Susan, I was afraid maybe Horn's was your source, but Gene has listed some other local retailers who carry it, so hopefully y'all can still find it at a reasonable price even after the loss of Horn's. Patty, I am sorry you went through that. Legionaire's Disease. Yikes! I think your hunch that it might have come from the potting soil is a good one. You're a true survivor in more ways than one. Thankfully, our bodies can recover from such things with the help of medical science. Carol, I'm lucky, too, to have an endless source of leaves in the fall. If I am diligent and rake and collect them, that is....lol Some years I do a better job of collecting them from the woodland than others, but I do take care not to repeatedly take them all from the woodland and not to take them from the same area every year since they are important to the health of the woodland soil too. I do rake up and use all the ones that fall in the actual yard, and since the woodland creeps closer to my garden every year, some of the taller trees now drop their leaves into the garden, but I still have to rake them and chop them up. If I could get Pro-Mix without driving 100 or 120 miles to find it, I'd use it. This year I bought MG Moisture Control in February, March and April to add to all my containers because I feared a summer drought, and I am glad I did. As I fill up more containers for the greenhouse for this winter, I think I'm just going to make a version of Al's 5-1-1 mix. Gene, I agree that with any form of soil-less mix or other soil amendments, you get what you pay for and I absolutely will not cut corners in this area. I'd rather cut corners some other way. In gardening, I think the quality of the soil is the overall determining factor in a person's success. Everything starts with the soil. My dad used to say you shouldn't plant a $10 tree in a $5 hole, and that sums up how I feel about using cheap soil-less mixes too. Bon, Bio-solids have been sold as fertilizer or as a soil amendment since at least the 1960s as far as I know, and I've always gone out of my way to avoid the stuff to the extent that we can. One of my favorite garden supply sources in Fort Worth always carried Sul-po-Mag and I always cringed when I walked by that product, knowing where it came from. Some commercial vermicomposting facilities use bio-solids and others feed their worms pig manure (and probably other manures as well) so I won't purchase bagged worm castings unless I am sure of how a given company produces theirs. I just try to feed the earthworms in the ground here really well so they'll strew their castings everywhere as they tunnel through the soil. Our earthworm population has increased a huge amount since we moved here and began improving the soil, and I am so glad it has. My preference is always going to be for amendments from something right here on our property as much as possible because at least then I know the source and I know what is in it. We had rabbits in our early years here. Not because we purchased rabbits, but because after we moved "to the country", everyone we knew in the city who had a cat, dog or rabbit they didn't want any more and thought we should take it off their hands, and we did, because we didn't think any animal should live where it wasn't wanted. I'll qualify that by saying one family had a dog they truly loved, but had a small yard and thought she'd be happier here with us. We agreed and they sent her here to live with us, which I thought was a true act of love on their part. It was not that they didn't want her, but rather they loved her enough to put her happiness ahead of their own. She lived to be 18 years old and was a happy country dog who took great delight in roaming our pasture and woodlands. As long as she lived, she kept the squirrels away from the garden and yard. I found rabbits difficult to keep alive in the extreme heat that often plagues us here. Also, our rabbits really watched the wild rabbits roam free and resented being keep in a coop. We built them a fenced run that they loved because it was a more natural setting for them, but they occasionally escaped from it. After they eventually died, we did not get more rabbits. I've spent two consecutive very long very hot summers with cats and dogs cooped up indoors trying to stay cool and I'm just not ever going to bring chickens or rabbits inside in extreme heat. There's a limit to how many animals I can bring indoors before the house becomes more of a barn than a house! It is nice to be able to send them outdoors on a day like today and know they'll be happy outside all day and won't be roasting in the heat. I hope the heat doesn't return and that our animals can get used to being outside all day again. Dawn

