How to Prepare Soil for Indoor Plants

Average garden soil is rarely used for potting plants, but it could be utilized as a component of a potting mixture. If you have applied liberal applications of compost, manure, or leaf mold in your garden, you can use garden soil in greater proportions, around half of a potting mixture.

buddha picture with plant (Photo credit: epSos.de)

Plant counters and nurseries sell large lines of ready mixed potting soils not only for green or flowering plants but also for cacti and other succulents. The one commercially available material known as Black Magic Planter Mix may give you quite a success in growing your chosen plants. Soil recipes are aplenty, many of them tailor-made to fit the demands of hobby plants like African violets, begonias, fuchsias, gloxinias, and orchids. If the mixture you are using grows thrifty, blooming plants, just keep on using it. If you wish to experiment using a new mixture, start out with one or two plants, never do the whole lot. A basic mixture suitable for most plants can be made of equal parts garden loam, sand (or perlite), and peat moss. It is different in the case of some cacti and other succulents, bromeliads, and, perhaps, geraniums. 

Soil mixtures are tailored to suit the needs of specific plants. 

A favorite among English gardeners, is a potting mixture of peat moss, sand, and garden-loam mixture. This mixture is harder to assemble, but the results may warrant the added work.

Prepare a base of:

2 parts hoof and horn meal

2 parts superphosphate

1 part sulfate of potash

Put in 3/4 ounce of gypsum to one-fourth pound of this base to one bushel of the following soil mixture:

2 parts sand

3 parts peat moss

7 parts loam

Soil specialists at Cornell University have developed an artificial mixture which likewise works nicely for growing most plants. This is known as Peat-Lite:

4 quarts #2 grade vermiculite

4 quarts shredded peat moss

1 tablespoonful (level) powdered 20 per cent super-phosphate

2 tablespoons ground limestone

Plus your choice of one of the following (but never both):

1 1/2  tablespoon of 33 per cent ammonium nitrate

or

4 tablespoons 5-10-5 fertilizer