sounds like a plan, melissa - i'd go with compost
~ freshair

A friend of mine plants his hostas in the garden pot and all.
Works great.

Potting mix does let you pull plants up easier if they have only been in the ground a short time. After about a year the roots will start growing into the surrounding topsoil. Whenever I plant anything special I use potting mix to back fill. I have major Silver Maple roots which makes it almost impossible to ammend the soil here so the potting mix helps a little.

I keep extra hostas for trades in growers pots with potting mix. I overwinter them in the pots sitting on the driveway and covered in leaves. Since I go through so much potting mix I make my own using large bales of milled peat moss and add perlite to it. I often mix in old potting mix with the new to make it go farther. While it might not be as good as name brand store bought potting mix it gets the job done and it is a small fraction of the cost. They are only in pots temporarily and it all goes in the ground anyways. I buy bales of peat at Lowes and I bought a 4 cubic foot bale of perlite which was enough for about 6 large bales of the peat. Bales of perlite and vermiculite can be bought at large nurseries that make their own potting mixes. You usually have to specifically ask for it as they don't keep it out in their retail areas. Same with buying shade cloth from them. If they use something, they probably sell it too. If you buy potting mix additives at the big box stores you only get very small bags and the price is outrageous compared to buying it in bulk from a nursery. The bale of perlite cost me 29 bucks.

When making your own potting mix from dry peat, mix the peat with the additive while it is dry then wet it down completely before using it. I use a 30 gallon growers pot for mixing up batches of potting mix. I save a ton of money making my own. If it is good enough for the nurseries then it is good enough for me. The reason I add old potting mix with the new is that it is like adding compost. What is in the old mix is partially rotted just like a good compost.

Usually when you get store bought mix, it is wet. You are paying for that water as part of the weight of the mix. Same when buying topsoil in bags. It is always very wet so you are paying for the water in it. The more money I can save on potting mix, the more I can spend on more hostas! One other tip, never let potting mix dry out completely. It is harder to get it completely wet again if it gets stone dry unless you let it sit in water for some time. Water will run off of completely dry potting mix.

I, too, make my own potting mix with milled peat moss and perlite. One difference between this and the commercial mix is the addition of a "wetting agent."

Peat moss is wierd stuff. When it is wet, it will hold a lot of water. It can be really soggy. But when completely dry, it will actually shed water. One year I used peat moss as a top dressing - figuring it would be nice compost. In fact, when it dried out, it acted like a tarp with water sheeting off it and running down the hill.

If you make potting mix with just peat moss and perlite with no wetting agent, you can find it difficult to water the pots unless you have a setup for bottom watering, letting the pots sit in water. The surface of the pot, if thouroughly dry, can make a lot of water flood off the surface and down the sides of the pot.

I haven't found a good solution for this. Wetting agents seem to come only in expensive sizes - of course, the primary sales are to larger nurseries.

My "poor man's solution" is to mix in a certain amount of commercial mix potting soil with my peat moss, perlite, compost combination.

sounds how i lost over 100 hosta ... and still am ...

I WILL YELL .... DONT DO IT !!!!

divergent soils cause too many problems ... sand made the promix dry out until it is water repellent in july/aug ... and they crown rot ... or it could stay too wet in a clay cauldron ...

it would be better to make a small ... say 5 by 10 foot nursery bed ... maybe with some railroad ties to raise it.. where you develop the soil so that you can stick your arm into the elbow ...

gotta run.. elementary school picnic... ken

I was waiting for Ken to weigh in...........I thought he would say, "if God had wanted the earth to be potting medium, he would have made it that way!"

LOL

Well, Ken getting his elementary school pics taken now clarifies a WHOLE LOT! ;-)

Thanks everyone! This will be chalked up to another BAD IDEA!