Susan, I was afraid maybe Horn's was your source, but Gene has listed some other local retailers who carry it, so hopefully y'all can still find it at a reasonable price even after the loss of Horn's. Patty, I am sorry you went through that. Legionaire's Disease. Yikes! I think your hunch that it might have come from the potting soil is a good one. You're a true survivor in more ways than one. Thankfully, our bodies can recover from such things with the help of medical science. Carol, I'm lucky, too, to have an endless source of leaves in the fall. If I am diligent and rake and collect them, that is....lol Some years I do a better job of collecting them from the woodland than others, but I do take care not to repeatedly take them all from the woodland and not to take them from the same area every year since they are important to the health of the woodland soil too. I do rake up and use all the ones that fall in the actual yard, and since the woodland creeps closer to my garden every year, some of the taller trees now drop their leaves into the garden, but I still have to rake them and chop them up. If I could get Pro-Mix without driving 100 or 120 miles to find it, I'd use it. This year I bought MG Moisture Control in February, March and April to add to all my containers because I feared a summer drought, and I am glad I did. As I fill up more containers for the greenhouse for this winter, I think I'm just going to make a version of Al's 5-1-1 mix. Gene, I agree that with any form of soil-less mix or other soil amendments, you get what you pay for and I absolutely will not cut corners in this area. I'd rather cut corners some other way. In gardening, I think the quality of the soil is the overall determining factor in a person's success. Everything starts with the soil. My dad used to say you shouldn't plant a $10 tree in a $5 hole, and that sums up how I feel about using cheap soil-less mixes too. Bon, Bio-solids have been sold as fertilizer or as a soil amendment since at least the 1960s as far as I know, and I've always gone out of my way to avoid the stuff to the extent that we can. One of my favorite garden supply sources in Fort Worth always carried Sul-po-Mag and I always cringed when I walked by that product, knowing where it came from. Some commercial vermicomposting facilities use bio-solids and others feed their worms pig manure (and probably other manures as well) so I won't purchase bagged worm castings unless I am sure of how a given company produces theirs. I just try to feed the earthworms in the ground here really well so they'll strew their castings everywhere as they tunnel through the soil. Our earthworm population has increased a huge amount since we moved here and began improving the soil, and I am so glad it has. My preference is always going to be for amendments from something right here on our property as much as possible because at least then I know the source and I know what is in it. We had rabbits in our early years here. Not because we purchased rabbits, but because after we moved "to the country", everyone we knew in the city who had a cat, dog or rabbit they didn't want any more and thought we should take it off their hands, and we did, because we didn't think any animal should live where it wasn't wanted. I'll qualify that by saying one family had a dog they truly loved, but had a small yard and thought she'd be happier here with us. We agreed and they sent her here to live with us, which I thought was a true act of love on their part. It was not that they didn't want her, but rather they loved her enough to put her happiness ahead of their own. She lived to be 18 years old and was a happy country dog who took great delight in roaming our pasture and woodlands. As long as she lived, she kept the squirrels away from the garden and yard. I found rabbits difficult to keep alive in the extreme heat that often plagues us here. Also, our rabbits really watched the wild rabbits roam free and resented being keep in a coop. We built them a fenced run that they loved because it was a more natural setting for them, but they occasionally escaped from it. After they eventually died, we did not get more rabbits. I've spent two consecutive very long very hot summers with cats and dogs cooped up indoors trying to stay cool and I'm just not ever going to bring chickens or rabbits inside in extreme heat. There's a limit to how many animals I can bring indoors before the house becomes more of a barn than a house! It is nice to be able to send them outdoors on a day like today and know they'll be happy outside all day and won't be roasting in the heat. I hope the heat doesn't return and that our animals can get used to being outside all day again. Dawn

Attempting to interrelate this thread with another....and will make a few referenced correlations of online resources: The USDA Handbook 674 vol.5:The Biological Component:Nursery Pests and Mycorrhiza(Thomas Landis) as well as subsequent publications (FNN) which compositely suggests to me of a series of precautions pertaining to the introduction of specific fungal isotypes/specific plants and sustained viablility and health at adequate population densities which requires modifications of one's cultural approach /pesticidal use, as well as assessing soil charasteristics at the outplanting site...Also, Horst Marschner:Mineral Nutrition of Higher Plants, 2nd Edition where half of the book addresses rhizopheric relationships..."Toxicological Benchmarks for Contaminants of Potential Concern for Effects of Litter Invertibrates and Heterotrophic Processes: (Revision 1997)"(R.A. Efroymson;M.E. Will;G.W.SuterII)(for the U.S.Department of Energy) addresses the level of confindence setting threshhold limits of toxins of some chemicals based upon investigative literature of previous researchers;the accommodation of some aspect of rather lower percentages (I think) of the ability of fungal mycelium to partition some metal toxins:pdf document- plantstress.com/ I think plantstress.com/(an international,peer reviewed site) is a good starting point for continued learning adressing transolcations and accumulations of toxins within specific plants/ and rhizospheric organisms accommodating soil types,pH.specific plants and endemic microfloras and their handling of specific contaminants/concentrations....prior to any suggestion of opening one's checkbook for all I see are series of red flags and further questions....(i.e.;I don't own an expensive microscope and scientific instruments where I can ID and monitor population densities and continued viability of microflora from year to year)) ...my view, anyway, but I don't really have much of a sense of the dynamics taking place...

If you live in an area where the ground freezes, late blight will not survive the winter EXCEPT on solanaceous tubers (potatoes). If you clear out all the vegetation and you get enough hard freezing, late blight will die. I think janice is concerned about the soilborne wilts (verticillium, fusarium, bacterial wilt) and parasites like root-knot nematodes, all of which are common in southern US soils. Late blight is dramatic--her photo does not show late blight. Janice, if you have the space/large enough containers to grow them somewhere else, it can't hurt. And then you open that space up for something outside the Solanaceae family. Another option is to buy some VFN hybrid plants, if they're available in your area (or get cuttings of some from a friend or something), and try them in that spot to see whether they succumb to the same ills or not. Might be a good opportunity to experiment!

3 months is enough to get rid of harmful bacteria like e coli. As for parasites, if your cat is healthy and up to date on shots, hopefully there are none. I would not worry about it too much though. If you 'cleaned it up and removed the soil' there is not much of anything there to worry about. Always wash your vegetables anyway. You might be surprised at the number of microbes in a teaspoon of soil, and some of their names. If you want to read more about pet manure, search for that phrase in this forum.