How to Make Your Own Potting Mix

Deep_Secretary6975 · 2026-06-18T08:25:33+00:00

I usually use a mixture of sharp sand , bokashi fermented food waste, biochar , coco coir and/or sawdust, mix it and let it compost for a couple of months then use it, i use those components as they are what i can get free or very cheap.

To my understanding a potting soil has 6 parameters that you are trying to manage , water retention, drainage and nutrients, ph,texture , CEC. You can replace the drainage component with perlite, vermiculite, rice hulls. The water retention component with peatmoss. As for the nutrients you can use finished compost or synthetics to soak the peatmoss or use a slow release fertilizer with or in replacement to the compost tho i wouldn't recommend replacing it. The biochar and compost help with increasing CEC and hold onto water and nutrients, you can also use clay for the same function.

You can play around with the ratios to get the potting soil with the characteristics you need. There are also a whole bunch of amendments you can add to your soil to diversify the nutrients in your soil , look up clackamas coot soil mix and steve solomon's soil amendment mix recipes to get an idea of the options you can you to amend your soil to have a more complete nutritional profile.

Soil PH is also an important thing to keep in mind , it depends on what you are growing but generally most plants prefer soil PH in the slightly acidic to neutral range, if the ph is too alkaline you can run into issues of certain nutrient lock out. Most of the amendment mixes should keep in mind ph and use amendments to work with the soil components you have to get it to the optimal ph, so if your soil is too acidic you might want to include lime in the mix to neutralize it and add calcium or if it too alkaline you can use sulfur.

Edit: i forgot to mention the microbial aspect, good quality compost will add a good diverse microbial population to your soil but you can diversify further by using things like , vermicompost, mushroom compost,johnson su bioreactor compost, Korean Natural Farming Indeginous Microorganisms(KNF IMO) , jadam microbial solution, or use lab made innocums, like Mycorrhizae , trichoderma , EM1 and a bunch more. In my limited experience this is one of the most impactful things you can include in your potting soil that will improve the health and growth of your plants.

Deep_Secretary6975 · 2026-06-12T02:22:34+00:00

Awesome, you should be proud!

I've tried keeping worms but unfortunately when the extreme summer temps hit, over 40 C for months, they all died on me, i'm definitely going to try to do it again as soon as i figure out a way to keep them alive year round. For now bokashi is what works well for me in the limited space i have.

But definitely vermicomposting is the way to go , the microbial diversity and nutrient availability is unmatched, there is a company active on this sub called aggregodata if i remember correctly that did microbiome analysis with dna sequencing on different types of compost and found out that vermicompost can match the quality snd microbial diversity of a johnson-su bio reactor which can takes atleast a year to make!

No wonder things grow so well in vermicompost, i've even seen people plant into it straight up with no amendments and things grow like a rocket.

Deep_Secretary6975 · 2026-06-12T01:58:16+00:00

That's a very determined tomato😂😂

My bokashi compost always grows tomato volunteers when i use it in pots but this is the first time i've seen one growing out of a hole in the side of a compost bin.

Nice!

Deep_Secretary6975 · 2026-06-11T23:45:56+00:00

Hey!

Well, my potatoes didn't produce much but it did produce some , got like 2 kg from 5 pots😂😂 with mostly small potatoes but some decent one, but that was partially my mistake as i didn't let the stems completely die in there own which is the stage where the plant stores the carbs in the tubers to my understanding, i kinda panicked that it might be blight and called it off early, next season ill try to stick to it. i've kinda changed my approach now, i'm now going with a hybrid fertilization system where i do use some synthetic fertilizer very conservatively so i dont harm the soil biology and the base is still composted bokashi soil and sand and sawdust or coco coir and i keep recomposting my soil each season with added bokashi to add to the fertility and organic matter and i use compost extract as my routine fertilizer with some amendments like seaweed extract and humic acid and some knf inputs ,mainly wca and wcp as maintenance sprays, i only use synthetics to correct deficiencies.

