A bag of Multi-Purpose compost is the building block of a garden. Have you ever wondered how much you can really get out of a bag of compost? Our horticultural technician, Meg, set out to discover how much a bag can nurture…
I headed down to our trial site and gathered up some plants in need of potting up to test my 40 litre bag of SylvaGrow Multi-Purpose.
As compost can vary in weight, it is measured in volume (litres) to tell you how much material is in a bag. To ensure consistency, the industry uses the BS EN 12580:2022 procedure to define the amount of material. This ensures that how it looks in a bag matches actual, settled volume. 40 litre and 50 litre are both common volumes for Multi-Purpose composts. Theoretically, you should be able to fill around 40 1 litre pots with 40 litres of compost, although this does not account for the plant in the pot too!
To begin with I gathered a total of 24 different plants in 9cm pots. Some were in desperate need of potting on, so this was a great opportunity to show how healthy plants look after just a few weeks of being potted on into fresh compost.
At this stage I was far less concerned with running out of compost, and far more worried I’d run out of pots and plants! I proceeded to gather another group of plants to pot on. This batch consisted of 24 Digitalis and 13 Gaura, all in 9cm pots.
Once I’d potted on the Digitalis I still had a bit of compost spare, so I repotted an additional two Penstemon.
Everything benefited massively from some fresh compost and more room for their roots. To conclude, I managed to pot a grand total of 61 9cm plants into 1 litre pots, as well as 2 plants from 2 litre pots into 3 litre pots. Which means personally I potted on a total of 63 plants with my 40 litre bag of SylvaGrow Multi-Purpose. Remember, everyone pots up differently, so these results may vary person to person.
A single bag of 40 litre SylvaGrow Multi-Purpose can start a whole garden which I hope you agree is excellent value.