When you are potting plants, you generally don’t use dirt from the ground as it introduces too many diseases to your plants. It’s better to buy bags of potting soil.
But he was no doubt on a fixed income and probably couldn’t afford potting soil, so he used garden dirt.
Soil in the ground aint bad around here. Who knows whats in those bags. And where it’s from.
One can bake the soil in the oven for a set period of time and temperature to sterilize the soil.
I did it one year when I was starting a garden early in the spring in IL, and wanted to do my own starts.
Worked just fine.
Prolific garden that year, due to an over fertilizing at the start.
I got lucky as a neophyte.
My huge plot received a full broadcast of fertilizer.
The downside was that I only gardened 1/4 of the space.
I had the best looking weeds in the other 3/4 of the space that money could buy.
We don’t know he didn’t use potting soil.