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soil is this soil to old

judohero

judohero

there is a bunch of potting soil on sale right now how long can i store it for. it will be in the garage where it will stay dry?
 
keeping it dry is not good if it contains peat because when it dries it repels water but when keeping potting soil too wet you release any fertilzers(like in miracle grow) that are in it it is best to keep it damp any fungi that grows should be beneficial
 
There are also some downsides to keeping it damp. It will then continue to break down and possibly compact too much, and you may get insect nests and fungus which is not necessarily a good thing, that's potentially the same fungus that causes damping off. To rehydrate dry soil it just needs to sit in the pot with some water added for a while, it may not soak it up immediately but over a few hours or days at most it will.

This year I found an old stash of potting ingredients that were my mother's and added those to a few pots. The stuff must've been two or three decades old and was stored bone dry. I see no difference in the health of those plants for better or worse.
 
Dave2000 said:
This year I found an old stash of potting ingredients that were my mother's and added those to a few pots. The stuff must've been two or three decades old and was stored bone dry. I see no difference in the health of those plants for better or worse.
Click to expand...

I should add that I did not use this ancient soil, moss, etc alone. It was mixed with microbe-live soil.
 
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