Keeping potted plants is an excellent way to make your home look more stylish and naturally fill your space with joy. However, it can be difficult to maintain potted plants if you don’t fully understand how their root systems work and what they need other than water and sunlight. Aerating your soil is a good way to maintain your potted plants’ longevity.
To aerate soil in potted plants, you can mix soil amendments into the pot, transplant your plant into a different pot with new soil, avoid overwatering, and refresh the potting mix every few months by mixing in fresh soil with the old soil.
This simple guide will take you through the steps of aerating your soil effectively. We’ll also be discussing why soil aeration is so crucial for your plants, signs the soil needs it, and the best ways to avoid soil compaction in potted plants. Finally, we’ll discuss whether peat moss is really a good way to aerate your soil.
1. Mix Amendments Into the Soil
Soil amendments can be a mixture of organic and non-living substances. These additives help the soil with drainage and aeration and relieve compaction. Organic amendments also help the soil’s microbes by providing organic materials that can be consumed and converted into energy for your plants’ roots.
Additionally, soil amendments can help the soil retain moisture levels, which is especially important in very warm climates.
Soil amendments can include the following substances:
- Worm castings
- Compost
- Peat moss
- Vermiculite
- Shaved bark
- Perlite
The organic elements listed above (worm castings, compost, and shaved bark) can provide the soil with a naturally occurring fertilizer that helps the soil’s microbial components break down organic compounds into valuable energy resources for your potted plant.
This is especially helpful if you’re not interested in using store-bought fertilizers that are, more often than not, full of nasty ingredients that are bad for the environment in the long run.
The other elements listed (peat moss, vermiculite, and perlite) are considered inorganic substances since they aren’t derived from living substances or bacterial growth. If you’re looking to aerate the soil in your potted plant, your best bet is to go for an organic amendment.
This is because they are ultimately much cheaper (and often free), easier to source, and much better for the environment since you’re recycling elements rather than purchasing manufactured ones.
If you’re interested in using organic soil amendments for soil aeration, the best way to achieve success is to use worm castings. These are organic materials that create tiny aeration holes within the soil, and when bacteria in the soil consume them over time, they get secreted back into the soil. It’s an inexpensive self-recycling process that will naturally take care of your soil aeration without any trouble.
Compost is likely the second most popular option when it comes to organic soil amendments since it’s straightforward to make at home and hardly costs a thing. Compost expands into the soil and creates good aeration in severely compacted soil. It works in a similar way to worm castings.
2. Manually Work the Soil to Improve Aeration
Manual soil aeration is a good way to temporarily improve the structure of your potted plant’s soil. However, be mindful of using this method too much since over-handling of your potting soil might result in disrupting the natural biological balance the roots need to thrive.
This method is a good way to evenly distribute organic compounds in the soil and create that fluffiness that potted plants love.
3. Transplant Your Plant to a Different Pot With New Soil
If you’re at your wits’ end with your potting soil, you can always transplant your potted plant into a different pot and provide it with new soil. New soil can provide the rejuvenation that your potted plant needs to fare much better.
If your old potting soil is overly compact and nutrient-deficient, transplanting is probably the best option for you. If the soil is especially old, this can also signify that it’s time to change the plant’s environment.
Using healthy, all-natural potting soil for your new pot will make all the difference when transplanting. Make sure you use potting soil that has good aeration capacities and is naturally fluffy.
Transplanting Potted Plants: Step-by-Step Guide
Transplanting with new soil is a fairly straightforward process, and you can even use the same pot.
Follow the steps below to transplant your potted plant into its new, aerated environment:
1. Dig Into the Bottom of Your Plant
Dig down along the sides and into the bottom of your pot with a small hand trowel, being careful not to cut the plant or its upper roots. Gently slide the plant out from the pot and set it aside on some newspaper.
2. Fix Any Overlapping Roots
Carefully loosen the soil around the roots with your gloved hands. If your plant has overlapping roots, you’ll need to disentangle them so that they aren’t so knotted up. This will help your plant take in nutrients more efficiently. It will also enable the roots to breathe easily once in the fresh soil.
3. Clean Your Pot Thoroughly and Dry It
This step is important because if the previous soil contained any diseases or pests, you wouldn’t want to transfer them over to the new soil.
