There is no way for me, or anyone to tell you that. How fast the soil amendments you used as fertilizer break down depend on several variables, the affect of which we can't guess. Organic soil amendments tend to carry over in the soil until conditions are favorable for the growth of soil biota, then fertilizers can become available rapidly. The problem is you never really know if there is insufficient fertility, or the nutrients are there but unavailable, locked in hydrocarbon chains due to inactivity or low populations of the soil organisms required to reduce the nutrients to elemental form so they are available for uptake. The reason I use solubles for container culture is mainly because delivery of nutrients from organic soil amendments is unreliable and erratic. By using soluble fertilizers, I know the exact ratio of NPK I'm supplying, I can completely control and fine tune the dosage, and what I apply is immediately available. If I look at a plant and the older leaves are showing some chlorosis, I can be pretty sure actual fertility is low and I need to fertilize. In your case, you're going to have to guess and take notes until you have a feel for what you need to do while learning from your mistakes - trial and error, because the same symptoms when relying on organic soil amendments for nutritional needs are not going to be such clear indication that potential or even immediate actual fertility is low. Al

This product may contain clopyralid, an herbicide that has been found to be a very long lasting plant poison that will survive the composting process. The only way to know this would be to have some of it tested which may be fairly expensive.

I want to try what you are doing with the germination. I think perhaps I had bad luck on some grass seed because I covered them, maybe too deep? I looked Jelitto up again. Those commas in the prices threw me but I think if I actually go through the steps I will figure it out. Another site I have looked at is Hazard's Seed. They have a lot of grass seed. Bluestem is my all time favorite grass of all the grasses. I want to increase the area of bluestem in my garden, it is so gorgeous massed and has interest all four seasons with the exception of about one month when you first cut them. I collected all the volunteer seedlings of the 'Blues' today and planted them in a separate area. They are on the other side of my house, a long distance from the other two types so I don't think they did any cross breeding. I didn't think they would come true from seed but after reading that you ordered the 'Prairie Blue' type, maybe they do. Seemed I'd read they don't somewhere. I am growing these types: Native 'Okies' Native New Mexico type (seed from Plants of the SW) 'The Blues' I have been wanting to start some 'Blaze'. I am only just now aware you can grow them from seed after reading your post. These three I am growing are each noticeably different. The native Okies get taller and are stiff, like they are spray starched, although they start out slower and more yellowish green. The New Mexicans are bluer and thicker, have longer leaves, shorter blooms and are not as stiffly upright. The clump is very pretty all summer before blooming, quite ornamental. I will see this year how 'The Blues' differ, so far they are lighter blue than the New Mexicans but shorter than both the others. I ordered 14 of them from SRG last fall.

"(I don't know what this "wetting agent" might be; I thought it was probably polymer gel but they list both the wetting agent AND polymer gel for their #7 mix, so apparently not!)" The "wetting agent" is just a surfactant that allows the peat to soak up water more easily--rather than to repel it like dry peat does so very well! For all practical purposes, it SOAP! When Zach posted that he got a bale of pure peat and talked about how hydrophobic it is, I almost posted (but the Nasty, NASTY has been preventing me from reading so I've just been x'ing out when it appears most of the time!) that all the peat-based soils/mixes must have a surfactant in them, because even when they dry out ALL the way, they're quite easy to re-wet to make them "usable" again. Without a surfactant they'd take hours and hours to moisten well enough to be able to use them! Polymer, in my opinion, is entirely unnecessary for growing things in pots or in beds that are regularly watered and taken care of. When I was getting started buying the seedling trees that are being planted on the mesa top just south of Mesa Verde I thoroughly researched the stuff, and I found comments by people who were putting it in their "hanging baskets," and "when they watered their plants the soil was all falling out of the top of the basket!" Polymer E-X-P-A-N-D-S! I did buy some to be used where the seedling trees are being planted--in a situation where they get maybe a gallon of water when they're planted, and then they're 100% on their own, but to be using the stuff in an urban garden makes no sense whatsoever to me! When I bought it the first time I wanted to see "what I had," so I put a level teaspoon of the dry polymer in a water glass and filled the glass half up with water. After an hour all the water was GONE! I wanted to see if it would soak up more, so I added more water! Hour later the water was GONE! I dumped what I had in a clean (regular size) peanut butter jar and added more water! Kept adding water till it was up to the top and left it sit! I wound up with a jar filed up to the top with "expanded" polymer---from ONE LEVEL TEASPOON OF DRY POLYMER! The stuff is intended to be used in situations where plants will not be able to be watered, where they need "the extra stored water" for when there's no precip. And, clearly, the people who were using the stuff in hanging baskets and "small" pots didn't have a clue what they were doing and hadn't taken the time to figure it out! My guess is they were taking a half a cup or a cup of the stuff and mixing it into the soil in their 8-10" pots--and then they were wondering why the soil was all falling out of the top of the pots when it started to expand! Virtually everybody with an "urban" garden waters--except for those who plant true xeric gardens, and polymer in the soil would kill xeric plants real quick! For me, if I had polymer in my "potting soil" I'm sure I'd promptly rot off all the plants--the same as I do with vermiculite--and vermiculite holds far less water than polymer does. As I see it, polymer is a Buzz Word these days, so the companies put it in the mixes and sell it for twice as much as the stuff without it--and since "everybody knows how good polymer is" everybody falls for the "Pintrest Wisdom" and pays for it! "Good" is relative! What's good for something can be very, very bad for something else! Having said all that...... Try whatever you think might work for you and see if it does work or not. If it works, keep on keepin' on! If it doesn't, try something different! If you try something with polymer, or add polymer to something, remember! One Level Teaspoon absorbs enough water to fill up, to the top, a 16 ounce peanut butter jar! It may have soaked up even more water, but I never took the time to put it in something bigger to find out! Mycorrhizae! Some of the sunshine mixes have mycorrhizae these days too! And ProMix (the stuff my brother uses), like Sunshine, comes in ALL different mixes. Mycorrhizae is something else you don't need for growing things in your Urban Garden! This came up on B2's "evergreen tree garden" thread last year, and there's a whole buncha links about the stuff on that thread if you want to read more. http://forums.gardenweb.com/discussions/3117113/my-evergreen-tree-garden-2011-2015?n=9 Sunshine #4 must be the one they had out when I saw the pallets of it out front that one time--that cost more than #1--and I couldn't figure out why! Still don't know why! It sure looks to be the same as #1 to me! I buy "the cheaper" #1!!! And I prefer to stay out of the "organic" brouhaha! As far as Sunshine #1 goes, the Canadian peat is organic, the perlite is organic, and the dolomitic limestone is organic! That's 99.9% of what's in the bale, and that's good enough for me! Skybird