DIRTY STORAGE 101

So, you have a growing collection of plants &a growing collection of mixes, amendments & propagation materials... but what do you do with it all? Well, we asked a handful of our filthy friends to show us the creative ways they store their mixes and we figured we'd give you some pointers alongside it.

You don't have to go full fancy with storing mixes, In fact, we HEAVILY encourage you to reuse and recycle as much as possible! Old plastic shoe boxes, old plastic cereal boxes, or even just throwing all your blend bags into a great big tote!

@the.housegardener / @mypodofplants / @cosmicplantstories

Some things to be mindful of however, are:

Making sure your soil isn't soaked when you seal it up and store it. This can lead to the organic matter being broken down anaerobically, which is a very smelly, gross thing to find 6 months later when you reopen the bag. A lightly moistened or better yet, dry mix is the best to store! It will not effect the mix at all and when you want to use it, just give it a few sprays of water and it'll plump right back up!

If your bag is opened, be sure to seal it back up with bag ties, string, clips, Tom Hanks' back hair (also useful for rafts).

If you see some little white patches of fungi forming, don't panic! Its most likely the mycelium that our soil is inoculated with to prevent bad fungi from grasping the mixes and to have symbiotic relationships with your plant roots! Want to know more about Fungi and it's useful properties? Check out our blog post!

No matter how you choose to store your bags of dirt, make sure it's cool, dry and preferably dark (unless you're wanting to keep the live sphagnum growing, in which case, a bright spot will see plenty of green shoots and extra sphag).

And most of all, get creative, we cannot stress there is very few 'wrong' ways to store your soil, and a million fantastic recycled and reused ways that are both aesthetically pleasing and SUPER functional! Also, a HUGE thank you to the beauties who shared some of their soil storage solutions with us.