Believe me, Nancy, it's brutal to us, too... but we know we have to endure it at times, and so we have gear ready! Warm coats and boots, hats and mittens, snow shovels and bags of salt, and basements filled with potted plants awaiting nicer weather! :-) My poor banana tree has like two leaves left... hurry spring! After a winter of rest, I finally gave my baskets of Oxalis a drink... I've got 4 baskets hanging in the basement... I hope they did ok over the past few months. What a day! Up early with a splitting headache... got my work done early... and went back to bed! Just woke up for the second time today... fill me up with coffee, please! :-)

The jiffy seed starting mix works just fine. Can you do better? Of course, but you do not necessarily need to. Just understand that peat and vermiculite are awesome at water retention and horrible at aeration. They are used because they are cheap. For seed starting you want a seed bed that stays moist (peat and vermiculite are superb for this), but once the seed germinates you want good aeration in the root zone (and peat/vermiculite suck at this). No need to get all complicated, the Jiffy mix works well enough. If you wish to do better you can, but you are no longer talking about store purchased ready mixes. This means you have to hunt around for stuff and potentially pay more $$$. The store mixes are all peat/vermiculite based as are the potting mixes. If you wish to do better and don't mind a little hunting around for components wander on over to the container gardening forum otherwise just go with the Jiffy mix and accept the good, but not superb results you get.

I think JaG hit on something that's always been fairly significant part of my offerings, and that is optimization. I've never said you couldn't grow in this or that. I may point out the probable shortcomings of a particular soil, but I never say you can't grow in it. I often say you can grow in a bucket of marbles, if you want to stand over it and water every 5 minutes. The same is true of a heavier soil - if you want to water in sips with distilled water & can devise a plan for ensuring soluble salts levels don't get too high. The point is, I've always been about two things - optimizing and simplifying. If I am a help, it's usually to those who wish to optimize growth or improve performance of their plantings. I'm little help to those content with the way things are. To many, me included, only a little improvement is a lot - kind of like using premium fuel in your car so you can squeeze out just that little bit of extra acceleration or top end speed - only in this case, the 'little extra' ends up being cheaper when you make your own. I figured what I had learned about soils could be helpful to others. I registered with GW in '02, and in '05 I posted the first soil thread. I'd mentioned the importance of aeration time after time, and how bark-based soils could be so much easier to grow in and more plant-friendly, and received a LOT of criticism and ridicule for trying to upset the apple cart. Eventually, a few started to see that what I was saying made sense & tried it. Now, there are at least six people growing in bark-based highly aerated soils - and I think at least 2 in the gritty mix. ;o) Some people have made very large advances in the amount of satisfaction they get from their growing experience as a result of changing to a more forgiving soil. Others have incorporated the 'aeration message' into their way of thinking about soils and have been pleased to have done so. The simplicity part comes into play because it's difficult to over-water a free-draining, well-aerated soil - you really have to work at it. That the soils I use have only 3 basic ingredients each, is also a form of simplicity. No .... not as simple as opening a bag, but those happy with simply opening a bag are not the ones I'm trying to reach anyway. The satisfaction isn't necessarily commensurate with the size of our forward strides. More often, it's in the perception of our progress. The people I care the most about are those who are happy to be moving forward and who are willing to do just a little extra to ensure that their progress is steady (no matter if it comes in leaps and bounds or that it comes in baby steps) - they're all kindred to me. ;o) Al

No we are talking about what the plant is growing in regardless of what you call it. And since when is water extraction not considered a accurate form of nutrient testing? Can you document that claim? If that were the case then there would be no point in any one ever having a professional soil test done, no way to determine the nutrient levels of any solid materials including foods. Anyone with any experience with using MG in containers knows that the 3 month claim on the label isn't accurate and if they don't know it up front they quickly learn it. So if you think using MG potting mix adds an element of "convenience" to container gardening then you are mislead. Nutrient supplements, even those in MG, leach out of containers with any top watering and/or rain and need to be replaced regularly. That's one of the primary benefits of bottom watering and self watering containers - leass leaching. This is pretty commonly knowledge here, on Container Gardening, and on most any other gardening resource as well and documented testing is readily available. The most common recommendation when working with containers is to supplement them weekly in a diluted form. You might want to do some more reading on exactly what 5-1-1 mix is and what it isn't. I suggest the link below. Dave Here is a link that might be useful: 5-1-1 Mix in detail and FAQs