Sterilizing a house plant’s potting soil is a fundamental thing to understand. Sterilize a house plant’s potting soil with help from the owner of a nursery in this free video clip.

Expert: Oscar Carmona
Bio: Oscar Carmona owns Healing Grounds Nursery, located in Santa Barbara, California, where he has been involved in sustainable food production for the past 30 years.
Filmmaker: Alfredo Rodriguez

Series Description: An indoor garden presents its own set of problems over an outdoor counterpart but in the end can be just as rewarding. Get indoor gardening tips with help from the owner of a nursery in this free video series.
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Indoor Gardening Tips : How Do I Sterilize a House Plant's Potting Soil?

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19 Comments

  • albert finney

    Don't know if this vid tells how to sterilize or not. My mom used to use an oven. It's hot here now so I'm going to do mine in a crockpot outside and heat till center reaches 200 degrees then cool.

    Would make little sense to sterilize potting soil stated to be sterile, but far less sense is to check by 'looking to see if things are moving around in it.' No idea where the poster got that stupid idea, so I'll assume it was just a facetious comment meant to be funny, one which missed the mark.

  • Mr McGregor

    Stop sterilising soil. You are wrecking the natural balance of microbes that are ESSENTIAL to plant health. Worms and compost.. Nature knows best! Your plants look stressed dude.

  • prettymochame just T

    Ok I'm over it, "I''m flying by the seed of my plants now"..lol.. I'm about to start my first grow after months of videos and studying, I finally decide to start with soil instead of hydroponics and now this mess. I went to Lowes, Home Depot and another store looking for Coco coir but they didn't have bricks so I could make my own with perlite and manure, now I'm freaked out about the potting mix and the Black Cow manure. I got all organic everything after all my research but I come home and I'm inundated with white flies and gnat videos. It seems from my research that these pests are inevitable at some point but I wanted a chance with my first grow and no bugs in my home. It's in God's hands now, I'm microwaving this soil and leaving the hypothesis that I may or may not kill the soil to God. I hope I'm not judged on killing micro and macro organism, its been a journey so don't come for me PETA or SETA…smh

  • Vlad The Impaler Țepeș III

    Actually, it seems that these soil companies are no longer sterilizing their
    product. They are full of fungus gnat eggs. And if you look at Miracle Gro potting mix bags, they no longer say "indoor". People have been complaining about MG potting mix having fungus gnats for many years now so sometime in the last year or two they removed "indoor" from the bag. I sterilize any brand of potting mix if using indoors even if the bag says "indoor", I take NO CHANCES!

    I made a rocket stove with bricks and I heat my soil up in a pan. I moisten it up with water then heat it till it's dry and hot. I don't use a thermometer but they say it needs to be heated to 180 degrees. When I do this, I am constantly stirring it so as to not burn the soil. I then store it in 5 gallon buckets with a lid. But I put it
    in a metal pan to cool before putting it in the bucket as I don't want to melt the bucket or leach chemicals from the plastic while the soil is hot/warm.

    Since I sterilize, I don't bother to buy Miracle Gro or other expensive brands, I just buy whatever cheapest but looks good. Sta Green from lowes or Expert Gardener from Walmart are good. I'm sure any fertilizer added to these mixes is no longer effective when I sterilize this way so I just fertilize it myself.

  • Charlie Chavez

    Oscar boy I don't know what planet you live on but soil is not sterilized far from it . I bought soil from my home depot stuck it under my microscope and found root aphids, fungus gnats and other critters. so time to step into reality.