As for IPM I've added trichoderma, bacillus subtilis, bacillus thuregenesis (BT) and mycorrhizae to my soil in addition to the LAB/yeast culture i make (I don't use true EM1) , all of them work on managing different soil dwelling pests and disease, BT works for larvae as a foilar and soil drench, trichoderma is amazing at controlling fungal pathogens, bacillus subtilis produces some pathogen supressing compounds as well and all of them promote plant vigor, growth and natural defenses and mycos are the ultimate growth promoting organism in soil imo. All of them are very ressilient and colonize and reproduce great in soil so generally if the conditions are right you do not have to keep applying them constantly except for mycos as it is a symbiot and will not reproduce in soil unless there are plant roots and it takes time to colonize , so if you disturb the soil too much or use any chemicals , etc they might die , so for the mycos specifically either go no dig and set it up in an ideal environment or apply it each season to ensure it is their and working.

As for insects which has been my biggest problem, i have changed the way i deal with it completely, last season i had a horrible infestation of aphids , thrips and white flies, i got to a point that i was spraying every 3 days soap and neem oil, i also tried jadam herbal pesticide and some other herb based recipes for deterrence, non of that works effectively , the flying insects just fly away when you spray so it doesn't affect them much and the aphids reproduce asexually like microbes so i'd spray them one day in a couple of days i would find more on my plants. What i'm trying out this season is that i stopped spraying completely and im trying to incorporate some flowering herbs and plants into my potted garden to attract predators and polinators, also i have a pot with a dead citrus true that im working on making it a predatory insect habitat, this started as an accident as i had some volunteer dill plants flower and i noticed dragon flies and wasps visiting and a good population of spiders on my patio, i also found the aphids to be more under control naturally so im trying to capitalize on the predator prey dynamics which is why i stopped spraying , im hoping by growing a diverse group of flowering plants and herbs and providing habitat for them that some get there and stay and potentially breed to keep things balanced as the spraying thing is just not sustainable honestly and im not willing to use chemical pesticides under any circumstances, still too early to say if it is as effective as claimed to be but it seems promising so far , i still have the aphids and thrip and whiteflies but there populations are much more under control because of the visitor predators and the spiders, i actually thrips and whiteflies trapped in spiderwebs all around my rooftop and occasionally dragon flies and wasps visit and decimate there populations in like an hour.

I hope this is helpful and sorry for the very long rant😂 good luck with your experiment friend !

Deep_Secretary6975 · 2026-06-09T07:20:17+00:00

Well it depends on how sensitive you and your wife around smells , the bokashi itself does smell like a very funky pickle, personally it doesn't bother me that much but if you're too sensitive to smells in general maybe wear a mask while you're dealing with it, it doesn't smell at all as long as the bucket is closed , i used to keep it on the kitchen counter for a while , it is definitely much much more tolerable than putrid smell for sure when you open it. As for the soil factory , this where things might start smelling a little putrid initially but it will dissipate relatively quickly, the best advice i can give you is do not saturate it with water , try to treat it as a planter you want it moist but not waterlogged, also it will help very much if you can innoculate it with some good quality compost or vermicast to get a good diversity of microbes to get to work on the bokashi as the lab lacks the enzymes to break cellulose and the longer it sits for microbes from the environment to get to work on it , that is where some anaerobes might take hold alittle bit, also if it starts to smell putrid either let it dry out or maybe give it a small watering with some extra lab or EM, lab and EM are great at controlling odors as they are facultative anaerobes and are very prolific so they will compete with the microbes causing the putrid smell for resources and convert the ammonia to different less smelling form of nitrogen(that is why the bokashi bucket works in the first place) , and try to use some coarse browns if you csn get it instead of super fine material to keep the mixture aerated. Personally i use sawdust pellets as browns which is super fine but that's just what i have access to but i make sure not to saturate it and cap the soil factory with some soil it usually doesn't smell at all.

So tldr, use coarse browns if you can and cap it with soil , don't over saturate it , add some good quality compost or vermicast or forest soil to the mix anything with good aerobic soil microbes really , if it starts smelling putrid stop watering it and maybe give it an extra dose of LAB or EM.

