Hi, Personally I wouldn't do it. IMO, second year 511 is super for tomatoes all by itself. Mine grew better the 2nd year in the partially composted mix. I didn't add anything except 1/2 the amount of lime, but probably could have skipped it. You might freshen up last years mix with additional pine bark and a little perlite. Not sure why you want to add MG mix to it. What are your concerns. I'm using MG water soluble fertilizer also.

As someone who grows almost exclusively in containers, let me offer this advice. Rhodies and azaleas do not require a lot of fertilizer. I fertilize mine only once a season with a light dosing of a CRF (osmocote) like I do all my long term woody container plantings. CRF's don't "flush out" - they disperse necessary nutrients over an extended period as the coatings breakdown with heat and moisture :-)) And I supplement that with a dilute application of Miracle Gro for acid lovers periodically during the growing season, primarily to maintain proper container acidity but there are other products (like Green Light's Soil Acidifier) you could use. Holly Tone or other granular or dry forms of organics are not going to be nearly as effective or efficient at delivering nutrients in a container situation as a non-organic (or water soluble) fertilizer would be simply because the microbial mechanism to convert these organics into a usable form is not present. btw, I use a potting medium that is more closely aligned with the gritty mix rather than the 5-1-1 and this method has worked beautifully for me for years.

Any way to delete this post? I was able to read all the re-posts of Al's (Tapla) Container soils and water retention originals and comments and questions (lots of free time! he he) and I believe I have found the answers in there. If there is a way to delete this post. please let me know. Thanks, Robert

I hear a lot of stories about how quickly the 5-1-1 mix dries out. I live in Phoenix. We have been over 100 degrees for almost the last month. It is dry and sunny basically all day every day. And I'm using unglazed terra cotta pots, which supposedly dry out super fast. I was watering every 1-3 days due to my certainty that the above environmental circumstances justified it and my faulty assumption that it was difficult to overwater the 5-1-1 mix. Well, I lost 1/2 of my lemon leaves due to overwatering before I figured out the problem. I have found that I need to water my young citrus trees about 1x per week. My trees get shade from my porch starting around noon (it's 100+ degrees by then), the pots are big, and I top with mulch (to help keep root temps down). I'm fairly certain the trees have halted growth because citrus don't really grow in temps above 100, but most of the water is used for cooling, so my water needs may be a little less than active plants, but probably not by much. If you don't provide shade, use smaller, porous pots, and don't mulch, water frequency will surely increase. All that to say, it's possible to get quite a bit of time out of the 5-1-1 mix and reading your mix is super important. A lot of people like to use a dowel but I actually prefer to just dig around with my fingers because I'm not good at using the dowel. Perhaps it's my mix which doesn't contain many fine particles, but I find the dowel comes out clean sooner than my trees need more water. I read somewhere that plants can extract water from the soil that our fingers can't detect. In other words, what feels dry may not actually be dry.