The most important thing to remember about this process is that your pot must have good drainage. This means it should have drainage holes at the bottom (either one large one or several small ones). This will ensure that the new potting soil has good aeration and drainage and can circulate air, moisture, and nutrients easily around the roots.
If your old pot has no drainage holes or is made from non-breathable material, such as plastic or glazed ceramic, I recommend getting a different pot. It can be the same size but with enough drainage holes at the bottom and made of breathable material, such as unglazed clay.
You can rinse the old or new pot thoroughly using a disinfectant solution containing 1 part bleach in 9 parts water. Rinse it again 1-2 times with fresh water before air-drying.
4. Add Fresh Soil and Moisten It
Place a few inches of fresh potting soil in the bottom of the pot and give it a spritz of water. Be careful not to drown the soil—just moisten it slightly. Ensure that the roots have enough space within the soil and that the base of the plant lies about an inch (2.5 cm) below the mouth of the pot.
5. Place Your Plant Carefully Into the Soil
Be sure to cover the roots with more soil from the bag. You can spritz this slightly with water and mix in a few organic ingredients to make the soil even more homey for your plant. Tamp the soil lightly to keep the roots stable in the pot and keep the plant upright.
4. Prevent Soil Compaction Over Time
Soil compaction can ultimately mean the death of your potted plants. If your soil looks like it has been pressed down and is dry, this could mean it can’t retain enough moisture, and your plant’s roots cannot breathe.
Roots need to breathe, so if you’ve got compacted potting soil, your plants will likely stop growing—or worse, they may even die. When soil is in this state, it cannot absorb water, even if you’ve been watering it frequently.
Being consistent with providing adequate moisture to your plants is essential and can help prevent overly soggy soil from weighing them down in the container. Soggy soil will increase in density over time and become compact.
If you aren’t around all the time and can’t water your plants on a schedule, your best bet is to get a self-watering planter. This is excellent for moisture-loving plants like ferns and ivies.
However, it’s not a suitable option for cacti and succulents. Luckily, these drought-tolerant plants grow in potting soil with adequate amounts of sand and perlite, which can resist compaction.
5. Avoid Overwatering Your Potted Plant
With the above said, you should never water your potted plant every day. Too much watering (especially on a daily basis) will effectively kill your roots by drowning them. If your topsoil is always very soggy, this can mean the soil’s aeration is very poor, and your roots are suffocating.
If you avoid overwatering your potted plant, you will likely find it much easier to maintain consistent and effective aeration channels within the soil. Remember: it’s always better to underwater than overwater.
Tailor Your Watering Routine Based on the Plant Species
To promote healthy aeration and drainage, you should be watering your plants more in the warmer months and less in the cooler months. This is because the roots are actively growing and spreading during the warm periods of the year, so this is when they’ll need that extra boost of moisture and energy.
Watering schedules will often depend on the plant you’re growing. Here’s a simple guide that often works if you have appropriate potting soil for your potted plant:
- Moisture-loving plants: Water when the top 1-2 inches (2.5-5 cm) are dry (every 5-7 days).
- Drought-tolerant plants: Water when half the pot or the top 2-3 inches (5-7.6 cm) are dry (every 10-14 days).
This gives them a good chance of absorbing all that moisture, retaining the appropriate nutrients, and keeping aeration channels free and clear so their roots can breathe.
6. Refresh Your Potting Soil Every Few Months
Even if you’re not in the habit of repotting your plant, that doesn’t mean you can’t refresh the soil occasionally. For the best aeration, your soil needs to be fresh and fluffy—and most potting mixes generally don’t last more than one year, so it’s good to bear this in mind if your plant has been sitting in old soil for a while.
Refreshing your potting soil doesn’t necessarily mean taking out the plant and replacing the old soil entirely. Instead, it means you can give your soil a new lease of life by adding some fresh soil to the old soil.
Do this layer by layer for best results, and be careful not to pack the soil too much since aeration depends on those little channels to expel carbon dioxide from the soil and give those roots the oxygen they need.
Why Is Soil Aeration So Important?
Having a good soil structure is one of the most important aspects of taking care of your potted plants. The soil essentially determines how well your plants will grow, how quickly, and how long they last overall. If you have a poor soil structure, your plants won’t grow well and may even die.
