The Best Performing DIY Soil Mix for Home Gardeners: How to Make it

Why purchase pre-mixed soils when you can make them yourself? Homemade soil blends offer more structure, fertility, and flexibility than store-bought ones. They’re often cheaper too! Join backyard gardener Jerad Bryant in making potting mix at home with simple ingredients.

Hands blending dark, organic compost with small bits of decayed leaves and twigs, ready for planting preparation.

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DIY activities are indispensable in the garden! Not only are they fun ways to get your hands dirty, but they’re also economical methods that make gardening cheaper. Rocks can create walls for raised beds, sticks provide trellising support, and homemade soil helps plants grow. They’ll have more fruits, flowers, and vegetables than those growing in garden center mixes.

Making your own soil can be daunting, though! Add too much of one ingredient, and the mix will swing out of balance. Careful attention to the ingredients, the ratios, and the mixing process ensures you create the best blend for your crops. You want a soil that’s porous, fertile, absorbent, and supportive. 

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Epic Gardening founder Kevin Espiritu and the garden hermit Jacques Lyakov tested their custom soils at the Epic Garden in San Diego, California. They grew broccoli in containers, measuring the plant growth over many weeks. They used Miracle-Gro® and Vigoro® potting mixes in the control group for the experiment. 

The results were astounding! Jacques’ broccoli performed better than the other three, growing more leaves, stems, and florets. It also weighed the most—Jacques’ soil mix was the clear winner of the experiment. Let’s break down what ingredients he used, why he used them, and how they’ll be helpful in your garden. 

Azomite Powder

Our Rating

Mineral Boost: Azomite Powder

Coco Coir

Urban Worm Coco Coir

Our Rating

Urban Worm Coco Coir

Vegetable Fertilizer

All-Purpose Vegetable Fertilizer

Our Rating

All-Purpose Vegetable Fertilizer

The Best Performing Recipe

Green Capsicum annuum plants growing in parallel rows with dark mulch in between, inside a garden bed.
Peppers, tomatoes, eggplants, and tomatillos will grow well in Jacques’ soil.

Though the Epic team grew broccoli for this experiment, you can use this soil mix for other fruits and vegetables. Broccoli is in the Brassica genus, and any of its relatives will fare well in this dirt blend. Plants like mustard, kale, cabbage, and Brussels sprouts appreciate the extra support it provides. 

Peppers, tomatoes, eggplants, and tomatillos will grow well in Jacques’ soil. Some plants, like carrots, need loose, porous soil so they can grow thick, tender roots. They’ll need lighter materials than this mix; carrots benefit from less charcoal and pumice. 

The great part about making dirt is that you control the ratio and ingredients. You can modify the list to suit your growing needs, whether cultivating corn, carrots, or daffodils! 

To start, let’s look at the ingredients we need. The percentages for each ingredient work in any size container. For example, 33%, or ⅓ of a 15-gallon grow bag is 5 gallons. It’s best to calculate how many of each ingredient you’ll need, that way you avoid overwhelming plants with too much fertilizer. 

IngredientsRatio Percentage
Coco Coir33%
Compost33%
Worm Castings5%
Pumice10%
Horticultural Sand10%
Charcoal5%
Azomite1%
All Purpose Fertilizer1%
Native Soil2%


After gathering your ingredients, mix them all up in the container. Cover the surface with straw or compost and water well. Store your extra soil ingredients in a cool, dry place to use whenever you need fresh dirt. And that’s it! Continue monitoring your plants, granting them sufficient fertilizer, water, and sunlight. 

A Simple Seed Starting Recipe

A hand holding crumbly, dark compost with visible organic material, showing its texture and consistency.
Modify it as you’d like to fit the plants you’re cultivating. 

Gathering many ingredients can quickly grow expensive! This other simple recipe is best for starting seedlings, though it works well for containers and raised beds. Modify it as you’d like to fit the plants you’re cultivating. 

