TropThought - one of the primary concerns with using soils made with small particulates is water retention. Fine sand's flow-through rate is adequate, but its water retention is excessive - especially in shallow containers. The same is true of compost/peat/coir/garden soil/topsoil/sand mixes - they just hold too much water to give plants their best chance at growing to their potential. MasterGardener shows a picture of a pepper now & then, and changes his stories as often as I change my socks. When he's able to eliminate some of the cognitive dissonance from his offerings, I'll take him seriously - until then ..... Perched water is the real issue/culprit. When a soil's particle size reaches about .1 inch, the PWT disappears entirely; so concentrating most of your soils particles in a size range of .1 inch and larger will leave you with little in the way of a saturated lower layer of soil to depress root function, hamper root health, or cause root rot issues. Uniformity in particle size can be used to the grower's considerable advantage in structuring his soils, but that uniformity can't make up for the excessive water retention that accompanies particulates that are simply too small. A quart jar full of marbles has some wonderfully large pores between the marbles, but you can probably pour close to an additional pint of BBs and then a pint of builder's sand into the same quart jar, destroying the aeration because the particles are inconsistent in size AND too small. You'd still have a good flow-through rate with the BBs and sand added to the marbles, but aeration would be poor and the ht of the PWT much too high for good results. Al

Very interesting, I have had problems with Miracle-Gro seedling mix go mouldy-green on me before. I now buy other brands, and don't get the GREEN. I'm not sure of the exact "type" of Miracle-gro product I used at the time, and I can't say the green was detrimental to my seeds....but it kinda grossed me out! good luck and good growing to you

Your mileage may vary, but I plant all of my rose wraps (Burrito Method) in it. Those planted in the coir product this year worked well. Those planted in the "organic" blend containing "landfill material", did NOT. But, again, I have extreme evaporation here. There is no summer rain. There is almost constant wind of low humidity. There is extreme UV, to the point where roses and hibiscus sinensis REQUIRE some protection from the direct, all day sun or the foliage burns. If you don't have those kinds of extremes, and if you receive rains so your pots don't dry out in a day, you may not need, nor even benefit from it. Too much fertilizer? I don't think so. I think the issue is the amount of moisture it retains and the humidity and moisture of your conditions/location.

Eeeek, not a good idea, brink. Mothballs are highly toxic...not just to wildlife and pets, but you! They are not intended to be used other than in an enclosed area to kill insects. Actually, the fact that they can be deadly to non target animals that may ingest them is why they need to be removed from public use. Holly, my favorite tip is to sprinkle cayenne pepper liberally where those critters dig. I buy a big canister of it at Costco every year and use it generously. It helps keep them out of seed beds, new garden plantings, and my containers for cuttings and flowers. Has no effect on birds, so you can even use cayenne in birdseed to keep the squirrels at bay. I have a couple of wooden propagation boxes that I use for cuttings and divisions and I don't want anything walking around in there! I lay hardware cloth on top of the box and weight it with heavy rocks! So, yes.....wrangling the squirrels and chipmunks are an annual event for me.