From left to right: Fafard 3B Fafard 3B 1 bag 3B + 1 bag pine bark fines 1 bag 3B + 1 bag pine bark fines 1 bag 3B + 2 bags of pine bark fines 1 bag 3B + 2 bags of pine bark fines 70% coconut coir + 30% perlite (I normally don't start any scotch bonnet pepper plants in the summer (it is too hot, buggy, and rainy) but this year thought I would give it a shot plus do more in the fall. They last longer than 1 season. We don't get freezes.) Here is just a sampling of some of them. Fafard 3B --great right out of the bag Actually had flowers and now fruit way ahead of others by 7 or 8 days. They have the greatest height and most dense foliage. One of the 4 plants I did with 2 to 1 ratio (PB to 3B) is just as tall and full but one is much shorter for some reason. I expect all of the extra pine bark component ones to do well. The 2 PB to 1 Fafard 3B ratio should be good over the long haul. (They also make a mix called Fafard 52 which I only was able to find once. It was 60% bark.) Fafard 3B is 45% peat and 30% pine bark (one site said 25 % pine bark). I am hoping this also will hold up well --I have used peat based mixes with no pine bark with good results so the pine bark should make it even better as the mix degrades. Coir is plugging along--not quite up to speed with the others but still doing OK. It is the final one of the group. The transplants seedlings I did in coir did awful. There are very good potting mixes on the market and pre mixed makes it super easy . Or buy your own ingredients and mix yourself--that can work equally as well too. Your choice. For many annuals like vegetables --longevity of the mix if you are dumping in raised bed after one season or not reusing is not all that crucial as long as the mix is well draining but nutrient retentive as well. L.O. Can you post pics of your vegetables in the gritty mix? How many times do you expect to reuse?

For what it's worth, I have used MG garden soil for my seeds. It has worked well for geraniums, sage, violas and gaillardia. I also used the peat pellets with some success. I guess it depends on what kind of seeds you are growing. The forum mentioned above sounds like a good idea.

First I would like to quote some lyrics- Everybody's Free (to Wear Sunscreen) by Baz Luhrmann "Be careful whose advice you buy but be patient with those who supply it Advice is a form of nostalgia, dispensing it is a way of fishing the past From the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts And recycling it for more than it's worth" This next bit is my opinion only and requires your patients to get through. I only offer it because it seems to be working well for me so far and I wish for all to have the success I seem to be having with it. I will post a couple of pictures at the end to show you what I mean. I did a lot of research about potting media and amendments. Last summer was my first summer getting into hostas and growing them in pots. I started by making my own mix using pea gravel, mother earth and sand. Seemed to be working well, other than the very heavy pots, especially when they were wet and the fact that while I was repotting using my new and improved media I found the bricks I had been creating with the old mix in the bottom of the pots. I read somewhere that if the pot is full to the bottom and there are holes in the bottom of the pot and it is touching the ground, then the earth will act like a wick to pull excess water out of the pot. Water will always find the easiest route to travel, so once it has created it's own channel in the pot, down the sides, it will be hard to get the pot completely saturated. As I was repotting, though, I found enough earth worms in the pots that I could have fished for a week. Although this is not for everyone and there are many paths to get to the same end, this is how I have been doing it this year. It requires the use of a chipper/shredder, a cement mixer and a cheap plastic lemonade pitcher. I did a massive amount of repotting this spring, so I bought in bulk to reduce my costs. I ended up creating my mix for right at $2.86 a cubic foot and have made over 12 cubic feet of mix so far. I buy southern pine nuggets at Lowe's, comes 3 cubic feet in a bag. Perlite-4 cubic foot bags, peat-2.8 cubic foot bags. Greensand-36 lb bags, Alfalfa meal-50 lb bags and Bio-Tone-25 lb bags. I run the bark through the chipper and end up with fines and small chips. I next mix 5 gallons of bark fines with 2 pitchers of perlite and 2 pitchers of peat. The next part is my own special sauce. I add 1/2 cup of Bio-Tone, 1 cup of Greensand and 1-1/2 cup of alfalfa meal to every cubic foot of mix. Alfalfa meal has triaconatol, which is a fatty acid growth stimulant. I read somewhere that it may increase the possibilities of sports and the worms love the stuff. I get mine at the local Co-Op, it is sold as a livestock feed. Bio-Tone contains Mycorrhiza which become symbiotic with the roots and helps the plants in their uptake of nutrients and the creation of fine roots. Greensand contains many micronutrients not found in most fertilizers. I also use a little sprinkling of Osmocote on top after potting, although it may not be necessary. I am going around now and adding a ring of my special sauce with a layer of compost on top to all of the ones I have in the ground. I just pummel the same ratios of amendments into a powder. Now for the pudding. Here is a seedling that I repotted a week or two ago. I started my seedlings on January 3rd of this year and they were growing in 5 ounce cups using this mix for about 2 months at the time of this picture. This is what they all looked like: Also, here is what it looks like inside my mini greenhouse today. Most of these are from last year after I repotted this spring. The leaf damage on the Fire Island liners in the middle is due to them getting too cold one night before I added heat to the mini greenhouse. They were the only ones that suffered and it only got down to the mid 40s.

Hey thanks for the response georgez5il. I had begun to wonder if any one would offer me futher advise. No mice or rabbits are seen on my property, but there are two squirrels which play and scavange under my four mature, acorn producing oak trees. Still yet it is a wonder why my late May recently planted hosta's display so much leaf damage. It certainly looks like what one would expect to see rabbits cause. Thanks for your heads up about that. Maybe, I should cage the buried pots and even bury the sides of the cage well enough to prevent any ground preditors from tunneling under and up into the cage. Since your IL z5 has much colder winters than we do here in zone 6b/7, that gives me more confidence that following your advice should give them a good chance to pull through till next spring. Since they are to be wintered by covering them with straw or leaves, and since our winter cold temps take so long to really entrench in, do you think it a good idea, for me to first put down a little bit of mulch, and then later secure a removable wind and cold temp shielding cover over the cage just prior to our predicted light freeze times, but later to only cover the plants completely with leaves and mulch or straw just prior to our first predicted hard freeze? If I do not do it this way, what can be done to prevent them from rotting if I cover them completely from the start of our night temps, only, dropping into the mid to low 30s?