How to Choose the RIGHT Bagged Soil for Your Plants

Nerd here with two soil science degrees- it's kind of fascinating the difference between a gardener's definition of dirt vs soil, compared to soil scientists out in the world. That first example that you showed as "dirt" I would actually still consider to be soil- because its still a growing medium at the end of the day even if it can't support what you want it to. We classify dirt as what's on the bottom of your shoe. I'd say the gardener's definition and the research's are both correct! just different! Great video as always- thanks for your insights!

Soil = dirt + life! Thank you! 😊

Thank you for this video. I literally went to the store today and was so confused but i got one of each bag. I literally know nothing about gardening but for some reason I decided to start … well because of my 5 year old who loves plants. Wish me luck!

I’ve been using fox farm for over 10 years they are very trusted in my eyes!

This is exactly what i needed! Im planing on moving a lot of my plants to bigger pots soon. VERY good timing!

"God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble." Psalm 46.1💚🌟

I’ve started to love growing radish. Purple, pink, red, white . . I enjoyed a young icicle radish in my salad yesterday. Mild and tender.

Omg! The video I didn't know I needed! Thank you! I started my gardening journey religiously making Mel's Mix and never bothered to learn anything about the bagged soil. Fast forward a few years and I started looking for shortcuts for refreshing beds, or added new smaller containers and started buying bags by making wild guesses. I tried reading the ingredients and finding something close to what I'd previously been mixing, but was not really ever happy with the result. I knew the potting soil looked better, but the name is so counter intuitive for outdoor gardening. I thought it was literally for house plants. I just could not figure out why there was so much volume at the nursery dedicated to house plant soil. 😂😂 My plants thank you too! Big fan of Fox Farms. I used them 2 years ago for tomatoes on the recommendation of my tomato vendor.

I've run into something very frustrating. I bought about 10 bags of Miracle Gro potting/gardening soil from Costco this spring. I planted about 30 tomatoes and peppers using this soil. The plants are alive but the peppers look like they just came out of boot camp and the tomatoes are not producing like they should, just a few tomatoes on plants that are 5-6' high with healthy leaves and stems. I use Espoma organic veggie tone and tomato tone fertilizer. I started to get to the bottom of it by testing my potted soil for moisture, fertility and pH. I found that the pH was between 4 and 5 in ALL the pots! I started backtracking for the cause. Fortunately, I still had a partial bag of MG soil left. I tested the soil in the bag and came up with a solid 7-7.2 pH. HOWEVER, once I added water, it dropped to 4-5 pH. I used our tap water and distilled water and rainwater and all came out with the same results. I contacted Scott's Miracle Gro which admitted that "The Miracle-Gro Potting Mix has an initial target pH of 5.5-6.2. Once water is added to Miracle-Gro Potting Mix the pH will be altered based on the pH of the water" their soil is formulated for a pH of 5.5 to 6.2! What the...????? Tomatoes and most veggies can't deal with that pH. Have you ever heard of such a crazy thing?

I just bought a lot of the wrong soil 🤣🤣😂🤭 Lesson learned!