Make your own potting soil by using your kitchen waste and cocopeat

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 Home made Potting Soil 

tomato's growing in home made potting soil
at the Green Living Lab

As an alternative for buying new potting soil you could easily make your own.

By composting your kitchen scraps in a wormbin
you can make super fertile compost for your plants.
When you add this compost to old potting soil,
or coco-peat you can make a rich soil for your plants to live in.

Coco peat (coir pith, coir fibre pith, coir dust, or simply coir)

Coco peat is made from coconut husks. These are the byproduct of industries that use coconuts. Coco peat is a rest material.

Coco peat has the abbility to hold a large quantity of water, just like a sponge. One kilogram of coco peat can grow to a volume of 15 litres moist coco peat. In between the fibers of the cocopeat is about 1000 times more air than fibre. So adding coco peat to the soil helps to hold water as well as air.

Using coco peat as an additive for soil helps diminish the use of peat (turf). In many soils bought in stores these days peat from peat mining is used. To obtain the regular peat vast regions are destroyed, causing environmental damage and brings huge amounts of CO2 in our atmosphere.

Coco peat is poor in nutriënts. Adding the wormcompost to the moistened coco fibers turns it into a rich environment for your plants to grow in.

The coco peat is sold in different ways. It is shipped from the lands where the coconut grows in the form of dried and compressed bales, briquettes, discs or slabs.

Before using the coco peat to make your home-made-soil you need to add water to the dry coco fibers.

If you are looking for a source of dried cocopeat in Amsterdam? At our location in Amsterdam Noord you can pick up the blocks of cocopeat. For more info please send an email to the address on the contact page!

Let it rain!

If you have some time to wait you could place the coco peat in a bucket and let the rainwater moisten the fiber naturally. This way it is less work for you & you don't need to use drinking water.
Make sure your bucket is big enough! The coco peat will grow a lot!

Making your own worm compost (vermicompost)

Worm hotel by Le Compostier

By composting your kitchen waste and garden clippings you can make a wonderful compost in a wormbin, or worm hotel. 

There are several types of wormbins on the market these days. 

If you are able to build your own, you can make the wormbin in a shape that fits your garden and in a volume that is able to transform all your waste year-round. 

There are many benefits to using worm compost. Worm compost is full of ready-to-use nutriënts for your plants and rich in soil-life (the micro-organisms that bring life to the soil).

Add waste on top, harvest wormcompost on the bottom

Screen the vermicompost & remove compost worms
before using it in your
DIY potting soil mix.

block of pressed coco fibe

Potting Soil DIY

Step one:

Moisten the Coco Peat.

Allow the coco peat to absorb all the water it can hold.

Step two:
Break up remaining lumps and mix in the worm compost you have harvested from your wormbin (worm hotel).


Step three:
Mix in some sharp sand for drainage of excess water.


Step four:
To add minerals to your mix you can
add some rock dust and mix this in.


Step five:
Use your self made soil and enjoy
the fruits of your plants

Add (rain) water to the coco peat

break up the coco peat with a gardening rake 

Worm Compost (remove worms if used indoors!)

Add approx 25% of wormcompost

Add upto 25% of sand to the mix

optional; mix in a handful of Rock Dust for extra minerals

Your DIY potting soil is ready for use.