Dear angierainbow83, Please think about the info from Jodi and Al. I add my own story below. Since thinking through my own experiences will help me too, I hope you don't mind. I believe for me, I need to separate the garden beds from my containers; just as a two bedrooms can be used differently while still being a room, a separate approach to garden beds (to use Al's words, more "organic") vs. containers (more "inorganic") is still gardening. Good luck on your journey! Over the past few years I seem to be suffering from a case of harvest envy. Due to space and location, I do not have the ability to grow vegetables in the ground due to shade, but I do have a very sunny spot where containers work fine. I have "successfully" grown various vegetables (and am lazily including tomatoes in this category). I say "successfully" since I have never been able to come close to the level of harvest that neighbors get when the essentially identical plants with similar methods EXCEPT the plants are grown in the ground. In fact, I can say this with with confidence since I have provided them with their plants. I have experimented with various combinations of top soil, organic potting soil, compost and small gravel. (I won't go into nutrient supplements I have tried.) I have used about 15gal lightly-colored plastic pots raised off the ground. Given my growing climate, young plants move into these pots in early May and typically are taken down sometime after Columbus Day. The plants are still producing, but the colder temps negative influences many of the types I grow. In the case of eggplant, tomatoes, cucumbers, and peppers, for example, my plants are 5-6ft tall and produce a crop not quite sufficient for a small family throughout much of the season. When I take the pots down at the end of the season, I typically find the exterior soil to be damp/dry while the center below the stem and near the main roots to be very wet. Further, there are many small roots near the soil surface, possible due to the thin mulch layer I applied (thinking I needed more moisture retention). There are some larger roots that spread in the pots, but not a tremendous amount. The best fruiting, distribution and size of roots was in the year where I only used organic potting soil without a mulch cover. Although I can't say with 100% certainty that by making the soil more organic I caused this problem since from year to year I changed conditions (and growing conditions change too), the evidence is pretty well stacked against me.

I bought it, and loved it. It did't really look to be exactly what I wanted, but I found another kind of cheep dirt sold at my local safeway and mixed them 50/50. It works just great. I would second the suggestion, find another kind of potting soil that you like and mix it together to the consistancy you want.

Do it now. There is a full moon. I just replanted a bunch of seedlings last nite into larger containers and left them to get the full benefit of the full moon. If you have the room, start a compost pile. When I go to Menards I usually stop by the 25%off torn bags section and buy one or two bags of manure or potting soil. I mix this in with the finished compost bin or in the fall in the bin that is cooking. Mix it well and after adding a small amount of clean sand, I use it for containers. You can use a wheelbarrow or a tarp on the ground and mix what you have with regular dirt from an area of the yard and make a mix that should be ok. If you are container gardening you will be adding some nutrients later anyway.

Mary made by Scott's, and the review (on their website no less) is low in stars. But, so is the review total for their Black Magic and I used that for mature container plants one year with no complaints, it stayed light, didn't compact, plants were happy. Here is a link that might be useful: Earth Gro - Scotts