How to Make Potting Mix at Home for Herbs: Mitti, Cocopeat, Sand

Why does mint that grew wild by the nalka sulk and yellow in a pot of the same mitti? Because soil behaves differently in a pot. The fix is a light, crumbly potting mix, and you can make it at home from four things: sieved garden mitti, compost, cocopeat and coarse sand. This guide gives the basic recipe by volume, versions for aloe, mint and greens, and lemon or chillies, plus how to wash cocopeat, which sand to use, which tins and buckets make safe pots, and how to reuse old soil.

Garden soil vs potting mix: why plain mitti fails in a pot

In the ground, water drains down through metres of soil that worms, roots and insects keep full of tiny tunnels, so there’s always somewhere for it to go. In a pot, it hits the bottom and stops. The lowest few centimetres stay soaked like a wet sponge, a layer gardeners call the perched water table. Roots down there can’t breathe.

Heavy clay mitti makes this worse, because it packs a little tighter with every watering and then, in a 45 °C summer, dries into a brick that sheds the next mugful straight off the top and down the side of the pot. Roots rot below. Starve above. Hence the yellow, stunted herb on so many balconies.

A potting mix fixes this by adding things that hold air and water at the same time: compost for food and structure, cocopeat for moisture, sand or brick chips for drainage.

Potting mix is not plant food

No. Mix is the house. Fertiliser is food. Compost in your mix gives a gentle start, but a pot’s food runs low within a couple of months, so you’ll top-dress with compost later. Some bought bags include a starter fertiliser; that too runs out.

How to make potting mix at home: the basic recipe

Measure by volume. Any container can be your “part”: a bucket, a mug, a paint tin, as long as you use the same one for every ingredient.

1. Sieve the mitti. Take loamy garden soil (crumbly, not sticky clay) and push it through a sieve or a piece of wire mesh. Pick out stones, roots, plastic and grubs.
2. Wash the cocopeat (see the next section) and squeeze it until it’s damp, not dripping.
3. Combine: 2 parts sieved mitti, 1 part compost or well-rotted gobar khad or vermicompost, 1 part washed cocopeat and ½ part coarse river sand.
4. Mix on a sheet of plastic or in a tub until it’s one even colour, breaking up lumps with your hands (gloved).
5. Squeeze test: take a handful of slightly damp mix and squeeze. It should hold together, then crumble when you poke it. If it stays in a sticky ball, add more cocopeat and sand. If it won’t hold at all, add a little more mitti or compost.
6. Let it rest, lightly moist and covered, for a few days if the compost was warm.

Done. This mix suits most kitchen herbs and greens, from tulsi and dhania to palak, methi and curry leaf.

Best potting mix for herbs in pots: three variations

Plants differ.

For microgreens you don’t need any of this: plain washed cocopeat on its own works. And for our other care plants, the aloe guide on cutting a leaf and using the gel and the pudina guide cover what to do with the harvest.

Cocopeat, sand and compost: buying and preparing

Cocopeat: wash it first

Cocopeat is ground coconut husk, a by-product of the coir rope and mat trade. It holds water beautifully and doesn’t compact. But cheaper cocopeat often carries salt from the coastal areas where husks are soaked, and salt burns young roots, browning leaf tips.

1. Break off a chunk of the compressed block and put it in a bucket. It swells to several times its size, so start small.
2. Cover with plain water, let it soak for 30 minutes, then stir.
3. Squeeze it out by the handful and drain the water.
4. Refill and repeat 2 or 3 times, until the water you squeeze out runs light and clear rather than dark brown.

Blocks labelled “washed” or “low EC” need less work.

Which sand?

Coarse river sand with visible grains opens up the mix. Avoid sea sand (salty), very fine plaster or “silt” sand, which clogs the gaps, and construction sand mixed with cement dust or lime. If you’re unsure, wash it in a bucket until the water runs clear. Brick chips (roda) or small pieces of broken terracotta pots work too.

Compost

Use compost that’s dark, crumbly and smells like earth after rain, whether that’s well-rotted cow dung khad, vermicompost or your own bucket compost, and skip raw or fresh gobar and any compost that’s still hot or smells of ammonia, because both can burn tender roots. Smell it first.

Where to buy

Local plant nurseries in most towns in Pakistan and India sell sieved mitti, khad, cocopeat blocks and sand by the bag. Online shops deliver. Ask for fine, sieved mitti rather than “bharai” filling soil, which is often heavy clay.

Pots from tins and buckets, drainage, and reusing old soil

Ghee tins, paint buckets and old containers

• Ghee and oil tins: wash out every trace of fat with hot soapy water first, or it goes rancid and draws ants. Punch 4 to 6 holes of about 1 cm in the base. They rust in a year or two; they’re fine for plants but never go back to food use.
• Food-grade buckets: dahi, ghee and paint-free plastic buckets are good pots once holes are drilled.
• Paint buckets: only if the inside is clean with no flaking paint film. If you can’t get it clean, use it for flowers, not for herbs and greens you’ll eat.
• Black plastic: gets very hot in summer sun. Paint the outside white or stand it in the shade of another pot.

Every pot needs holes. No exceptions. Empty saucers within an hour of watering, because still water breeds mosquitoes.

Myth: a layer of pebbles at the bottom improves drainage

It sounds sensible, but water doesn’t move easily from fine soil into coarse gravel, so it waits in the soil above the pebbles and the soggy layer simply sits higher, closer to the roots you were trying to protect. Fill the whole pot with good mix instead, and put a piece of broken terracotta or a small mesh over the hole to keep soil in.

Reusing old soil (and does potting mix go bad?)

Old mix gets tired, because the compost in it has been eaten up by a season of roots, the structure has slumped and packed down, and it may be carrying root pests or fungus from the last plant, though it never spoils the way food does and a sour, rotten-egg smell only means it sat waterlogged and needs airing. Refresh it:

1. Tip it out, pull out old roots, and sieve it.
2. Moisten it lightly, seal it in a black polythene bag and leave it flat in full summer sun for 3 to 4 weeks. The heat kills many pests and weed seeds.
3. Mix 2 parts old soil with 1 part fresh compost and a little cocopeat, and it’s ready.

Don’t reuse soil from a plant that died of wilt or root rot for the same kind of plant.

Did you know? Most bagged “potting soil” contains very little actual soil. It’s mostly peat, cocopeat, bark and compost. For more ways to turn kitchen waste into garden food, visit our Zero-Waste Kitchen section.

Potting mix questions people ask