I'm a little late to the discussion, but I'll give my experiences in the world of growing potted citrus in case it helps. I live in South Central Pennsylvania where our zone was changed from 6a or b to 7a in the last year or so. I currently am growing meyer lemon, something that was labeled as "standard lime", and an arctic frost satsuma mandarin. I potted them all in unglazed clay pots because they dry out fairly well with less chance of root rot occurring as long as the soil drains well. The lime was the only plant that didn't give me any problems once I started watering it regularly. The 3 foot meyer lemon was my favorite and I decided to get a nicely decorated pot just for that one. The pot is maybe about 18" compared to the 12" and 14" the other two were placed in. The walls of the pot were much thicker than the other two as well. The soil itself was organic soil that comes pre mixed with compost and worm castings. I just added sand and micronized azomite to keep the soil well drained and enriched with trace elements. The lemon grew a few limbs and leaves last summer. It also flowered and grew lemons. My intention was to remove the lemons to allow for more leaf growth, but couldn't bring myself to do it! The problem was that the soil never dried out. I believe the thickness of the pot was the cause of that. Most of the leaves dropped off over the winter despite it being kept under a 600w high pressure sodium grow light and being watered the same amount as the other two plants. I just repotted the plant about a week ago and it started growing new leaves almost immediately. The new pot is 12" with the soil being recycled from the 18" pot. The citrus have been outside almost a month now since we've been out of the 30s. I wanted them to get some of this rain we've been getting to flush the soil out and to rinse the neem oil off that I sprayed them with last fall to get pests off before I brought them in for the winter. The lemons never fell off so I knew the plant wasn't close to dying, but I did notice the roots hadn't grown all that much since I potted the plant last spring. I think it should do a lot better now that the soil can dry out a bit between watering. As for the arctic frost, the plant never did much of anything from the time I planted it until about two months ago. It neither grew nor lost any leaves. It just stayed the same and I knew that wasn't what it was supposed to do. I knew that could happen if the soil level was raised higher than it was at the time of purchase but didn't remember adding soil. I later remembered that I pushed excess soil around the edge of the pot as if to direct water toward the trunk during waterings. That excess soil eventually leveled out and left almost two extra inches of soil around the trunk of the plant which was maybe two feet tall. I removed all the excess soil until I ran into roots. The excess soil filled about a quarter of a plastic grocery bag. I removed a little excess from the meyer lemon at that time as well. Within a couple weeks, the arctic frost finally grew new leaves and eventually flowered for the first time. The fruit started to grow, but I did remove those because the plant is way too small with too few leaves to be growing fruit in my opinion. As for the lime, It did just fine from the time it was potted spring of last year. It started flowering last fall or winter and hasn't stopped since. The fruit would get to about pea size and drop off during the winter, but as the length of our days increased and especially since I put the plants outside, the fruit hasn't been dropping. To sum things up, plastic pots retain moisture too much in my opinion. Clay pots allow for breathing and make it harder to damage plants due to over watering. You will have to water the plants more often, but from what I've experienced thus far, that's how citrus like it-quick drying soil with frequent thorough waterings. Misting the leaves is also appreciated by the plants. Given the hotter temps in Florida, plastic pots may be acceptable while outside. Root rot may become an issue if the plants are taken inside at all however. Something else to keep in mind is mentioned in a youtube video by an experienced citrus grower. He compared the growth of his citrus to that of his neighbors citrus plants. The neighbors pruned the plants heavily in a way that exposed the bark of the tree to a lot of sunlight. The trees never recovered from the pruning. He rarely pruned his trees and if he did, he did it in a way that allowed the branches to still be shaded by leaves. He stated that citrus, unlike apple trees, don't have to be pruned in order for more fruit to grow. Citrus will likely have more of a bushy growth while people prune them to look more like trees. Doing so with a potted plant will expose the trunk to sunlight, which they do don't want. It will also take needed shade away from the pot. The roots need to be kept cool like they would be if the plant were in the ground. Hot roots will result in poor growth as well. If the plant isn't wide enough to shade its pot from too much sunlight/heat, place other pots around it or something white/bright around it to reflect some of the light... I had to move due to not being able to find employment and my plants were stuffed in a closet at a relatives house for a few months with a florescent lamp. My gojis, navel oranges, jade plant, and original meyer lemon all died from lack of light and air circulation. Actually the navel oranges were placed in a very cold window sill with a thick curtain keeping any heat from getting to them and weren't watered for over a week... Of all the plants pictured, only the two bananas and the lime survived. The lime is front left with the vibrant green new growth. I'd only had it about 3 months at that time. The long branch was about two feet at that time. That very same lime plant is on the left in this photo after a much appreciated summer outside. This photo was taken almost a year after the previous photo. It really filled in! I guess it liked the bat guano ;) The plant in the middle is the arctic frost satsuma with a meyer lemon cutting rooting under the plastic jug. The plant on the right is the 3 foot meyer lemon plant. It didn't look too bad after the summer but the long winter started to take its toll... It flowered and started to grow lemons. Then flowered again. Then I decided to flush the pots. The lemon never dried out after that and I eventually ended up with this... It's now in a smaller, thinner pot that should dry out like I want it to. It's been cloudy/rainy the last few weeks, but I still found some growth on the meyer lemon. It was windy yesterday so the leaves are flipped over in some spots. The arctic frost is doing well with a few new leaves... And the lime is still doing well... I guess I've exceeded some kind of limit so I'll have to add the photo in another comment...

I wouldn't spend the money on a test for contaminates anyway. While both creosoted timber and CCA timber can leach chemicals into the soil, it has been pretty well established that they do not do so to any significant degree nor do the chemicals travel far in the soil, rather remain very close to their source and eventually are broken down and dissipated by soil biology as are most other chemical compounds. Even concerns about growing edibles in lead contaminated soils tend to be overstated. The chemicals are seldom absorbed and transmitted in the produce in any significant concentrations above what naturally exists.......it's more a concern about working the soil or having it splash onto the produce. And that is easily fixed by a thorough washing. If you are very concerned about organic gardening and want anything you produce to be free of any extraneous chemical input, then do not plant edibles in this location or replace the wall. Otherwise, I would have no issues planting there.

I bought some fungicide and figured I'd mist the leaves with it until they were saturated. It turned out to be thick goopy stuff that splattered on and beaded up and ran right off the leaves! So, I poured some of it in my spray bottle, added a little water to thin it slightly and added a few drops of Dawn dish soap and got what I was after. No further browning so far. Hope that was it! Someone also suggested sunburn and indeed my LEDs were pretty close. I gave them some additional distance. I'm loving the forum here and am learning a lot. I read a thread about fish emulsion (which I had never heard of). I bought some F.E. (5-1-1), misted my leaves with a diluted mixture and watered the trees with what was left over from my mix. Both my lemon and orange greened up tremendously overnight. Amazing. Read another thread about heat mats and someone talking about the desired temps of the roots. I have mats that I used to get these trees going but turned them off months ago. After reading about the target temperatures, I realized my house AC keeps things on the cool side for them. Heat mats back on! Thanks everyone.