Possibly dim container gardening question

[MassiveOvaryaction]

Hello. I'm a very novice gardener anyway but have had to adapt to growing stuff in pots/containers rather than in beds. I planted a couple up last year and the compost was to the top. It's sunk down quite a long way on a few (have attached a couple of example photos).

If I want to have the compost to the top again, can I just add new on top of old? Or do I have to empty the pot and refill with new?

Any advice/tips gratefully received, thanks.

the problem with topping up is that you will bury the existing plants, and for shrubby plants that can mean the stem rots. Perennials or bulbs will be fine.

For shrubby plants, remove the whole root mass from the pot, add soil underneath, then put the root mass back in and fill the soil around it. The mass of soil will most likely come out all together due to the roots, so it isn't hard to do.

I think you could either top up with compost or replace it , both would be good, depends on how much you want to do. If you keep old compost plants will probably need feeding more . Good luck!

If you have planted perennials, I would scrape as much compost away around the roots as you can then top dress with a good layer of fresh compost. The nutrients in tt soil get deleted so without adding more your plants will fail to thrive.

If there are still plants growing from last year, tip the whole pot gently out and add new soil at the bottom then put the tipped out plants in their soil back on top. You can also scrape away and replace the top soil as PP suggested, to refresh the topsoil, but I'd boost the level back up to the top again first. If the plants are too far down in the container they don't get as much light and it's harder to manage the watering.

Thanks all, appreciate the advice. The smaller tubs will be easier to tip out and then refresh but I've some bigger ones that I'm not able to lift. Might go for the scraping down/top dressing for those ones.

Have a read on Vertical Veg. He did a whole comparison of topping up v tipping out. Only for annual veg though I think.
https://verticalveg.com/blog/91244-how-to-re-use-old-compost-ten-useful-ingredients
Unfortunately he seems to have paywalled a lot of the detail on his trials since I last looked a few years ago. But do sign up to his newsletter.

Are they raspberries in the second pot? They’ll be fine with additional compost on top.