I've reused my potting soil now for 2 growing seasons. Like someone else here mentioned, I didn't go 100% reused for a "fresh" mix, but added 25% fresh peat and some new perlite. Now for what I do.... The first thing I do is let whatever plant is in the pot die off completely. This seems to remove a good portion of the live root system as well as much of the green foliage. Once that's done, I shake out as much of the soil as I can into a 5 gallon bucket that I keep on the side of the house. Any large clumps of roots I take out and toss in the garden, in the beds around the house, etc. I keep that bucket going until it's full. When that bucket is full, I take that soil out and transfer it to large lasagna sized aluminum baking trays that I picked up at the local dollar store. Just to the edge of the top, not overfull or they take forever. I typically get 4 of these trays per 5 gallon bucket. I take those, 2 at a time, and bake them at 325 for 2-3 hours in the over. It does smell like earth cooking here, but I actually like the smell. It's the pieces that fall off the tray into the oven and come back smelling later, that can be nasty (especially when it actually *is* lasagna in the oven). When it's all baked off I dump the trays into a wheel-barrow that I keep by the house and let it cool. Once cool, I add 1 small bag of peat to 5 gallons of reused soil. I then add some perlite, perhaps 1/2 a bag to break up the mix a bit. The first thing I've noticed, the longer the reused mix sits in the 5 gallon bucket, the "cleaner" it is at this point. I've settled in on around 4 weeks in the bucket before I bake it. Next, the Ph is almost always off, tends to be on the low side and needs lime to bring it up. Mine typically registers around the 5.7 to 6.0 on my testers so I add lime to bring it up to ~6.8. If you're planning on rolling your own soil, regardless of the sources, test the Ph before you use it. I also add 1/2 cup of slow release granules to the wheel-barrow mix (Osmocote) and have also ammended with bone meal and blood meal for higher fast acting N & P soils. One thing I have found is that reused soils the way I've made is low in calcium and magnesium so I augment with a good fish/kelp emulsion (or even a mix). Use organic fertilizers, fish and kelps are by far the best I have used. The brand I use is Neptune's Harvest but I've heard that Earthjuice is really good as well. Get away from chemicals, they're not necessary and plants have a difficult time processing them. To give an idea on reuse numbers here. I just finished baking the rest of the containers I had from the summer and have ~90 gallons of fresh potting soil. For what cost me around $40 in peat and perlite (forget my time) I have perhaps $500 in potting soil at my disposal. Go to Walmart and pick up the $7.99 17 gallon plastic tubs, they're perfect for winter storage of what you've made. I really believe more people should reuse what they have instead of tossing it out. If you do toss it, by all means, please do so

“Salty” Manure It’s quite easy to find NPK values for manures and manure compost. Bagged composts containing manure that I have seen are typically in the NPK range of other bagged composts ��" 1-1-1 for example. It is not so easy to find ‘salt’ content of manures. Everyone likes to SAY that “manure is salty,” but there are vastly more NPK reports for manures on the web than there is data on salt content. If anyone has actual data, please post a link. Fact sheets and articles saying manure is salty are not particularly useful. It does make sense that when urine is included in the manure, it would have higher salt content. Particularly in a feedlot, where (reportedly) higher salt levels are fed in order to make the animals retain water so they sell for more. If you’re getting manure from someone who has a couple of horses, it’s probably going to be different from manure from a beef feedlot. This does not make all manure unusable. My FIL put manure on his garden (NE silty sandy loam) annually for decades and had wonderful gardens year after year. I have clay (which retains salts longer), mostly use my own compost, and wouldn’t use pure manure year after year. I do occasionally buy bagged products that have or probably have manure in them. No problems here. “Alkaline Soils” A claim was made that Western soils retain more salt because they are alkaline. It was always my impression that Western soils retain salts better because it’s more arid in the West so they are not washed out. Regardless, it might be a good idea for Westerners to watch the amount of manure they add, and know what’s in it. Unfortunately in arid zones there is often a lack of green waste for composting, but there are lots of cattle so manure becomes an important source of OM for gardeners. “Heavy Metals” I was able to find a paper on extraction of HM from manures and it appeared that Cd, Hg, Pb were somewhat higher than they might be in native soils depending upon where you are. Based on the numbers I saw, it would take a looong time for them to become significant. However metals do accumulate (they don’t biodegrade) and the heavy ones likely don’t leach away (the more clayey the soil, the more they will stick). Basically any time you’re importing organic matter (or synthetic fertilizer, for that matter), any bioaccumulative constituents present are being added to your current load. Unless you can subsist entirely on your own compost made from your own waste, this is an inevitable consequence. How long would it take for Pb to build up to an unsafe level in topsoil if you’re adding so many lb of imported compost per sq ft per year? The math is not actually that complicated. What’s the HM content of non-manure based composts (i.e. the alternatives)? What’s the background level of HM in the soil to begin with? These are all things to consider, and there is no single answer due to the endless variations. Rejecting the use of manure based compost entirely, on the basis of HM content, is a very simplistic approach.

