hi everybody its gerald backyard evening I decided to bring you a video today on how to refresh potting soil yes so stay tuned alright guys so we are back here and we are in the backyard garden and I'm getting ready to pot up some pepper plants so I have a number of containers try to give you a shot of them have a number of containers right here I don't know there's probably some 30-something containers around the backyard and I am trying to get my peppers planted for this season so I want to reuse the soil a lot of people don't but I reuse my soil so what I do is pretty simple I dump it out check for any sort of issues with the potting soil and then then refresh it so a couple of things you want to keep in mind when refreshing potting soil if you grew something in it the previous year and you've had some sort of disease issue you want to make sure to get rid of that soil so I would recommend if you had for example if you grew potatoes in a pot and you wanted to reuse the potting soil but during the potato season you realize that your potatoes had blight or some sort of disease you want to make sure to discard that soil for the next year because you don't want to be able to you don't want to carry that disease to the next plant and so if you're gonna use that soil for anything in the nightshade family something like of course potatoes obviously peppers tomatoes eggplants those type of things you could very easily transmit that disease through that potting soil so you want to make sure to dispose of it other than that potting soil can be reused if you follow a couple of simple steps a couple of simple rules you want to make sure that the potting soil has enough nutrients for whatever plant that you're growing in it but in addition to that you want to make sure that the potting soil has the right components so that it holds moisture so that it's not too heavy and that it's going to be an overall good soil for whatever plant that you're growing in it so the potting soil that I'm reusing today is primarily Kellogg's potting mix it's an organic potting mix it has basically everything you would want in a potting soil already in there and what I did last year is I added just a little bit of pear light just in addition to the potting soil and what our firm is that helped to aerate the soil a little bit make it a little bit lighter and a little bit more fluffy now this year I will not be adding the pear light I will just be using the potting soil just how it is because the soil from last year has enough of that pair of light in it so real simple I'll show you what I do all right so here is my wheelbarrow and my trusty shovel I've got a couple of pots already put in here and you can see you can see this soil is really good I mean it's dark it's rich it's got the pear light in it you can see that's the white it does have some words still in it and that's okay the roots will finish decomposing and help feed up the soil but I've already got a couple pots already in here so when you're looking at those pots you want to make sure obviously number one that you don't have any sort of fire ants or anything like that in it because when you start mixing it up you can actually spread it and then you'll have more issues with that so this I have I've had an issue with fire ants being in my pots before and I usually find out the hard way so the easiest way I just do it and I know this sounds dumb but I seriously just reach in grab a handful of soil and usually that will I can just barely disturbing the soil I can tell if there is ants in the in the tub or in the pot so this one's good to go I'm gonna simply take it and I'm gonna dump it out in the wheelbarrow and you can see this one has quite a bit of roots in it in the bottom and that's all routes okay now if there's big clumps like that I just take it and I break it up I found X I found a snake in one of these earlier it's just a little rough earth snake I'll put a picture in there they're not gonna hurt you they actually eat insects so I love snakes just FYI so but yeah you just want to break it up make sure there's no clumps I've got another bag for the Kellogg [Applause] take my shovel break up the clumps all right that's all there is to it and even though there's some words in it you still end up you get this nice fluffy soil it's got more nutrients added into it alright guys so that's really that's really all there is to it now at this stage once you get this the old mix once you've got the old potting mix and the new mix mixed together in my case that's what I'm doing but in your case you can add whatever you want to it you can add in some cow manure compost you can add in some mushroom compost basically the idea is when you're refreshing potting mix you want to make sure to add in some good organic matter so potting potting mix is gonna have a little bit in there but what you really want to do is you want to add in some good organic matter so things like mushroom compost cow manure compost any sort of compost that you make it your home would be great to add in there you can add in some blood mill or some bone mill depending on what you're growing that'll be as a organic way to some feed up the soil you could also add in some worm castings which is what I'm gonna do here in just a minute when I start potting my plants up I'm gonna will add in some worm castings and some organic fertilizer so really the idea is you want to add in enough organic matter to refresh the soil and I've actually got a recipe on my website an article how to do it now I'll put a link in the description below but you want to add in that organic matter if you want to make sure that's got the right soil structure so it's gonna hold moisture if you need the potting mix to hold more moisture you want to put in things like either vermiculite or peat moss or coco coir that'll help you hold on to the moisture if you need to if you need something to help drain you can add some para light that's also gonna help aerate the soil so it's not so heavy so make sure to add in some good stuff what do you like to add into your potting mix leave that in the comment section below if you have any questions pop those in the comment section below if you like this video give it a thumbs up if you haven't checked us out on social media you can do that you can find the links of the description below and as always guys I will see you in the next video hey you made it to the end awesome if you liked this video give it a thumbs up if you haven't subscribed already go ahead and do that right below this video and please if you enjoyed it share with your friends and I hope that you come back and continue to watch our content and also have a awesome