I use a potting soil mix when I pot up. I have never used the cotton burr compost for potting up. Have mixed a little in the soil at times but never as a potting mix. Maybe someone who has will chime in. My feeling is that would be a very high concentration of cotton burr compost. Jay

Sorry about your transplants because that's a lot of work and time to lose. Like Jay, I also use potting soil when I pot up. I have bought cotton burr compost to use in my flower beds and garden a few times with good results. Last year was an exception. I bought three bags of compost at WM to use in a new flower bed. It smelled so bad that I would never have put it on a food crop. I thought since it was outside that the smell would be 'gone with the wind' in a few minutes. Several days later my neighbor asked my husband what I had used because they were standing in the street talking, many feet from the flower bed, and they could still smell it. I could barely stand to spread it out. I have been told to only use the ones from Texas, but I'm not sure I want to use any of them again.

Matt,

I am sorry you lost your plants, and yes it was the composted cotton burrs. As far as I know, no processor/retailer of cotton burr compost ever recommends that it be used as a potting soil, and in fact, most of them recommend either on the bags or on their website that it be used only as a soil amendment and not as a soil substitute.

The fact that the bagged cotton burr compost had a bad smell should have been a warning...never use any bagged product that smells strongly of ammonia or some other unidentified 'funky' smell. At this time of year, it is common for bagged composted cotton burr products to sometimes get an odd odor because they become anaerobic. If you open a bag and get that smell, either return it and get your money back or add it to your own compost pile, mix it in well with the rest of the pile and let it decompose a few more weeks to get it out of that anaerobic state.

For what it is worth, you probably could have used composted cotton burrs as maybe 20-30% of a potting mix, but you would have needed to add different ingredients like actual soil, and not just a different compost or a seed-starting mix that is 50% peat.

Chalk it up as a lesson learned.

Dawn

Sigh...oh well. At least my peppers survived. It wasn't a total loss. Off to TLC I guess to get some replacements... Thanks everyone for the replies.

-Matt

Well aged manure, which is the ONLY manure that should be used even as a soil amendment, does not have a strong smell to it. In fact, often I can't detect any odor at all from it. Manure is one thing I do not compromise on as far as using a good product is concerned. I buy the bagged, aged steer or chicken manure at Horn's. A 40 lb bag is about $6 and lasts a season for me as I have a pretty small yard. Don't need to use a lot of it, and I never use on seedlings, Only potting soil for them.

Yeah - when I first started out I made too many errors to count! Heck, I still make mistakes. If anyone claims to be a perfect gardener - steer clear of their advice. And sometimes the most experienced of us make mistakes as well.

My mantra - never say never - and progress not perfection.

Susan