Sammy, TOMATOES: With tomato diseases and soil, there are so many variables that your questions are a little hard to answer, but I'll do my best. I grow my tomatoes in the same beds (and also in the same containers) every year, and have for the 11 years we've been here. I do enrich the soil by adding compost and other organic matter as needed, and I always mulch heavily with various products, including grass clippings, hay, straw and chopped/shredded leaves. The mulch adds more organic matter to the soil as it breaks down, so that organic matter is being added year-round as the mulch decomposes. I put some organic Espoma Tomato Tone fertilizer in each planting hole as I set out tomato plants, and usually a handful of bone meal too. How much do my plants struggle with foliar disease given that I grow tomatoes in the same soil every year? Well, first of all not as much as you might expect, and it seems almost entirely dependent on the weather conditions. In a wet and rainy year where humidity levels stay high and the plants have dew on them virtually every day, I'll usually see early blight beginning in late June or early July. If the rain is really heavy in April or May, I may or may not see some bacterial speck or bacterial spot although they're usually a minor issue if they are an issue at all. About 1 in 4 or 5 years (and 2009 was one of them) my plants will have issues with Septoria Leaf Spot. In a dry and droughty year, which is probably at least 2 out of 3 years here in southcentral OK, I might or might not see a little Early Blight in June or July, but that's about it as long as I keep the plants mulched well (including mulched pathways) and water only with soaker hoses or drip irrigation. For what it is worth, none of the other gardeners who live and garden near me in Love County rotate their tomato plantings either, and most of them don't add organic matter to the soil or mulch like I do, relying on chemical fertilizers instead. They seem to get enough tomatoes to make them happy, although I rarely see any of them getting the higher production that I get from my plants. Because they don't mulch and most of them water using sprinklers, those plantings usually exhaust themselves or become diseased and are pretty much done by August, although some of their plants remained productive into the fall this year. If you have other types of disease issues like some of the wilt diseases or Tomato Yellow Leaf Curl or Tomato Spotted Wilt Virus, then crop rotation might be more important, but I rarely see those here so it is hard for me to comment. It is my opinion, Sammy, that you could continue to use the soil in your containers and just keep adding amendments, particularly compost and perhaps also one of the rock powders and perhaps some bone meal. Mulching the containers with 2-4" of organic matter will help reduce soil splash which often transfers diseases. Mulching the ground around the containers also helps reduce soil splash. Water with a hand-held hose or a drip irrigation line to keep water off your plant foliage. For people who grow in the ground, the Earl's Hole method (linked below) of soil replenishment works just fine. As far as I know, Earl continues to grow his plants in the same area every year and gets some of the highest yields of fruit per plant that I've ever heard of, and I think that is due to his use of the Earl's Hole Method. You could adapt portions of his method and just add the needed ingredients to the existing soil in your containers. Some people who grow in containers like to spread out a tarp or a piece of heavy duty plastic, pour all their soil onto it, and add their amendements to that soil and then refill the pots. That is a lot of work, and I usually don't do it that way. I just add my amendments to my containers and stir them in by hand a week or two before I transplant the tomatoes into them. To tell you the truth, I ignore those people on other forums who insist you must put all-new soil in containers or rotate your in-ground plantings every year. I haven't found that to be true at all in our climate here in southern OK nor in northcentral Texas when I lived there. Perhaps in some parts of the country, the soil replacement or rotation are absolutely essential, but not here for