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What s inside potting soil? Everything but soil. danchooalex/Getty Images
If you find it shocking that there s no actual dirt in potting soil (also known as potting mix), you re not alone. Much of the confusion is probably because gardening experts don t use the word soil the same way that regular people do. Soil is a broad term and is often used interchangeably with planting medium. Soil in general is composed of minerals and organic matter (decomposing plant, animal or microbial matter), explains Paul Cunningham, hard goods buyer for Pike Nurseries & Armstrong Garden Centers in an email interview. A planting medium refers to a variety of materials used for planting in containers or the ground. Depending on the recipe, potting soil is soil because it contains all ingredients mentioned.
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There’s nothing like launching a gardening passion by tearing out a hilly front lawn by hand with a saw and crowbar, designing a low-water garden, and then getting it installed. But that’s just what Vista homeowner and novice gardener Robin Ziegler did, starting in 2018 and going through 2019. And all that hard work yielded not just a colorful refuge for birds, butterflies and bees, but also the Vista Irrigation District’s win in the 2020 WaterSmart Landscape Contest.
Digging deep
(Robin Ziegler)
Ziegler and her husband, Michael Goryan, bought their 30-year-old house in 2017 and, while they wanted a drought-tolerant garden, they focused first on renovating the interior. In the meantime, they turned off the irrigation to kill the 150 square feet of front lawn, studded with surprise ankle-breaking dips and holes. But, Ziegler recalled, in spring 2018, there was still growth only what came up were weeds that grew 8 feet tall. At that point, determined to turn the space