Used Garden Soil In My Fabric Pots: Am I In Trouble?

[Randar]

I grabbed a bag of garden soil instead of potting soil when I made up my most recent two pots. I'm using 5 gallon fabric pots with a mixture of garden soil, mushroom compost, composted manure, and perlite. Will this be too heavy/dense for the plants? Right now the seedlings have sprouted and are growing, and seem to be doing fine. Just not sure if this is going to retain too much water/be too compact, which could lead to root rot.

Thoughts?

 

[Mike80]

If they are growing keep doing whatever you are doing. Water them when they are dry and you should be good to go. Get a moisture sensor from Amazon for like 10 bucks to tell you exactly when to water.

 

[skirk]

My well draining soil mix in a 5 gal fabric pot weighs in at 12 lbs. dry and 20 lbs. saturated to slight runoff. Are you in the ballpark?

 

[bobrown14]

If your question is about soil tilth - grab a handful of soil and squeeze in your palm of your hand. It should form into something the shape of you palm and be very loose and not compacted. If you squeeze it and it stays in a ball shape without falling apart, that's pretty dense.

 

[Nunyabiz]

Bobrown is correct.

And more than likely there must be something that doesn't look right to you and your gut is usually right.

You should have at least 30% of your soil as aeration such as pumice, rice hulls and biochar.