me. People in every region have different gardening issues and much of it is related to their soil or climate conditions, so what some people find necessary in some places are not necessary in other places. COMPOST: One way to compost leaves is to just poke a lot of holes in the bags to facilitate air flow, wet down the leaves good before you close up the bag, and then seal the bags of shredded leaves using twist ties or twine or whatever. Pile the bags in an out-of-the-way place like behind a garage or shed or someplace else where they won't be an eyesore, and leave them there. By spring, the leaves will be partially decompsed and can be mixed into the soil or used as mulch on top of the soil. You can make an attractive compost bin for your compost pile in many ways, using wood, lattice, etc. If you use lattice and want to keep squirrels out of it, line the lattice compost bin with 1/4" hardware cloth. Out here in the country on larger parcels of property, it is easier to place compost piles and bins in out-of-the-way locations where you don't see them from the house. So, a lot of people here pick up old pallets and build compost bins from them and that works fine. I use round woven-wire fencing formed into cylinders 4 or 5' across and just fill them up over the growing season. If you use this method, you can plant morning glories, hyacinth beans, black-eyed susan vines or moon flower seeds in the spring and they grow all over the cage and hide it during the growing season. It is easy to use a large trash container or extra-large rubber storage container as a compost bin. Just drill lots and lots of air holes in whichever container you use, and leave the lid off when it rains so that the contents of the container receive adequate moisture. You don't have to leave the lids off all the time but they need moisture from rainfall or the waterhose from time to time. If you're concerned small rodents will get into the containers, line them with hardware cloth. I'd drill holes (and lots of them) in the bottom and sides of the containers to facilitate air flow and also good drainage so excess moisture doesn't remain in the container. APHIDS: I'm clueless on this one. I don't know enough about how they overwinter to help you on this one. Have you seen lady bugs eating the aphids? In general, lady bugs feast on aphids and I have a healthy population of lady bugs so I rarely see aphids at all. Sometimes aphids appear on container plants I overwinter in the garage, but if I am patient, lady bugs show up 7-10 days later and take care of them. If the aphids are in your compost pile, it ought to get hot enough to kill them, but I can't quote any research that says that it will. We have hackberry trees in our woodland but the wooly hackberry aphids haven't made it here yet, so I have absolutely no experience with them and don't know how similar or different their behavior is compare to that of more common aphids. Good luck and keep asking questions. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: Earl's Hole Method of Tomato Bed Soil Replenishment

Not just termites, but soil holds moisture, so it's best to avoid having it up against anything other than concrete, such as wood siding, due to the risk of moisture rotting the wood. Note, the old house guys say that 'dry rot' is a misnomer - it normally means the wood was wet for some time. If your vinyl siding comes down over the concrete and that's all that is behind it, then maybe it's not an emergency. I've seen termites where I live, they are everywhere, and we always leave an expanse of exposed concrete to keep them from getting behind the siding into the wall (or crawling upwards till they find the wood wall) without being exposed to light. Never soil up against siding because there is protected air space behind it that can be used as a highway for not only termites but ants and other bugs. I'm going to guess that if you showed this to your pest control guy during your annual inspection you might see a raised eyebrow. It's up to you to decide what is appropriate. If this were my house I would get some bricks or blocks and make a border along the back with an inch or two of air between the blocks and the building. Or a treated timber or 2x4 on edge. Just my two cents.