Greetings fellow gardeners! My name is Ryan and I am the sales rep. for Dyna-Gro. I came across this discussion board and it looks like there is an excellent exchange of information taking place which should be very beneficial for the growing community. I was a bit concerned because it looks like some people are having a difficult time finding foliage-pro at their local gardening stores. I wanted to encourage everyone to ask the store owners to begin carrying Dyna-Gro products because without your input they will never know what they are missing! You should also stop by www.dyna-gro.com and take a look at all of the excellent gardening information we have available. I would also like to make everyone aware that we will be offering a 10% discount to anyone that mentions this forum when placing an oder with us directly at 1-800-DYNAGRO. We pride ourselves on happy customers and happy plants and I see this as a way of thanking everyone for benefiting the growing community by spreading accurate information and informing people about the amazing results that can be achieved when plants receive the complete nutrition provided by Dyna-Gro. I wish everyone continued success with all of your gardening endeavors. Please feel free to contact me at 1-800-DYNAGRO with any questions you may have. Here is a link that might be useful: www.dyna-gro.com

FWIW, When we built here ended up with about a 1500 foot gravel drive. The ground here is sand. Around here, there's something called "crusher run," which varies from 2" down to pea size. I spread that and then took a 4WD JD farm tractor and just went over and over using the tires as a roller. The big stuff went down and the smaller came up. Evened it up with a dozer blade on a GT. Couple of years later a added about two inches of regular sized gravel. Worked that in as previously described. It's held up fairly well, and yes, you do periodically have to add more gravel. In ten years have added gravel once. I plow snow with the GT and blade. The gravel has packed down and is pretty level and solid. I'd consider having the driveway graded, add more and larger gravel if what you have is small. To me, gravel driveways and snow throwers go together well. Mowing 3/4 of an acre and hauling and landscaping the balance would work well with a GT or even a hefty LT with cart. Yes, totally agree that compact 4WD would be the way to go, if price wasn't a consideration. With your budget you're looking at a used machine which could be a steal or you could be robbed. :-) Good luck, Ev

Both companies are a little right and surprisingly wrong. Could be inferior copper or PH problems which can result in pinhole leaks in copper pipes. If neither has mentioned checking the PH of your well water then they are both of questionable competence. Why do you think your sodium # is high? High TDS is not necessarily sodium but is total dissolved solids. Is 26.5 hardness gpg or ppm? Where you start is... get a comprehensive water test from an independent lab. An independent lab has no agenda and won't be trying to sell you water treatment equipment. This is a MUST DO because without it everything is a guess. A quickie water test from a water softener company won't be as accurate (and possibly not as competent) as from a certified independent lab. Hit the Yellow Pages and call at least three local INDEPENDENT water treatment pros. You've already called the big dogs (Kinetico or Culligan) for comparison. DON'T TELL THEM YOU HAD YOUR WATER TESTED. Give each an opportunity to offer suggestions and provide you with a quote to meet your water treatment needs. IGNORE ANY THAT DON'T TEST YOUR WATER THEMSELVES as they can't speak intelligently to water treatment without knowing what needs to be treated. Ask lots of questions. Softening the entire house or just the water heater? Warranty, parts & labor or just parts, how long and on exactly what? Install, permits required, licensed plumber? Routine maintenance and costs? Do they stock parts? Response time for emergency (water leak) calls? If they don't explain things to your satisfaction that is a good indicator of how you'll be treated after the sale. After they've gone use your water test to compare with theirs. Are all your treatment needs being addressed? Ask your neighbors if they have any water treatment experience. They might tell you who's good or who to avoid. Come back here and post the specific recommendations and hardware components with the costs and we'll give you our opinions.

@Nil13 made reference to the Whitcomb 311 mix, which is an earlier historical attempt to create a more coarse potting soil for container plants. I think it is extremely helpful to read a document written by Carl Whitcomb that explains how he came on this formula by accident. Essentially what happened is he accidentally left nine test pots under a bench and everyone forgot they were there. They had successfully nearly killed all of their test plants by watering in a normal potting soil mix and the unwatered plants started to do very well. What I have started to realize is that any plant can do well in many different soil mixes, if you are able to carefully control the watering. This explains why so many people on this forum claim gritty mix is not as good for their succulents as their (fill in some random horrible soil with lots of small particles) mix. Inevitably those people are growing their plants indoors. They have enormous experience with their plant type and they know exactly when to water the plant. So that is the case of a very skilled gardener compensating for a very bad soil. What gritty mix does for me is let me grow succulents outside in very abusive weather conditions, without the plant dying. A plant can get a week of rain and it will still drain well. During Summer, gritty mix will tolerate a bit of overwatering, although you still really need to pay attention to not overwatering. Whether you make your 511 mix with perlite/peat, or with two parts Turface, or with lava and pumice, is probably in the big picture not going to be the deciding factor in whether your plants grow well or not. Success can be add with any of those mixes because the size of the particles allows the roots to breathe and prevents capillary action of water from bring the perched water table to the top of the pot and drowning the roots. Fine-tuning how you make 511 is a question of matching the plant type to the moisture retention of the soil and to the watering habit and climate exposure. Any 511 variant is going to do better than almost any commercial potting soil because of the larger particles used in the majority of the mix.