How I get PREMIUM soil for free!

Every year, twice a year, my local church decorates the sanctuary with poinsettias.  For Christmas and for Easter the church is full of these beautiful plants.  However, when the seasons end, they are left with little choice but to discard all these plants.  This is where I saw a great opportunity to recycle all those pots, soil, and even the dying plants.


The first step was to separate the soil from the roots.  As you can see, the flowers were already starting to get root bound so I was able to recover the soil just in time.

Next, I break off the flower about 2 inches up from the root ball since that flower will be going into the compost bin.

With the right tools, even separating the soil from the roots is easy.


After all the work, I was left with 25 pots, a whole tub full of flowers for the compost bin, and most importantly about 10 lbs of premium grade potting soil!


In about 6 to 8 weeks, we'll revisit the compost bin to see what we have.