Soil aeration is essential for the soil to expel and absorb nutrients and gases from the air. Your plant’s roots need oxygen to “breathe,” and they expel carbon dioxide. If your soil isn’t adequately aerated and doesn’t have those all-important channels through which gas can escape, the carbon dioxide will clog up the soil particles—a process that will effectively suffocate your plants’ roots.
Additionally, the roots aren’t the only thing in your soil that needs oxygen. Microbes living in the soil structure also need oxygen to survive. And if they don’t survive, they can’t consume and excrete organic matter. It might seem strange to think that your soil effectively “breathes”, but this is precisely why aeration is so important for soil respiration processes.
There are various components that affect how well-aerated your soil is. These components include:
- Water retention capacity
- Air filtering ability
- Percentage of organic materials
How to Tell if Your Potting Soil Needs Aerating
If your soil needs aeration, you can generally tell by looking at the topsoil and feeling the consistency. Your soil should naturally be slightly fluffy and bouncy, so if the soil feels very hard, gritty, and dry, it likely doesn’t have much capacity for aeration.
A compacted soil structure isn’t the only sign your potting soil needs to be attended to. If your plant has stopped growing, has yellowing leaves, or there are signs of insect infestation, then lack of adequate aeration may well be the culprit.
Additionally, compacted soil tends to become hydrophobic after a while, which means that water cannot penetrate below the topsoil. If this happens, you’re probably better off replacing the soil altogether.
When Is the Best Time for Soil Aeration?
During the winter months, it may not be productive to aerate your soil. This is because growing processes cease somewhat during cooler weather, and if you live in an area that doesn’t get much sun during this time, your plant may go into hibernation—or at least stop growing.
This means that the best time for soil aeration is during the warmer months. This is generally considered to be between April and May, and it’s the perfect time to fix up your soil. With more warmth and sunlight and well-aerated soil, your potted plants will be in great shape.
Is Peat Moss a Good Soil Amendment to Aerate Soil?
In many cases, peat moss has been shown to provide the soil with a more balanced texture and, over time, encourage root growth. For this reason, you might think that peat moss is a good soil amendment if your soil structure is very poor.
However, you may not know that peat moss is not considered a sustainable soil amendment. Its harvesting processes are effectively destroying our carbon stores on the earth, not to mention that it takes many years to grow in the first place. In this way, it is not considered a renewable resource – so peat moss shouldn’t be used in excess by amateur gardeners.
You may find peat moss at your local nursery, but the likelihood is that it’s relatively expensive. Since the substance is becoming more and more difficult to harvest, and often at the expense of our natural resources, it is slowly becoming a taboo in the gardening world.
Best Ways To Avoid Soil Compaction
If your soil has become very heavy or compact, it’s likely that it hasn’t had a good aeration system for a while. Dealing with the issue before it becomes impossible to fix is usually the best way to ensure your soil lasts.
Here are a few of the best ways to avoid soil compaction in potted plants:
Don’t Water Your Plants Excessively or With Pressured Water
Using a strong garden hose on your delicate potted plants is not considered a good idea since the plants can’t withstand that much shear force. Instead, it’s usually recommended to use a drip irrigation system or a watering can that isn’t going to damage your plants’ roots.
Always Water Deeply, Not Superficially
Watering deeply but not superficially means not just dumping water over your topsoil and leaving it to soak in. Instead, you should water very slowly to ensure the water is seeping right down into the subsoil and the roots.
Use Organic Fertilizers or Compost to Improve Soil Structure
Organic fertilizers or compost will help maintain a balanced soil structure and ensure it doesn’t become compact over time. It will naturally create air pockets in the soil that will be essential for releasing gasses that can be harmful to your plants’ roots.
Final Thoughts
To aerate the soil in potted plants, you should consider using organic and non-organic soil amendments such as earthworm castings, compost, and perlite. Mixing up old soil with new, fresh soil is also an excellent way to ensure your soil lasts a long time.
Always make sure your soil isn’t becoming too compact and try to avoid overwatering the plant. Otherwise, you’ll suffocate the roots.
Soil aeration is one of the primary components of healthy potted plant life, so keeping an eye on its texture and structure can help your plants survive for as long as possible.
