In looking up images of their products online, it seems they do have one under their own name - Scotts. Imagine that :) There were a few who used it for winter sowing a few years ago (searching) and results were that some thought it similar to Miracle Gro and others thought a little more coarse. It doesn't sound like either the worst or the best out of the choices of brands, if hubby picked it up for you, why not use it....especially if he's the type who wants to participate, help :) Unless their formula/ingredients have changed dramatically, it doesn't seem like it would cause you problems from what I can find. I'm lucky here, one of our local nurseries (mom-pop type) has the Cornell formula peat light potting soil mixed up and bagged under their own store name so I'm not going through the national brands regularly, I just buy that one.

Malcolm: thanks for the info. on pH meter. I checked on that before, and found that most of them are not accurate, and even the more expensive one above $200 need to be re-calibrated before each use. Red cabbage boiled in distilled water is quite accurate, since I am testing one agent against each other: color of Miracle-Gro potting soil is very pink, against the color of Scott's premium top soil with peat moss (greenish blue). I checked the colors of all 10 samples after 1 hour: peat moss gets even pinker, Scott's premium soil gets greener. Reg_pnw7: thank you for your feed back, my goal is to learn, and I don't need to be right, since I'm a newbie. Corn meal tested neutral, and the color of red cabbage boiled in my alkaline tap water is bluish purple, compared to the color of red cabbage boiled in distilled water, pinkish purple. If you google "optimal pH for fungi growth", there are several that cited preferably acidic for fungi growth. The red cabbage boiled in distilled water is an interesting experiment to test various materials. Try it and you'll see how accurate it is by testing with at least 10 mediums: few drops of vinegar, coffee ground, peat moss, baking soda, MiracleGro potting soil versus Scott's bagged top soil. The peat moss and MiracleGro potting soil get more pink after several hours, and the Scott's get more green. I used quite accurate fish tank litmus paper (Jungle brand from Walmart). It correctly gave a 7 for distilled water, and a 8 for my tap water. The direction said to read within the first minute - it took more than 10 minutes to get the epsom salt to dissolve, and this gave a more alkaline false reading at pH 7.3 to 7.5. However, when epsom salt is tetsted with red cabbage, this gave a correct neutral pH: the color did not changed compared with the control red cabbage boiled in distilled water. Blackspots can germinate on the ground and get splashed up by rain water. This year I have zero blackspots on 10 Austin roses mulched with very alkaline horse manure, as recommended by the British.

Scott's and Miracle-Gro are made by the same company, and in recent years they seem to be filling up their potting mixes with a lot of "stuff". No longer the nice fluffy mix that was so great for WSing, but it will be fine. I still use Miracle-Gro, mainly because that is what's readily available in my area. I've got germination right now in it. Sure would like to find some Pro-Mix or something else, though. Too much raw wood and other disagreeable stuff in Miracle-Gro these days. PV

The problem isn't finding it, the problem is affording it! It's really went up over this summer....