The Dirt Locker

For several years now I have wished that I had a place to store lightly used soil.  Anyone who does a lot of gardening in containers will know what I mean.  Sometimes when you dump a container, there seems to be no soil left in there.  There is nothing but a mass of roots, and the dirt has completely disappeared.  Other times you have a large container half or three quarters full of slightly tired soil.

The Dirt Locker

Now there are a few things you can do with it.  You can dump it into gardening areas to improve the native soil, you can put it into your compost pile or you can leave it in the container for next year.  For my large whiskey barrel planters, of course I leave it in.  They are too big to dump over, and they are large enough to mix in new ingredients.   Before I plant again I will add a balanced fertilizer, and then top it off with fresh potting mix to replace what was removed with the roots as I pulled out the dead plants last year.  

A mass of roots, some empty plastic pots for filler,
but still some usable potting mix to reclaim

But my raised beds cannot take large quantities of new material each year.  Putting it into the compost seems a bit of a waste since it is still light and fluffy and full of peat and vermiculite and perlite.  As for leaving a bunch of half filled pots around - well I like to scrub out my containers and store them away each winter.  We have a lot of autumn leaves to deal with and we need a clean slate.  Stacks of containers everywhere just collects leaves.  And the winter weather will continue to age the planters unnecessarily.

Some of the ingredients that go into mixing your own potting mix
Absent from photo: large quantities of compost and peat or coir

Another plus of saving and reusing potting mix is the cost savings.  Whether you buy it by the bag or mix your own, potting mix can represent a large portion of your gardening budget.  You can go broke pretty quick growing a year's worth of potatoes in containers of brand new medium.  It never hurts to have a quantity of lightweight, clean potting mix on hand.  Often you just need it as a filler at the bottom of a large container.  I also have used straight compost for filler, since we usually have a substantial amount of that cooking, but that could be considered a waste of good compost.  In the cases where I've used compost, I always try to return it to the compost pile when I dump the pot.

So this weekend my husband treated me to a 73 gallon deck box.  Now I can store a useful amount of used potting mix for the filling of large containers.  I will still buy bags of new potting mix for topping off each pot, and those dump neatly into a large Rubbermaid container so I can tote it around and store it temporarily in a dry place instead of having half full opened bags of soil setting about.

My typical potting day set-up

I'm pretty tickled with my dirt locker.  It is just one more step towards getting all of my potting activities in one spot.  Next year the plan is to add a greenhouse where I can have all of my pots and supplies stored together near where I actually keep my plants and pot them up.  Right now I have containers and the potting bench stored way back in a canvas storage building.  My compost pile and messy work area where I store half filled containers is in another spot.  My cold frame for tender plants is up by the garden shed.  And my soil additives and hand tools in the garden shed.  I spend a lot of time in the spring bent over a wheelbarrow filling pots.  In good weather I bring the potting bench up to the garden.  On cold rainy spring days I round up everything and take it back to the potting bench and then haul it all back to the cold frame. I can put in a lot of steps in a work day.  Yet another way that gardening is good for your health!

Potting Benches

I have been wanting a potting bench for a very very long time. I always end up potting something, divided perennials, rescued perennials, stuff that won't fit in my garden... and I always do it on the ground, bent over or on my knees, trying to keep spillage to a minimum. At least this year I used my collection of galvanised washtubs to dump the bags of potting mix in. This was a huge help. I put the pots in the wheel barrow, put my vintage grain sifter on the top of the pot, and filled with large scoops of soil. The grain sifter is great if you get a bag that has a high percentage of bark and you are trying to fill small pots, or when mixing in some half used dirt. Now, finally, I have a good place to put a bench, months of winter ahead, and a properly motivated husband. The possibilities are endless! With Tim's exacting attention to detail, I may even end up with something resembling fine cabinetry.

I've collected pictures from magazines and catalogs, and flipped through pages and pages of web images. Of course, I'd be quite happy with a simple greenhouse bench at the proper height.

But the decorator in me wants something "cute" that I can accessorise.

I would be happy to buy one premade, but when I showed my husband the costs of the benches and additional shipping, he volunteered to help me out. Which means, I am in the enviable position of being to combine the best features into just the right bench for me.

For starters, we have a heavy old maple top to a shop bench to work with. My husband is convinced I need a hole cut to sweep dirt back down into a container, and I agree.

Probably with some sort of grid over it so I don't lose counterspace.

I think I need one shelf below not only to hold the dirt container, but to keep things up off the floor so I can sweep under. I like the dirt stopper on this bench and think we need to have at least a 4-6 inch curb not only across the back but also wrapping around the back corners.

I also need at least one shelf above and I really like the cubby idea. I think we are going to center the bench on a window, so we would have to modify this to have a row of cubbies on each side.

In browsing for ideas, I've found some great gardening blogs and sites. Here are a few of the most notable...

A cute do-it-yourself bench

Vegetable Gardener.com

This guy even hooked running water up to his....