Indoor Houseplant Soil Vs. Cactus and Succulent Soil

Sherri Harrah:

I’m Sherri Harrah with HomeShow Garden Pros. And indoor plants. Cactus and succulents are all the rage right now. And I have Bob here with Coast of Maine to help us understand picking out soil, what makes them different, and why we would use one or the other. And clearly, different when we look at them.

Bob Lawson:

Very different.

Sherri Harrah:

Very different. Different color, different texture. What makes these different?

Bob Lawson:

Different needs for different plants, obviously. And that’s really important for any gardener, to make sure you’ve got the right soil for the right plant. So to your earlier point, you got indoor houseplants as well as cactus and succulents. Super popular right now, and continue to be that way as they have been for the last several seasons.

So, let’s talk a little bit about the indoor houseplant mix. What’s one of the greatest challenges of planting indoors? Fungus gnats. So, we want to make sure we’ve got a formulation that’s going to cut that down as much as possible. You’re never going to get rid of fungus gnats completely. We got to be really clear about that. It’s just the nature of organic. But we want to reduce that population as much as possible.

So we’ve got a formulation here that doesn’t quite have as much the compost blend to it like most of our other soils, in order to reduce that possibility of having fungus gnats in your house. So, the other side of that though is the blend is such that it holds moisture the way a good houseplant mix should. But also has great drainage, so then you’re not going to have anything that’s going to attract those fungus gnats, which is moist organic soil. So, we’ve balanced it.

Sherri Harrah:

Right, because we know the number one thing on the interior plants is just overwatered.

Bob Lawson:

Absolutely.

Sherri Harrah:

So, that helps with the drainage.

Bob Lawson:

We love our plants to death sometimes, and it’s just the nature of the beast. So, we try to help mitigate that with a great soil blend from Coast of Maine. When we talk about cactus and succulents, completely different mix. So now you’ve got something that’s a lot more grainy, a little more sandy to allow that moisture to really flow through. You’ve got enough stickiness to hold to give that plant, whether it be any type of unique succulent in your small or large. And you can use this outdoors as well. So, keep in mind you can mix that with native soil and get the same effect. But the beauty of it is now you’ve got something just the opposite allowing that moisture to drain through. Got just enough stickiness of moisture to hold it to keep the plant watered to what it needs and then it just flows through.

Sherri Harrah:

Let’s the excess go.

Bob Lawson:

That’s exactly it.

Sherri Harrah:

Which is super important on our cactus and succulents.

Bob Lawson:

Yeah.

Sherri Harrah:

So no matter what you’re planting, Coast of Maine has a soil for you.

Bob Lawson:

Yeah.