You're welcome. Thanks again, for being so kind. Some thoughts I offered in another, older threads on this forum. They should pretty much answer your question, and may even be quoted in the text somewhere up this thread (if so, I apologize for the redundancy): In my estimation, the only case to be made for reusing container soils is one of economics, and you'll never find me argue against making that decision. If you can't afford, you can't afford it. That said and setting economics aside, you might decide to reuse soil for reasons other than economical. Perhaps the effort involved with acquiring (or making your own) soil is something you might not wish to go through or be bothered with. In any case, it would be difficult to show that soils in a more advanced state of structural collapse can somehow be preferred to a soil that can be counted on to maintain its structure for the entire growth cycle. So, if the economic aspect is set aside, at some point you must decide that "my used soil is good enough" and that you're willing to accept whatever the results of that decision are. All soils are not created equal. The soils I grow in are usually pine bark based & collapse structurally at a much slower rate that peat based soils, yet I usually choose to turn them into the garden or give them over to a compost pile where they serve a better purpose than as a container soil after a year of service. Some plantings (like woody materials and some perennials) do pretty well the second year in the same bark-based soil, and with careful watering, I'm usually able to get them through a third year w/o root issues. Watering habits are an extremely important part of container gardening. Well structured soils that drain well are much more forgiving and certainly favor success on the part of the more inexperienced gardeners. As soils age, water retention increases and growing becomes increasingly difficult. If your (anyone's) excellence in watering skills allows you to grow in an aging medium, or if your decision that "good enough" is good enough for you, then it's (your decision) is good enough for me, too. The phrases "it works for me" or "I've done it this way for years w/o problems" is often offered up as good reason to continue the status quo, but there's not much substance there. I'm being called away now, but I'll leave with something I offered in reply on a recent thread: "... First, plants really aren't particular about what soil is made of. As long as you're willing to stand over your plant & water every 10 minutes, you can grow most plants perfectly well in a bucket of marbles. Mix a little of the proper fertilizers in the water & you're good to go. The plant has all it needs - water, nutrients, air in the root zone, and something to hold it in place. So, if we can grow in marbles, how can a soil fail? Our growing skills fail us more often than our soils fail. We often lack the experience or knowledge to recognize the shortcomings of our soils and to adjust for them. The lower our experience/knowledge levels are, the more nearly perfect should be the soils we grow in, but this is a catch 22 situation because hidden in the inexperience is the inability to even recognize differences between good and bad soil(s). Container soils fail when their structure fails. When we select soils with components that break down quickly or that are so small they find their way into and clog macro-pores, we begin our growing attempts under a handicap. I see anecdotes about reusing soils, even recommendations to do it all over these forums. I don't argue with the practice, but I (very) rarely do it, even when growing flowery annuals, meant only for a single season. Soils don't break down at an even rate. If you assign a soil a life of two years and imagine that the soil goes from perfect to unusable in that time, it's likely it would be fine for the first year, lose about 25% of its suitability in the first half of the second year, and lose the other 75% in the last half of the second year. This is an approximation & is only meant to illustrate the exponential rate at which soils collapse. Soils that are suitable for only a growing season show a similar rate of decline, but at an accelerated rate. When a used soil is mixed with fresh soil after a growing season, the old soil particles are in or about to begin a period of accelerated decay. I choose to turn them into the garden or they find their way to a compost pile. Unless the reasons are economical, I find it difficult to imagine why anyone would add garden soils to container soils. It destroys aeration and usually causes soils to retain too much water for too long. Sand (unless approaching the size of BB's), has the same effect. I don't use compost in soils because of the negative effect on aeration/drainage. The small amount of micro-nutrients provided by compost can be more efficiently added, organically or inorganically, via other vehicles. To boil this all down, a container soil fails when the inverse relationship between aeration/drainage goes awry. When aeration is reduced, soggy soil is the result, and trouble is in the making. I've mentioned before that I don't post here to get people to convert to a particular mix or blend of soil. I post what I know will work very well for anyone who can get appropriate ingredients & modify the mix to suit their climate & other cultural conditions. If you use a mix that guarantees good aeration for the expected life of the planting - you're in good shape. Most peat based mixes will not work well in extended life plantings. Conifer bark based mixes, on the other hand, retain structure for much longer periods. If you still have questions, please don't hesitate .... Al

This year I built my first earth-tainer. Last year was my first year of container gardening and I had build a large SWC. (more details in this post - SWC Method for Large Container) So I decided to compare both this year. I bought two pink brandywine plants (same height and health) and planted one in the earth-tainer and one in the large SWC. Both have same growing media, same fert. The earthtainer probably gets 30 more minutes of sun. After 16 days, the tomato plant in the earthtainer is 4 inches taller than that in the large SWC. (16 inches to 12 inches). Also the early girl in earthtainer is growing with a lot more vigor than other tomato plants in the large container. So far earthtainer 1, my large SWC built on family handyman design - 0. If this pattern holds on .. the large SWC will be relegated to cukes and lettuce next year while I grow more crops in earthtainer .. The large SWC does not have aeration holes and a lot more wicking area. May be that is the reason for better performance for the earthtainer?

