EarthGro Potting Soil: mistake?

15 years ago

I started my container gardening this year with containers filled mostly with store-bought compost. I was told that compost would burn the plants, so I used EarthGro Potting Soil (from Home Depot) exclusively to fill the rest of my containers in which I planted over the last 2 weeks peppers and tomatoes.

The tomatoes in the compost or compost and potting soil mix are doing just fine. But I'm concerned about the plants in 100% potting soil. The thing that puzzles me is that the soil resists getting wet, as if it were water-proof. The top floats in water while remaining dry. The water does not penetrate the soil at all for a few seconds. Then when it drains the soil appears wet in patches. When I scratch the wet soil, it reveals dry soil under it. So I can't tell how much water is retained in the container and if the plant is getting enough of it.

What did I do wrong? Should I have mixed in some compost? Is it too late to transplant the plants and add compost?

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Comments (4)

dirtdauberz5mo
15 years ago
I've never heard of mixed in compost burning anything. Too much fertilizer will burn plants. What are you growing in the 100%, and what is generally in your compost?
justaguy2
15 years ago
If you can't get the entire media wet when watering you are going to have a problem. Lack of water would be the obvious problem, but salts from any fertilizer, including organic will also build up around the dry spots creating toxic areas for the roots.

I would repot now. If the plants were just planted recently they shouldn't have any trouble being rehomed. If you find yourself ripping some roots in the process then put the containers in a shady location for a week before putting them back in full sun.
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bakaroni
Original Author
15 years ago
Thanks for the responses. I'll start by repotting one plant and see how moist the medium was. If it was bad I'll repot the rest.

I notice a similar kind of water-proofness in EarthGro Steer Manure Blend. Is this common?
justaguy2
15 years ago
I notice a similar kind of water-proofness in EarthGro Steer Manure Blend. Is this common?

Yes.

The planting mixes you have explored are much better suited to in ground plantings than container plantings.

I would encourage you to look over the first 3-4 pages of this forum for ideas on how to buy/make more suitable container mixes. Prefer anything where the OP is Tapla.

To put it simply a container isn't the earth and therefore what works optimally in the earth doesn't work optimally in a container. Things like dirt, compost, organic matter etc. which work out so very well in the earth, simply do not work well in containers.

The reason such earth based/organic ideas work so well with the earth is that the earth is the earth and has physical laws governing it. Once we slice the earth up into a minuscule portion (such as with container gardening), those physical laws no longer apply to the same degree and we have to re-learn things.

When growing in the soil you really are unlikely to want the soil replaced with a potting (container) mix and when growing in containers you are really unlikely to want potting mix replaced with a soil.