Potting soil can become one of those sneaky spring gardening expenses that barely gets noticed until the cart contains several bags and the receipt suddenly looks ridiculous. The good news is that last year’s container mix does not automatically belong in the trash just because a tomato plant, petunia, or pepper spent a season growing in it.
Old potting mix can often serve another season, but it needs a little attention first. The goal isn’t to blindly reuse whatever happens to remain in a pot, but to figure out whether the mix still has a useful structure, whether anything nasty lurks inside it, and what it needs before another plant moves in.
