Compost and wood chips make an excellent team when it comes to creating a potting mix. Compost adds essential nutrients and enhances soil fertility, while wood chips work like perlite or vermiculite, ...

Use the potting mix as a topdressing over the disturbed soil. • Bare-rooting container plants is a more successful transplanting technique, root flaws can be corrected and container medium removed.

You’ve probably seen little chips of black bark in your potting mix at home. These largely inert, resilient chips of wood maintain structure, meaning water and air can flow freely throughout a pot.

I was thinking of using chat, crushed rock, for mulch rather than wood chips. ... Stick the bulbs in the refrigerator, upright, in slightly moist potting soil for 14 weeks.

Marianne C. Ophardt is a horticulturist for the Washington State University Extension and writes a garden column for the Tri-City Herald. She talks about the fire danger of potting mixes.