Does anyone go from one year to another with the same soil in the same pot - just adding fertilizer or whatever "pick-me-ups" you use?
I've been dumping the soil and cleaning the pots and then mixing in some new soil. this was fine as long as I was adding containers to the garden. Now that I have all the containers that I need, I am wondering what other people do to "refresh" the soil in their containers.
Actually, it depends mostly on what type of plant I intend to put in the pot. If it's something like a tomato, that is susceptible to various soil-bourn diseases, I go to the trouble to thoroughly wash and sterilize the pot and use new soil. I've lost plants due to being lazy about preparation, and that's terribly discouraging.
OTOH, if it's something like a holiday cactus or other plant that isn't susceptible to such diseases, I don't even bother to empty the old soil out of the used container. I just wet the soil under the faucet and stick the plant cutting in it.
If the soil is seriously old, more than 3 or years, then I just throw it on the compost pile and use newly purchased soil for my plant. And cleaning of the pot would depend on whether an encrustation of salts had accumulated around the rim and/or the drainage holes. Those need to be scraped off, or they will leach into the new soil.
OTOH, if it's something like a holiday cactus or other plant that isn't susceptible to such diseases, I don't even bother to empty the old soil out of the used container. I just wet the soil under the faucet and stick the plant cutting in it.
If the soil is seriously old, more than 3 or years, then I just throw it on the compost pile and use newly purchased soil for my plant. And cleaning of the pot would depend on whether an encrustation of salts had accumulated around the rim and/or the drainage holes. Those need to be scraped off, or they will leach into the new soil.