Hello in this video, I'm going to show you how I mix my soil, and a very easy and fast and cheap
way to sterilize it using boiling water. Ideally I would buy individual soil ingredients and
mix my own, but I simply don't have that many plans and that much reporting to do to justify
buying individual bags of soil ingredients. So I like to start with houseplant potting mix.
I'm not very picky about which brand I buy from. I just go with whatever I can find
in the store. However I have found that for most houseplant potting mixes I've tried,
if that's all I use, then the soil stays wet for way too long, and I don't like that. I
like the soil to drain really well, to be light and airy, and that's not what the houseplant
potting mix will give me usually. So what I do is I have a large bag of perlite here,
and I will just mix that into the houseplant potting mix. I usually go for two part houseplant
potting mix and one part perlite, but if I'm using the soil for a plant like a succulent or
something that's more prone to root rot, then I will go for 50 percent houseplant potting mix and
50 percent perlite. I don't really measure them, I just eyeball it.
ooo also, I find my perlite to be really dusty, so I usually wear a mask when I pour it in.
I'm going to go ahead and mix this.
Okay so now the next step is to sterilize the soil because there could be bugs and their eggs
in here, and we don't want that in our home or in our plants. So there's many
different ways you can sterilize your soil. It really depends on what your preferences are,
and what you already have at home. What I like to do is to use boiling water, which
takes only a few minutes, and it's quick and convenient. First step is to boil some water.
While the water is boiling, I'm going to transfer the soil mix that we just made
into a pot with drainage holes.
It doesn't have to be a pot. I just like to use a container that lets water through at the bottom.
Now get your freshly boiled water, and just slowly pour the water in.
I don't like to hold the pot like this because I don't want to accidentally burn my finger.
So I'll just put it down like this, and try to get the water on every part of the soil,
and the high temperature of the boiling water is what's going to sterilize the soil.
So now that I have poured boiling water through every part of the soil, I'm just gonna let it sit
for a little bit. And if you're going to use the soil immediately, which is what I'm going to do,
I will have to cool the soil, because I do not want to put my plants
in hot soil. To let the soil cool, you could just wait. Or you could just run
some cold water through the soil which is what I'm going to do now.
I'm just going to check how hot the soil is it's cool already so this is ready to be used.