Using dirt from the garden for seed starting?

[HLAC]

Hi everyone,
I have always used commercial seed starting mixes in the past but I'm wondering, can I just use the dirt from my garden to start seeds?

Do I have to sterilize it? Add stuff to it? It's good black dirt. Not much clay or sand.

Most of the plants I grow, I plant directly in the garden anyhow, but I'd like to start more plants for an earlier harvest this year. I'm planning to start about 40 eggplants, 40 pepper plants, 40 tomato plants, about 100 squash plants and several dozen other plants.... enough that I don't really want to cough out the dough for bagged dirt if I don't have to.

Has anybody tried this? Thanks!

 

[beavis]

Good question!

I have used garden soil before to start seeds, and tried a half garden soil, half potting mix and both methods produced hard caking soil. And I also think I have pretty good garden soil.

This year, I went back to strictly potting mix for my seed starts and the results were infinitely better.

Plus, you don't have to worry about weed seeds with potting soil.

Hope that helps a bit.....

 

[sparkles2307]

I found the garden soil to be too heavy when I was starting my seeds. And yes, the weeds bothered me.

 

[lesa]

I just received some info on this very subject from Cornell. In addition to the damping off problems we associate with garden soil for seed starting- they say garden dirt should not be used in containers "because it is too dense to provide adequate aeration and drainage."
I hate buying dirt, I really do- but in the case of seed starting I think it is an investment that is worthwhile...

 

[patandchickens]

You can do it, especially if you mix in at least an equal volume of peat or finely-screened finished compost. But IME it does not work well, for a variety of reasons, and I expect that after you have gotten the urge to try it out of your system, you will revert to soilless type mixes

from Cornell. In addition to the damping off problems we associate with garden soil for seed starting- they say garden dirt should not be used in containers "because it is too dense to provide adequate aeration and drainage."

I can attest to the truth of that, at least for soils with any meaningful fraction of clay in them! My mother grew many/most of her houseplants in garden soil mixed with homemade compost, for years and years and years, and despite the addition of about 1 part compost to 2 parts soil, man those things were HEAVY and would set up like concrete if you let 'em dry out much; and you couldn't grow plants that were sensitive to waterlogging in that medium, b/c it was just about impossible to achieve "sufficiently damp without anaerobically soggy for a while".

And note that despite soldiering on with this practice for most of her life even though even *mom* agreed that the plants didn't really like it all that much, she still always did her container lettuce and decorative-annual windowboxes and seed-starting in purchased or homemade soilless mix

Pat

 

[journey11]

If you're mainly looking to avoid purchasing the soiless mixes, you might want to try getting your soil from the forest floor, rather than the garden. It will be lighter and more humus as it is mostly decomposed leaves and wood. It takes a little scavenging to aquire enough. You push away the leaves and such, then scrape up just the thin, top-most layer of dark soil. Bake this in your oven to kill off any molds, seeds or disease that might be present. Sift it if needed to remove any larger chunks.

 

[silkiechicken]

I generally suck it up and buy a new 55qt bag of potting mix for starting seeds in. Tried re-using last year's potting mix from buckets outside and brought in all kinds of bugs that hatched in the warmer apartment.... including mosquitoes! Ugh, and some how slugs made it up to the 2nd story balcony, but figure I also have frogs show up randomly in the middle of our over sprayed housing development sterility so should have figured.

Back home, I never tried using our garden soil. Too many rocks, too much sand, too much clay among the chicken poop, forms bricks in containers. Figure if I did try it, I'd also come across the same problems as the used once potting soil on the balcony. Probably doesn't help the fact the balcony soil also has all of last year's vegatative growth mixed into the bottom. I could not bear taking the plant matter and throwing it into the dumpster. So it was either bag it up and take it home, or put them back into the pots here at school.

Forest floor stuff is awesome to use as mulch here in the PNW. Back home when I want to mulch the roses, I go into the woods on our property and scoop up buckets of pine needles. Under the big trees, the needles are easily 8-12 inches deep before you reach stuff that is too decayed.