The Epic Recipe

  • ⅓ Compost and Worm Castings
  • ⅓ Coco Coir
  • ⅓ Pumice, Perlite, or Vermiculite

Adding a dusting of azomite powder is beneficial, as it adds trace nutrients essential for healthy plant growth. Coco coir is the preferred substrate, though you may use whichever absorbent material you have on hand. Peat moss was the industry standard, but its harvesting practices are sometimes unsustainable. Choose an environmentally friendly option like coir, compost, or leaf mold instead. 

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Why Use DIY Soil Mix?

A hand placing fine, dark compost around a small seedling in a white grow bag with green shoots emerging.
You’ll quickly learn which soils are best for each crop you cultivate. 

Though you can buy a few bags of potting mix and plant directly into them, you’ll miss out on some key benefits homemade mixes provide. Making a dirt blend puts you in touch with your garden, forcing you to touch the earth your plants will grow into! You’ll quickly learn which soils are best for each crop you cultivate. 

More Control

A gloved person holding a handful of pine bark chips used as mulch for soil.
For shrubs and trees, growers often add wood chips or bark to their growing mix.

Control is key when it comes to making soils for gardens. Commercial mixes use cheap fillers instead of valuable amendments, creating blends that degrade poorly over time. You may have noticed this if you’ve tried reusing old potting soil. Old mixes need new amendments before they’re usable again. 

You control the quality of your soil and the amendments you use. Let’s say you’re growing fruit trees in a backyard orchard. You’ll want the blend to have plenty of organic matter and structure. For shrubs and trees, growers often add wood chips or bark to their growing mix. They decompose slowly, providing structural support for young roots.

Vegetables need more nutrients and less structural support, and they’ll fare well with free-drained, fertile soil. Grant them more compost and leaf mold, and skip out on wood chips. The decaying wood can soak nitrogen from the ground, preventing your growing crops from accessing it. 

No Unsustainable Materials

A large bucket full of black, sustainable substance, called biochar, being mixed using a shovel.
Also called “biochar,” this material provides air pockets for roots to access.

Our recipes use coco coir instead of peat moss, though there are other materials that some consider unsustainable. Choosing sustainable materials ensures you garden with little impact on surrounding environments. You’ll opt for harmony instead of destruction!

Though perlite and vermiculite are excellent amendments for adding drainage, absorbency, and porosity, they require significant energy during the manufacturing process. Heat and pressure are necessary to transform the dense rocks into fluffy particles. Pumice is a natural stone that manufacturers break up into smaller pieces. It’s the perfect alternative, though it is quite heavy. 

Charcoal is available in garden centers, but why pay the expensive fees when you can make it yourself? Also called “biochar,” this material provides air pockets for roots to access. Make it by burning logs in a campfire at high temperatures, then put them out with water before they fully burn. Break up the charred pieces, and they’re ready to use as a natural soil builder!

Cheaper to Make

Close-up of a gardener's hand in a green glove with composting food waste in front of a raised bed. Composting food waste with worms presents a rich, earthy tableau with decomposing organic matter interspersed with wriggling red worms, fostering nutrient-rich soil for sustainable gardening practices.
Microbes, worms, and other decomposing organisms turn garden waste into humus, a rich soil byproduct.

There are many ways to cut costs in the backyard garden. Composting and making leaf mold are two easy ways to turn leftover waste into valuable amendments. Best of all, they’re free! All you have to do is invest some time into making them. 

Composting can grow quite complicated, though the process is simple in its purest form. Microbes, worms, and other decomposing organisms turn garden waste into humus, a rich soil byproduct. Kitchen scraps, plant clippings, and paper waste transform into compost with little time and maintenance. Check out this guide for more information on composting.

Key Takeaways

  • DIY soil mixing is an excellent way to get your hands dirty! Start today, and you’ll continuously learn what your plants need to perform their best.
  • Aim to purchase cheap, sustainable materials for soil mixing. If they’re not available, consider using a substitute or making them yourself. Charcoal, compost, and leaf mold can all be made in the garden.
  • Though Jacques’ recipe performed best in this experiment, it may not perform well in every garden scenario. Consider modifying the ratios to suit your cultivation needs. 

Have more questions? Learn more about soil building here.

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A close-up of dark brown, crumbly material being scooped with a trowel.

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