Here’s an oldie but goodie from gardenweb.
The OP ends with “I have seen advice that some highly organic soils are productive for up to 5 years. I disagree. Even if you were to substitute fir bark for pine bark in this recipe (and this recipe will far outlast any peat based soil) you should only expect a maximum of three years life before a repot is in order. Usually perennials, including trees (they’re perennials too, you know ;o)) should be repotted more frequently to insure vigor closer to genetic potential. If a soil is desired that will retain structure for long periods, we need to look to inorganic amendments. Some examples are crushed granite, pea stone, coarse sand (no smaller than BB size in containers, please), Haydite, lava rock, Turface or Schultz soil conditioner.”
A subsequent post reads "There is wide disagreement on this point, but I never reuse it, turning it into the garden or on the compost pile instead. Others reuse it.
If you use the search words “tapla reuse” on this forum’s search function, without the quotation marks, you’ll be able to read other’s comments about reusing container soils. Here is my opinion:
In my estimation, the only case to be made for reusing container soils is one of economics, and you’ll never find me argue against making that decision. If you can’t afford, you can’t afford it. That said and setting economics aside, you might decide to reuse soil for reasons other than economical. Perhaps the effort involved with acquiring (or making your own) soil is something you might not wish to go through or be bothered with.
In any case, it would be difficult to show that soils in a more advanced state of structural collapse can somehow be preferred to a soil that can be counted on to maintain its structure for the entire growth cycle. So, if the economic aspect is set aside, at some point you must decide that “my used soil is good enough” and that you’re willing to accept whatever the results of that decision are.
All soils are not created equal. The soils I grow in are usually pine bark based & collapse structurally at a much slower rate that peat based soils, yet I usually choose to turn them into the garden or give them over to a compost pile where they serve a better purpose than as a container soil after a year of service. Some plantings (like woody materials and some perennials) do pretty well the second year in the same bark-based soil, and with careful watering, I’m usually able to get them through a third year w/o root issues.".
