In any kind of situation where you are trying to sustain your home by gardening yourself, giving your plants the right soil medium to grow in is almost a crucial to your plants growth and survival as the light that you give them from your grow lights. What most people do not realize is that there are many different ways and types of mediums or materials that your plants can grow and even strive in. More times than not most people just put their plants in regular old potting soil and are disappointed when they do not get the results that they wanted. There are obviously many different reasons that people’s gardens fail and it is not always the soil but having a good nutrient rich root friendly soil definitely does not hurt your cause. In today’s lesson we are going to be going over a very easy, inexpensive super fast way to make a good soil medium that helps your plants get the most out of the soil in its first and very crucial weeks.
Materials list:
- Pair of scissors
- Old sponge preferable the big light brown one that is used for washing cars
- Bag of potting soil, if you do not have this then any soil will work; the bag just makes it easier.
- Bag of organic fertilizer, can either use the water soluble kind or can be the granular, or time release kind, just has to be a kind that can be evenly dispersed in the soil.
- A bowl big enough to hold the water, sponge pieces and some fertilizer.
- A bowl that can hold a decent amount of soil and the sponge mix.
- A spoon or something to stir the bowl solution with
- Gloves, these are not absolutely necessary but do help a lot
1. Now that we have all of our materials, take the scissors and cut up the old sponge into tiny pieces. You will want to continue to cut the sponge until you have all of the pieces no larger than half of your pinky nail. So basically you are going to be cutting this stuff a lot THE SMALLER THE BETER. An easy way that I found to do this is to cut the sponge in half, then cut it in half again then in half again and so on. Doing this will give you a plan and help you to see your progress better. If you can get this daunting task out of the way quick you are in great shape and will have a breeze with the rest of the project.
2. Now that you have the all of your clumps cut up put them aside, and mix a half of a cup of water and a handful or so of the fertilizer you do not need a lot. Use the spoon to mix the water and fertilizer with. Mix the fertilizer until it is pretty well mixed and then introduce the sponge pieces. Stir the mix until all of the pieces of sponge are covered in the solution and let it stand for a couple of minutes while you prepare your soil.
3. While the sponge mix is soaking up the solution pour a good amount of soil into the large bowl.
4. After the solution has sat for couple of minutes take all of the pieces out of the solution bowl and begin mixing them in with the dirt bowl. You will want to mix these pieces in the best that you can, you can use the spoon or just mix it in with your hands like you would flour and water.
Once you have mixed in your sponge pieces well slowly pour in a little at a time the rest of the water fertilizer solution that the sponge pieces did not soak up. The best way to do this is to pour a little a time turn and mix it in with the soil and pour a little more. The whole key is to evenly disperse the liquid the best that you can with soil.
Now that you have this done plant your seeds and begin gardening. Now when you go to water your plants in the future your soil will hold deposits of water better and will provide your plants with a slow release of nutrients. Happy Gardening
