving, and they allow you to be more efficient in your use of resources. If you have a small garden space or live in an apartment with a balcony or rooftop, containers are for you.
What Is Potting Mix?
For containers, you’ll often read that you need to buy or make a good potting mix. But what does this mean?
Potting mix is not garden soil—which is heavy and includes sand, clay, and other cheaper additives that won’t work for containers. Some people may refer to it as potting soil, yet potting mix is soilless. It’s lighter and fluffier than ground soil to allow enough air and water for healthy root growth and also provides enough anchorage for roots. These soilless mixes are sterile, so there is no chance of introducing pest or disease problems.
Read Next
Potting mix can certainly be bought in bags at garden stores. Look for “Soilless Potting Mix,” which generally includes three ingredients: 1) peat moss or coconut coir for moisture and nutrient retention, 2) pine bark for anchorage, and 3) either perlite or vermiculite for air space, which makes the texture light and fluffy. Some potting mix also includes fertilizer or moisture-retaining treatments. If you use a potting mix with fertilizer, you’ll need to adjust the fertilizer you provide. (Think of salted butter versus unsalted butter in a recipe!)
But many gardeners who plant a LOT of containers or raised beds or start seeds indoors will mix up their own potting mixes! For the number of containers I use in my garden, I learned long ago that it’s much cheaper to make my own potting mix and store it in an extra trash can rather than pay for several big sacks of premade potting mix. Plus, I can customize the mix for a variety of different plants.
Before Making Your Own Potting Mix
Before we go any further, note that if you only need a few small containers’ worth of potting mix, you may actually be better off buying a premade mix! Making your own is usually only economical on a large scale. Here are a few things to keep in mind before creating your own mix:
- When it comes to any potting mix, the lighter it is, the better. Loose and porous mixtures not only make a container lighter to move, but they also transport water, fertilizer, and air to plant roots more quickly and allow for good drainage, which is important for container gardening.
- Start with the basic recipe below and then add soil sulfur to lower the pH or lime to raise the pH, according to the needs of your plants. Both additives can typically be found at garden centers. Plants such as lettuce, Russian sage, and marigolds prefer sweet soil with a pH of about 7.5, while others are acid lovers, like ferns, asters, and strawberries. They need a pH of about 5.5 to 6.0. Here’s a list of more plants’ pH preferences.
- If rapid drainage is needed, as is the case for cacti, succulents, and lavender, add extra sand and perlite.
- If greater moisture retention is needed, as is the case for ferns and woodland flowers (like primrose) add extra vermiculite or coconut coir.
My Basic Container Potting Mix Recipe
Ingredients
- 1 bucket (10 quarts) coconut coir
- 1/2 bucket (5 quarts) perlite
- 1/2 bucket (5 quarts) vermiculite
- 1/2 bucket (5 quarts) screened compost or composted cow manure
- 2 cups fine sand
- 2 cups pelleted time-release fertilizer
Instructions
Mix thoroughly. It makes enough to fill two 14-inch tubs or five 12-inch hanging baskets—double or triple the recipe for bigger containers.
Credit: Cem Selvi
How Much Potting Mix Do I Need?
Potting mix is sold by volume (typically measured in quarts), and most pots are measured by their diameter. To translate quarts of mix into various pot sizes, use this quick reference:
Pots & Tubs | |
|---|---|
| Container Size | Amount Needed |
| 8-inch | 3 quarts |
| 10-inch | 6 quarts |
| 12-inch | 8 quarts |
| 14-inch | 12 quarts |
| 16-inch | 20 quarts |
| 20-inch | 24 quarts |
| 24-inch | 28 quarts |
| 30-inch | 72 quarts |
| 36-inch | 96 quarts |
Hanging Baskets | |
| 12-inch | 6 quarts |
| 16-inch | 10 quarts |
Window Boxes | |
| 24 inches by 6 inches | 12 quarts |
| 36 inches by 6 inches | 20 quarts |
Learn More
Here’s another potting mix recipe for seed-starting—with a video demonstration!
See our Plant Growing Guides for advice on planting and growing popular vegetables, fruits, and flowers!
Do you make your own potting mix? Share your recipe in the comments below!
Robin Sweetser
ADVERTISEMENT
I keep seeing things while looking for a good potting soil (long story short I got a bad bag and my house is full of fungus gnats that are so resilient I'm going to re-pot everything), about some soils being "hot" and that plants need to get used to it. Particularly brands like Fox Farm. I'm having trouble understand what it means that it's "hot" for plants, because I'm pretty sure they don't mean it's popular, people appear to be referring to temperature. How is a potting soil generating heat? I'm very confused.
Monica when some one says the soil is hot , it means it has not been fully composted, it is still creating heat during breakdown and can harm your plants , best to wait before using allowing the process to finish .
You are correct that the term “hot soil” isn’t referring to the popularity nor the temperature; rather, it refers to the nutrient content of the soil. I don’t believe this usage is all that common, but it appears to mean soil that has a high nutrient content—even too high—which can actually be bad for plants.
Generally, any organic soil that’s meant for use in containers should do the trick. No need to get overly fancy!
Too hot also refers to the fact many of the bagged soil companies package their products while it is still composting and therefore is really hot (meaning temperature). This too often creates the "hot" youre speaking of. If you pick up a bag of soil thats indoors and you open it and stick your hand down to the middle and can feel it being very warm/hot then your soil was not properly composted before it was packaged, unless of course that bag has been sitting in the hot sun for days. So that being said , "hot soil" has two explanations and both can burn your plants.
What type of fertilizer is required . Thank you, very interesting article.
Started work in a garden nursery in gillingham kent in 1952,now my employer was Mr Featherby ,well known biologist ,who had huge greenhouses took me under his wing sent me to university for biology farm and forest which I passed ,I then became hie researcher ,now had a huge sterilizer for soil ,his own soil mixes for nearly all different plants ,tomatoes ,peligoniums,fruit tree cutting ,soft wood cuttings ,we had a menu for each type of plant and would mix the compost soil in a builders cement mixer ,adding bone meal blood ,nitrogen as we needed it ,great days but now 65 years later have forgotten those compost mixes , do you know them ,please reply still love gardening
I am doing 3 raised self watering containers (4ft by 8ft, 12 inches deep) and it says to use potting mix not garden or top soil having trouble trying to find out how much I need to get as most are all for raised beds using garden soil or small planters for potting mix. since composition is so different I am thinking it will be different. any help would be great as it appears it will be fairly expensive to fill as not sold in bulk?? thanks!
Hi, I live in northern part of India, where weather conditions are diverse. We have temperature range of 37 Deg F to 107 Deg F. So will the same mix serve purpose or should i change some ingradients.
Thanks.
I have used coffee grounds, tea leaves, crushed egg shells added to my potting mix to plant all my annuals. They seem to do really well here where I live, in the Tennessee area climate. I have these items daily so it stretches my potting mixture and adds lots of potassium and other minerals.