Here' an end of the year update to my All Natural versus Synthetic container growing experiment. The pictures below were taken on Sept 20, 2011 The previous posts are at: http://forums2.gardenweb.com/forums/load/contain/msg06185055362.html http://forums2.gardenweb.com/forums/load/contain/msg0518184613195.html Overall this proved quite instructive for me with the following conclusions: 1. Forest mix prevents transplant shock wilting. Totally unexpected result. 2. Compost mix wilted some when transplanted, but not as much as the gritty mix. 3. The gritty mix needed to be fertilized and watered much more frequently then the organic mixes. Ultimately I gave up on the gritty mix containers. Since I watered with a drip system, I could not easily adjust them to water one container more than another. And if I watered a lot more the organic mixes would have been too wet. 4. One gritty mix container I dumped out and put in a 50:50 mix of peat and bark. Then fertilized with FP. This one did well, but since it had such a late start the pepper planted didn't get big. 5. The compost mix and forest mix pepper containers, ended up producing about the same amount of peppers. They did quite well and produced a lot. Even though the compost mix peppers wilted at the start of the season and basically didn't start growing until 3 weeks after the forest mix peppers, the compost mix pepper plants ended up bigger. But the forest mix pepper plants were stocker and stronger. The leaves were much tougher than the compost mix pepper plants. And the forest mix peppers were easier to keep fertilzed, didn't have to add the HLF as often to keep the leaves green. But since it is easier to prepare the compost mix and it produced the same amount of fruit, I'll use this one in the future for all my peppers. 6. The eggplant in the gritty mix was doing horribly, so I dumped it and made it into another pepper container with 50:50 peat:bark mixture, fed it FP and it did fine, but due to late start didn't produce much. 7. The eggplant in the compost mix didn't do so well. Another surprise. Last year the eggplant in the organic mix did well. But last year I purposely put the drainage hole 4" up the side of the pot. This meant that after watering, the bottom of the pot was in 4" of sitting water (just the opposite of a good drainage system). The pot this year, it had normal good drainage. However whenever I stuck my fingers into the mix after a complete soaking with a hose for over a minute, the mix about 4" deep would be completely dry! And this is in just a compost mix which doesn't get hydrophobic. I believe that the extensive and thick eggplant root system allowed the water to flow down the pot without wetting the mix. Next year I'll add some clay soil to the mix to see if this helps. I'll post pictures of this problem in a different post. Overall I came to realize that the gritty mix can be useful, but it probably shines most in wet climates, not as much in dry hot ones. Unless as some posters have indicated, you water a lot and fertilize regularly. Because of the watering problems of trying to combine a gritty mix and compost mix containers in the same drip system, I couldn't get a good comparison between which fertilizer system did better. The organic fertilizer (ashes and HLF) buckets, 2 peppers, 1 basil did great. Next year I'll just add one bucket with 50:50 peat & bark mix and use FP for that one. So I can see what difference the fertilizer makes. End of year, 6 containers. Front row left to right: 1. peppers in gritty mix. What happens when you aren't willing to water and fertilizer regularly as gritty mix requires. 2. Eggplant in compost mix, did ok, but not so good. Mix would not wet below about 3-4" from top no matter how much watered. 3. Basil in compost, did great as usual. Mix did wet ok, much better than eggplant pot. Back row left to right: 1. Peppers in compost mix, did well, lots of peppers. 2. Was eggplant in gritty mix, but dumped half way through and replanted with peppers in peat:bark mix, fertilized with FP. Did good, but too late for good harvest. 3. Peppers in forest mix. Did great, no transplant shock. Plants stocky and tougher than compost mix pepper. Harvest about the same. Peppers in forest mix. Pepper in compost mix.

I'm doing my own little growing experiment using red light. I just threw up a post, which explains the plan: http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load/lights/msg1110182528789.html?18