Can Garden Soil Be Converted to Potting Soil?

How Garden Soil Helps

• Garden soil is typically full of nutrients. It holds nutrients and moisture better than most commercial potting mixes. It's also heavier than potting mixes, adding weight to tall or lightweight plants in pots that may easily blow over on a windy day. Garden soil is the normal growing medium of many plants, helping the roots grow and secure nutrients easily.

Garden Soil Safety

• The problem with using garden soil as part of your potting soil mix is that garden soil sometimes carries fungi, diseases, weed seeds and pests. This can cause stunted growth or a failure to thrive in your plants when you use the soil in a potting mix. To reduce the chances of spreading disease or pests to your new plants, choose garden soil from an area of your garden that isn't infected to the best of your knowledge -- where no plants have suffered from fungal infections or major insect problems, for example. Spread the soil thinly on a metal pan and bake it in your oven at 200 degrees Fahrenheit for 20 minutes, turning it every five minutes to help sterilize it.

Basic Recipes

• To create a basic potting soil mix that works for most plants in a garden environment, combine equal parts of the garden soil, compost and builder's grade sand. This is a fairly heavy mixture, but the compost and sand help aerate the soil. In containers, you need a little extra help with draining. A basic container recipe is one part garden soil, one part peat moss and one part sand.

Other Additives

• A benefit of making your own potting mix is that you are in control of what goes into it, so you can adjust the mix for each plant's needs. For example, for plants that need extra drainage, add perlite or bark chips. With plants that need extra moisture retention, add more garden soil or vermiculite, which holds water and releases it slowly into the potting mix.