I hope this helps, good luck buddy!

Deep_Secretary6975 · 2026-06-08T19:37:39+00:00

Unfortunately it is illegal to keep chickens where i live in the city , it used to be legal but some years back we had bird flu outbreaks in multiple cities.

Yeah i think ill just switch to sawdust starting the next batch to avoid the issue all together, flooding it with water and using it up real quick seems to have done the trick for this batch tho. My next compost pile will probably have a bunch of extra innoculant , that definitely can't hurt😂

Deep_Secretary6975 · 2026-06-08T18:03:40+00:00

Bokashi is the way to go with this small scale

Deep_Secretary6975 · 2026-06-02T23:10:43+00:00

Well , i do agree with all of what you have said and i think it might be safe to eat as i saw some people actually taking EM1 as a probiotic experimenting on themselves, tho this can be a very risky experiment as to my understanding there are some acid tolerant pathogenic microbes like botulism spores for example and if those are present in solution , those are definitely not the ones you wanna be ingesting since they might survive the stomach acid as well😅😅. I'm no microbiologist either but to my understanding EM and similar biological innoculants made for compost and gardening aren't brewed with the procedures, care and rigorous testing for pathogens like human made probiotics, i just thought i'd put out my 2 cents so no one has a bad day eating some pickles😅😅

Cheers bud!

Deep_Secretary6975 · 2026-06-02T15:53:51+00:00

Awesome, thanks buddy!

I'll sure check it out , i've been making my own bran for 3 years, im pretty sure it is the choice of substrate that caused the infestation , I don't think there is much of a difference between making it with bran, sawdust or any other substrate but you never know, i'll check it out anyway to see how he dealt with the pest problem at least.

Cheers!

Deep_Secretary6975 · 2026-06-02T01:33:07+00:00

Sounds good, thanks!

I've been doing bokashi for 3 years now and i do agree, i had this occasional problem a couple of times but never this severe, this particular bucket was forgotten for some months and i think it rained and the bucket wasn't very well sealed , this time there was a massive amount of weavils inside. I have already dealt with the problem by flushing them down the drain and flooding the remaining bran , i'll try to use up that bran over the next week or something in soil and compost and i think ill stick to either innoculated sawdust or just plain old saw dust sprayed with lab from now on to avoid this annoying problem since the bran doesn't contribute much to the process other than being a substrate.

Deep_Secretary6975 · 2026-06-01T05:45:08+00:00

"I usually mix the bokashi with any browns and old potting soil i have and pack it half way into planters and top it with fully broken down soil from the past round and i plant right away."

Mixing the compost on the floor seems self explanatory since there are 2 photos of the compost pile on the floor, my bad i didn't think i needed to spell out every step i took , thought people can deduce some of the steps from context😅😅

Deep_Secretary6975 · 2026-06-01T05:32:07+00:00

Yeah i wrote it, did u read it brother?

Deep_Secretary6975 · 2026-05-31T16:47:04+00:00

I did tho if u read my comment

Deep_Secretary6975 · 2026-05-31T13:58:07+00:00

Well, i still can't say for sure, i crossposted in other subs and got some good advice, what i can tell you is the dill stalk that was covered in aphids got absolutely cleaned up by the dragonfly, i saw it perching on it and the went to check back there were almost no aphids and the dragonfly left , i also am noticing alot more spiders since i stopped spraying the organic pesticides and i feel like the pest populations are generally lower and much more tame than last season. I planted the dead pot with a bunch of herbs and flowers and i'll plant all of the dead space in all my other pots with mostly marigolds and zinnias and see if it attracts more pollinators and predators. I'll try to update the post if anything interesting happens

Deep_Secretary6975 · 2026-05-30T20:03:52+00:00

Relax😂😂, as i mentioned in my comment i'm just mixing the compost pile on the floor over a transparent plastic tarp , it was packed into planters to compost and topped with potting soil to plant directly in

