How it looks from my perspective: If the decision to reuse container soils is an economic one, who can disagree with the decision? If you aren't concerned about expense and are willing to go to some minimal extra effort to build a good soil, that is what I would elect to do. Here's why: Container gardeners need to direct primary focus to insuring that the soil they are using will remain able to provide adequate air to roots for the expected life of the planting. Along with the ability of the soil to hold ample air, comes good gas exchange and drainage for rootage. All the other major cultural variables affecting growth are easily manipulated. Water, nutrients, sunlight, and to some degree, temperature can all be controlled easily. Aeration cannot and its consideration is as important as water and light to plant vitality. The breakdown or collapse of soil structure occurs at an exponential rate. If we imagine the usable life of a peat based container soil from a bag, it deteriorates from a reasonably good soil when fresh to unusable after 2 years. It's not unreasonable to expect the soil to lose at least 20-25% of its air holding ability by the end of the first growing season. In the first half of the second growing season, it will lose about another 25% of its air holding ability and in the second half of the second year, near total collapse is likely as the remaining 50% is lost. Though this is an example of an imaginary soil, it is very close to what actually occurs. Another way of saying it is: Even though a soil might be performing acceptably at the end of the first growing season, you should expect a rapidly accelerating collapse in the subsequent year. So, if you use a soil for 1 year and mix it 50/50 with a fresh, similar soil, 50% of the soil will have totally collapsed by the end of the growing season, and the other 50% will have lost about 25% of its ability to hold air. If a soil is not holding enough air, it's holding too much water. Water and air retention vary inversely in soils and when one increases, the other decreases. When soils hold too much water, you have to hope that the plant will use enough water or that enough water evaporates to prevent root rot issues and even minor cases of over-potting can mean terminal misfortune. At risk, I speak out often against the use of compost in container soils. It supplies nearly nothing in nutrients and clogs the soil macro-pores container gardeners should covet. Containers are not gardens and much of what works in the garden can cause difficulties in containers. Additional possible considerations are carry-over of fungal spores, the possibility/probability of insects in various stages (eggs, larvae, etc) and carbonate precipitates from your watering water. A slow soil will also have accumulated fertilizer salts and possibly insecticides that you may have applied and forgotten about last season. I suggest that container soils be turned into the compost pile or garden and fresh soil used in its place unless monetary considerations prohibit. Al

How big are your containers with all this left over soil? Everytime I plant the same, I get huge plants that fill the entire container with their roots and no soil leftover to spare! "One" pepper plant filled a five gallon bucket! It must be the porous soil I use that Al has taught me to make...The roots love it. My neighbor is from the Azores....The islands off of Portugal...He's an ole timer who believes in growing entirely like you do, an expert from what he says. The thing is, he has to constantly watch for root rot and diseases, not to say an entirely nutritional deficient mix, and, has to constantly repot every month or two or his plants will stay stunted and keep yellowing..By the way, he will use Fish Emulsions too along with MG that he says helps. When he comes over to my yard to compare quite often, mine look alot more robust..We laugh about it, but he still refuses to try a new way.. I respect that though..He still loves his hobby, his own way..I admire his hard work.. Lol, he spends even less money than you, he just digs up the dirt from his backyard, throws the ingrediants together, and presto!!..:-) I suppose a "short" growing season might allow you to grow like this too... Hope you understand this time..:-) Mike

I often store bags of leaves over the winter. I stock up in the fall at a nearby subdivision. I use the leaves to balance all the old produce I compost throughout the year. I get them from other people's yards, so some are shredded, some aren't, some have grass mixed in, but mostly they do not. The bags don't seem to shred in the sun unless I keep them for more than a year. Two falls ago I went a little berserk and stockpiled 3 truckloads of bags of other people's leaves, so last year I didn't scrounge any up. But the bags from two years ago sometimes came apart. Not much trouble with bag smells in the bags, as generally some weeds or something poked a hole in the bags. Marcia

- I strongly recommend that you NOT try to incorporate the material into the soil. You will destroy the natural soil horizons that are no doubt there, as long as you leave the soil undisturbed. Furthermore, research done by the Ag Dept folks here showed that any organic material more than 2 inches below the surface will do no good at all. It's completely wasted. UC California Master Gardener's research on planting trees came to the same conclusion. Adding organic material to your back fill (in other words, incorporating it) at best does no good at all and in some cases adds to rot and disease problems. If you have an established woods, the soil structure you want is already established. Do not disturb it. - I'm not sure why you are in a hurry to speed up decomp in a natural woods. There is benefit to letting it happen slowly. The blanket of material will keep soil cool in summer, help control erosions, help water holding capacity, provide a good environment for a wealth of biological agents and more throughout the year. Let it go slow. - Adding nitrogen will make your mature trees grow denser leaf canopies, making it harder for your understory plants to get enough light. Go easy on nitrogen. I would not add any at all if you want plants under the trees. - Woods generate their own leaf mulch every year and usually self-perpetuate a fairly healthy soil. I would not keep adding to much material to the woods. If you have some from your property and want to amend a little, that is good but don't over do it, and you certainly don't need to spend money buying or even transporting material from elsewhere to a wood lot. Gas is to expensive and I don't think you need it. Great for garden beds though! I add mulch into my orchards, but remember I take fruit out every year, so I'm restoring the balance, give some take some. - I think it's a wonderful project by the way. My native environment is desert, not woods so I have very diferent things that I work to preserve. But I keep a little area for natives to grow. I try to encourage them just a little. They include Desert primrose - the most amazing flower you would not believe would grown in the DESERT and what a fragrance Die weed that the Indians used to color clothing and pottery, also a lovely fragrance. Verbena with it's beautiful lavender explosion of flowers. several others that are rather nondescript but part of the native mix. My Grandfather, back in KY, used to encourage things like gensing, blood root, sassafras (tree), and others. What kind of natives are you going to try?