A lady at the local garden club made me rethink my whole approach to soil

Last Saturday at the Oakwood Garden Club meeting, a retired teacher named Eleanor told me I was overcomplicating my potting mix. She said she just uses plain compost from her backyard bin and never bothers with perlite or vermiculite. I spent the last 3 years buying bags of fancy soil blends and tracking pH levels every month. It hit me different because she showed photos of her thriving orchids and ferns grown in straight compost for 8 years. Made me wonder if I've been wasting money on stuff I don't really need. Has anyone else tried going super basic with just compost and seen good results?

2 comments

2 Comments

miles_young5918d agoMost Upvoted

Oh man, Eleanor's out here with her eight year old orchids in straight compost and I'm over here treating my soil like it's a chemistry experiment. I bet she doesn't even own a pH meter, probably just pokes her finger in the dirt and says "yep, that feels right." Must be nice to be that confident in your backyard bin. Meanwhile I got a shelf full of fancy bags from the garden center that probably cost more than her entire compost setup. Maybe I should just dump my perlite stash into the bird bath and call it a day.

julia_anderson17d ago

Dumped a whole bag of fancy orchid bark into my compost bin last spring by accident and the pile ate it like candy.