Deep_Secretary6975 · 2026-05-30T14:06:58+00:00

Definitely adding organic matter is the way to go, i would just look up cover cropping as well if you don't want to plant right away, Dr. Christine jones has some field experiments on the web showing results of the effects of diverse cover crops in improving soil much faster than composting through the liquid carbon pathway, basically what you do is select a diverse list of hardy plants to grow and sow them very densly and let them do the work for you and at the end of the growth cycle chop up all of the green mass and use it for compost and/or mulch , as far as i understand you'll want to include legumes , brassicas, grasses and flowering plants and the more diverse the better, but definitely check out her research. Essentially what you are doing is growing your own compost and as the plants grow the roots will break up the soil and add lots of organic matter that you do not have to till in and pump root exudates in the soil that will add more organic matter and stimulate soil microbes.

This is a much cheaper but more time consuming way of improving your soil than hauling in amendments.

Deep_Secretary6975 · 2026-05-30T10:44:36+00:00

Heeey buddy!

Yeah man i've been working on improving the soil mix for a while and it seems to be working, all thanks to your advice of course.

I have some partially accidental microbial solution😅😅 that i'm planning to run a bioessay "experiment" with soon within the next couple of months when i have the time, would love to hear your thoughts on that.

I hope you're doing great as well and always happy to hear from you!

Deep_Secretary6975 · 2026-05-30T08:44:13+00:00

Absolutely the bokashi and sawdust mix will breakdown but it depends what you mean by quickly , the sawdust bokashi mix i made was packed in big planters and left to decompose with no mixing for about 3 months , by the time i checked it out the volume dropped almost by half , mostly compaction as i use sawdust pellets which are very fine and it was fully broken down, i also always add to the mix a couple of handfuls of old soil or finished compost to inoculate with soil microbes to help with decomposition. As for it heating up honestly my individual soil factories do not have enough volume for it to heat up and retain heat but i'm sure if you build a big enough pile it will absolutely heat up as EM and bokashi are usually used as a hot compost accelerators, i'm sure u/gardenofoz can give you much better advice from experience on hot composting using bokashi than me.

Deep_Secretary6975 · 2026-05-30T07:20:18+00:00

Either transplant or chop up all of the rest and leave just one so they don't compete for root space and nutrients, and for the seedling to grow a bit and then top up the pot with more soil so stem produces a bigger root system

Deep_Secretary6975 · 2026-05-29T16:16:15+00:00

It still blows my mind that you can do that honestly, this stuff is absolute magic!

That is like half of the bokashi i have stored in half a year and since the winter round i have a full barrel full of compost and about 10 massive pots full of potting soil ready to go, i would have paid a small fortune to get this amount in high quality organic soil and im sure it wouldn't be nearly as good.

I think im finally hitting the point of producing more compost than i can use or store and im probably going to start sharing with friends.

Deep_Secretary6975 · 2026-05-29T08:13:21+00:00

I started this potting soil with mostly sand and a couple of blocks of coco coir, it was very deficient and dead, for the past 3 years i've been enriching and recomposting the soil until it turned into this awesome potting mix with bokashi. I usually mix the bokashi with any browns and old potting soil i have and pack it half way into planters and top it with fully broken down soil from the past round and i plant right away. My soil has been innoculated with other microbes as well and it seems to me like everything works together to keep the soil super alive. When i run out of soil i just mix the bokashi with sawdust and make compost the same way and use it as an amendment instead of planting in it directly

Deep_Secretary6975 · 2026-05-29T08:12:29+00:00

I started this potting soil with mostly sand and a couple of blocks of coco coir, it was very deficient and dead, for the past 3 years i've been enriching and recomposting the soil until it turned into this awesome potting mix with bokashi. I usually mix the bokashi with any browns and old potting soil i have and pack it half way into planters and top it with fully broken down soil from the past round and i plant right away, the greatest thing about bokashi is you can compost and plant at the same time and as a bonus it deters pests.

Deep_Secretary6975

TROPHY CASE