It does look alot like potting soil. This is actually soil from my property. We have about 10 acres of woods and the soil is super rich and very dark for the most part on the ridge I live on. I wanted to use this soil 1: due to is richness and 2: I know it is virgin soil. I mixed it up with some lichen and a few small rocks. I plan on building a pretty large terrarium from scratch in the next few months and plan on using this one for something else.