Here's a "recipe" I found on one of the Forums years ago, I have used it and it works well. I can't get pine bark, but fir bark will work as long as it's small and NOT colored. I used coconut coir instead of peat, and I think that I used my own good compost for the micro nutrients part.

This is it: Small batch:

3 parts pine bark 3 gallons

1 part sphagnum peat 1/2 gallon

1-2 parts perlite 1/2 gal

garden lime handful of lime (says: careful)

controlled release fertilizer 1/4 cup

micro-nutrient powder (sub: small amount of good, composted manure)

The original clipping I copied:

I can not comment on the "recipe" as I have not made my own mix. But if you do, and if you heat your garden soil to make it sterile, I would suggest doing it outside....maybe in the grill or on a portable cooktop. I can still remember my dad baking garden soil in our oven when I was young. Even with the vent fan running on high it made the house smell awful.

Can you explain why you want to use garden soil in a container potting mix? It is not recommended. Neither is manure.

@gardengal48 (PNW Z8/9) i watched a youtube video and they said to use it. both garden soil and manure/compost are readily available to me

Cost wise, it might not even be worth making your own if you are like me where locally Walmart sells compressed bags of HP Pro potting mix for $12. 1 bag can fill a 15+ gal pot..

Rebecca, most YouTube videos are not worth the time you waste watching them. Whatever one you watched, it gave you some very bad advice. As stevie mentioned, even the cheapest bag of bag of potting soil will be better than what you propose.

Hi, Rebecca. It's mandatory that the grower provides a root environment that supports good root health and root function. If that key element is missing from your care regimen, there is no hope for a healthy plant. Soggy grow medium is a silent and inconspicuous thief of your plant's potential, so I encourage you to avoid inadvertently enabling the thief.

Tip - manure is often very high in salts, The urea it contains can easily cause ammonium toxicity (especially when the soil is soggy), and it breaks down quickly, which can destroy the structure of even a very good medium amended with manure.

How much water retention a grow medium supports is directly related to the size of the particles the medium is made from. The higher the % of fine material, the more water it will hold. Because media comprised of all fine material are difficult to grow in, I turned to growing in coarse medium more than 30 years ago (probably 40).

These are the 2 basic media I use:

Coarse soils that drain extremely well are extremely productive, easy to grow in, and they make watering correctly and fertilizing monkey easy.

I also encourage you to ask questions because there is a huge difference between growing in a medium that works for you and growing in a medium that is constantly at cross-purposes with your efforts.

Al

Lime is somehow always added by people as a magic ingredient. In my neck of the woods, the pH of my tap water is 9.2. Lime is, to me, hazardous waste. It's an "it depends" ingredient.

People are somewhat frantic about getting a perfect potting mix. In truth, you just need something that can hold some moisture, and allows the roots to spread. You can do that many many different ways. Plants are actually pretty forgiving. If you're potting plants that will stay in that pot for years, then not having much garden soil is smart. Your mix will work OK, as will lots of others.

As noted, fresh manure is not advisable at all.

Extremely well said, Al. As usual :-)

Boy, Al, I could have made a lot of potting mix in the time I took to read that. Your bottom line seems to be that some people just strive for perfection. I have no trouble with that. But perfect is often the enemy of the good enough. That being said, specific points about potting mix for the OP would be welcome.

The OPs question was "Would this work?" The answer is sure, sort of. But so would lots of other things.

"But perfect is often the enemy of the good enough."

I'm not sure I understand this sentiment at all!! What does that even mean?

As someone who gardens almost exclusively in containers, I want to make sure my plants have the best possible opportunities for healthy growth and productivity. And over the years, I have learned that focusing on the best quality soil media I can access is the way to achieve that. Nothing is "perfect" in a garden and maybe even less so in a container growing situation but that does not mean I do not want to optimize the growing conditions to the best of my abilities in either situation!

"Your bottom line seems to be that some people just strive for perfection." I'm not sure the wish to do the best you can on behalf of something you're responsible for is the same as striving for perfection, so that's really not the bottom line; and I think 'good enough' isn't necessarily the best choice if only because perfection is unattainable. If we struggle to produce results good enough (my kite won't fly), do we then default to accepting poor as good enough (but it sure looks good lying there on the ground), or do we try harder to do the best we can? I think the later is the more meritorious trait.

"Perfect is often the enemy of the good enough." Note the quote says often, which means Voltaire recognized it wasn't always true. The idea conveyed is that diminishing returns often accompany the territory between good enough and perfect. That might be so in some cases, but practical insight reveals that in container culture, successful efforts to advance beyond middling (a fair comparison to good enough?) produces rich rewards in matters substantive (healthier plants, more eye appeal, fewer problems, greater yields) and personal.

Everyone wants to get the most from their efforts. Battling your grow medium, even if we don't realize we're in a battle, limits the opportunity the grower can offer the plant to realize its potential. A poor or middling medium makes us work harder for less, and provides a good measure of frustration at no extra charge.

".... specific points about potting mix for the OP would be welcome." I actually did offer some specifics and encouraged Rebecca to ask any questions she has. I'm hoping she can tell we have her best interest in mind, so I'm comfortable waiting for any questions she might have.

I guess we all live under the same sky, but we don't always share the same horizons, so YMMV.

Enjoyed the exchange.

Al

Al, I loved your comments, especially as I am currently battling with a water-retentive Pro-mix and, consequently, some soggy/sick tomato seedlings as a result of not realizing what I bought before it was too late :(.

Linda

Thanks, Linda ...... appreciate the kind words.

Al

I am one of those "hundreds or thousands" that has been transformed. I could barely keep the hardiest of plants alive, due to overly water retentive soil and overwatering. After heeding Al's advice, my pots grew and thrived. I now teach others that I previously asked for advice.

I seldom mention how many times I've been contacted by growers who decided to deviate from the road more traveled (commercially prepared peat-based media) and put the concept to work that I explained here. The numbers are what allow me to talk confidently about how much difference there is in quality of results when using a medium that allows you to water correctly w/o the medium remaining wet/soggy for long intervals, which affects both root health and function, causing often conspicuous loss of potential. Unfortunately, the recipes get more attention than they deserve, and the concept, which provides the most value, garners far less attention than it should.

I understand Liebigs Law, so I get that each individual nutrient and every cultural condition can be a life and death matter. However the 2 obstacles most likely to confront Mr(s). Grower are inappropriate light and an inherently poor medium. For container growers, fixing the light levels is often easy (move the plant) or impossible barring supplemental lighting (my house has only one corner and it's dark). However, they seldom give more than cursory consideration to what they use to serve as a home to their plants' root systems. Chronically poor or mediocre root health is an obstacle that nearly every container grower runs up against, even if they don't realize it. Getting beyond that obstacle is very likely the largest step forward a container gardener can make at any one time.

Al

I found this paper yesterday, great rundown of common potting mix ingredients: Growing Media for Container Production Part I - Components and Mixes (Greenhouse and Nursery Series) - FSA6097 (uaex.edu)

You probably won't be shocked to find they agree with Al on most points.