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.

Mat, It also depends on your climate. You may have to ask other members in the USA. Here in Australia i live in the tropics and i use quincken which is a volcanic rock about 10mm in diameter for extra drainage as we probably have more issues with fungal diseases. Down south they may use orchid potting mix or pine bark. You can have a fair idea what area a brom comes just from it's potting mix. Dooley

It's a Neoregelia, can't say exactly which cultivar as there are so many similar-looking ones. It's odd, because Neos don't have a tall spike flower, it's more like a tight pincushion deep in the cup, so they don't "fall off", but looking at your last picture, it sure looks like someone removed it, wonder why? Either that or it's starting to rot out in the center-- I hope not, but the overall appearance and the slight pinkish tinge on the center leaves looks more like a Neo about ready to bloom than one that's already bloomed. Hmmm... I don't like the look of those brownish inner leaves. The soil looks ghastly. Bromeliads do not like hard-packed earth at all, they want something light, porous and well-drained. A good peat/perlite houseplant mix is fine. I'd wash all that hard muck off it with a hose, and put it in some new mix (same size pot) and add a small amount (about 1/4 the label recommendation for houseplants) of slow-release fertilizer. If it has already bloomed, though, it's not going to grow any more or bloom again. Instead, you will have to wait for the pups to mature (I think I see one forming at the base of the plant in your second picture, unless that's just the remains of a leaf-base), at which point you can remove it and pot it up. Keep doing this and the mother plant should give you several new bromeliads before calling it quits. If it is rotting in the center, though, there's not much you can do except toss it. You'll know soon enough. If a handful of inner leaves suddenly comes off in your hand and it smells really disgusting, all you can do is give it a decent burial. Contrary to popular opinion, keeping water in the center cup does not cause a bromeliad to rot. They like water in the cup, but if there has been some damage to the plant, or some toxic chemical has fallen in there, it opens the way for disease to set in. Your pictures make it 100 times easier to answer your questions, but I wish I could poke my finger into the cup, then I could tell you exactly what's going on there.

The blueberry parts sound pretty good. If you have some soil that is not too heavy, it should be OK to mix in. I don't have any experience with any of the blueberries you listed, but I have had success with Berkeley, Duke, Bluecrop, Blueray, and Draper.