Wow, a lot of great ideas and uses for these. I have some comments/suggestions, too, but firt let me give an alternative source for people who can't get their local car washes to part with them. I bought two from a guy who gets them from a famous soda bottler. (Don't want to give them free publicity.) They originally had syrup in them, any residue of which might actually be beneficial in soil! I am using one of the barrels to keep my blackberry bush confined. I cut the top and bottom off the barrel, buried it in the ground with only a few inches showing- and yes, it was a lotta work!- then planted the bush inside it. One way berries spread is by root suckers. But the roots are so deep by the time they get "out of" the barrel, that they can't send up suckers. If I was to use the barrels for strawberries or other plants, I would do one thing differently as far as drainage. I would drill the holes about 3 inches up the sides, not on the bottom. That would create a reservoir to collect water that ran down too quickly, without actually soaking the rootball. The water would slowly be drawn back up by capillary action. This is the principle behind self-watering pots. I also would use the heaviest, clay soil I could find. To me, most potting soil looks like wood chips! Everybody hates clay "because it's so hard to work." But in the pots, you never work it- I haven't in my garden either for 34 years!- so that's irrelavant. Clay is not only the most nutritious soil, but it holds water best of any soil. I would also put a minimum of three inches of grass clippings on top of the soil, more if it fit. Between the clay soil, the mulch, and the drainage holes up the sides rather than the bottom, I bet people could water only a third as often. The final suggestion is using these barrles to collect rain water. Like Mandy, I am mechanically challenged, so I can't help with installing spigots and stuff. But I wanted to mention that you can in effect turn several barrels into one large reservoir, by connecting them at the bottom with PVC pipes. You would only have to let rainwater into one barrel, and the PVC would let it fill up All of them. You could then put a spigot in the last one "in line," and get water from all of them when your garden needed it. Oh, in these West Nile Virus times, you want to make sure to put screens over any openings.

I've been picking up truckloads of this compost for 3 years after laying a 6 inch layer on my sweet corn bed as mulch 3 years ago....one day I moved some of the top layer aside and was blown away at the millions of redworms that had moved up through the bed and began to congrigate in the top layer of this compost as red worms are wont to do. I've experimented with this compost and all I can say is redworms freek out when you give it to them! They will devoure a 3x3 box 5 feet tall filled with this compost in 4 weeks! Leaving about 3 feet of worm castings behind, crazy stuff. I had brandywine tomatoes all year long this year and still have huge tomatoes coming in in the middle of January.

Go ahead and try it. I've been using field soil in my pots for 8 years now. My soil is about 30% sand, 30% silt, and the rest clay, so it is a heavy dense soil. Water lightly. Watch your pH. I've done some side by side work comparing colorado spruce, lodgepole pine, dogwood, silverberry, choke cherry plugs planted into soil vs plugs planted in a bark based mix. Only the silverberry noticed. Details: 410 plugs for conifers, 412 plugs for deciduous, planted into Beaver Plastic styroblock 15 x 1000 ml blocks. (15 1 liter cavities per block) If you are really worried about drainage, put 1.5 inches of wood chips covered with newspaper in the bottom. The paper will keep the dirt from filling in the pore space in the chips before it consolidates. Soil has advantages over bark. You don't end up with that abrupt transition between the root ball and the surrounding soil. For some plants it's too heavy. I'm experimenting with compost based mixes since I can get it from the city inexpensively. To hedge your bets, you may want to try raised beds. Till your field, then run a bed shaper over it. then plant your liners in the raised bed. Some bed shapers will also apply plastic mulch at the same time.

First, let me say that I'm not a commercial vendor or business. I have more varieties & seeds than I can grow and offer my extras at a cheap price to cover shipping, special envelopes, expenses, ebay & Paypal fees, etc. What I make is miniscule--it's almost a break-even in small amounts, and considering what it costs me in supplies & utilities to grow them til harvest, it may even be a net loss. Any money goes towards food on the table & my mother's Rx's or supplies. Without getting too personal here, she's diabetic & mid-level Alzheimers and I have more than 1 handicap/disability. As many here may know, I've given away many seeds for free in the past, both here & other places, as well as sometimes trading & bartering. This is just a way to get some harder to find seeds out there to people to grow, some aren't easily available commercially, (Olive Hill was great this year!) so it's a good cause both ways. I've distributed probably 20+ packs for free this year at the Buffalo-Niagara Tomato Tastefest party, in addition to donating 60 packs to the event as winner prizes, some still unclaimed (actually 50 packs--I won Smallest Tomato category! Anybody that won please contact me by e-mail if you still haven't picked your choices--yes, YOU get to choose 10 packs!) Anyway, generally 20-30 seeds per pack, even more for some small seeded varieties... about 300 tomato varieties, it increases every year. While I often use generic descriptions, I also try to include personal comments on how they did or what I thought of them. Pics are available for most so you know what they should look like, what the seeds came out of. Many are not bagged but I use some unique practices like isolation, distraction planting, timing, location/selection, etc. Commercial places don't bag blossoms, though they do grow larger #'s of plants to reduce their chances of crossing. I actually make it very difficult for crosses to occur. You really have to throw the plant distance/closeness theory out the window and think outside the box on this one--I've actually found that others that plant with sufficient or great space between plants often get crossed seeds and I don't. Plus I often regrow my seeds the following year to insure what it's supposed to be, not just germinating to check leaf type. If you feel you've got a variety that isn't what it was meant to be, I encourage everyone to e-mail me at matermark@gmail.com to let me know about it and I'll pull it and make good on it. And if I grow a variety from well known commercial sources that you've already mentioned here, and it's not correct, (yes, it happens many times, from many you've recommended above), I come right out and say it's suspect (say, PL Watermelon Beefsteak or WinsAll) & don't offer it, pull it or replace it. I usually outright discard seeds and try another source if it doesn't seem like what it should be, instead of selling those seeds or giving them away as "bonus" seeds like some often-recommended-here companies do--ie: Azoychka bonus seeds many are familiar with....plus you know what I've went through re: Dr. Lyle... Yes, many places charge shipping or handling charges that often are higher than the seeds... plus many people compromise what they grow because of high S/H costs incurred from ordering from multiple places. I've found ways to cut those costs considerably, so I pay the shipping. I don't really have any minimum order levels though try to stay in nice rounded numbers like $3-5-10, and have even worked with people with smaller quantities of each variety, of course it takes much more time & is more expensive for me to pull 20 packs of just 5 seeds than 5 packs of 20 seeds. And you don't need to be an ebay member either, it's just that that is my most common, easily accessable outlet, and I use it in the spring mostly, when I have all my seeds together, ready to decide which to plant. I also put my extra plants on craigslist in May for a buck or 2. So, once again, I'm not a business, and this isn't an ad or an offer--I'm an enthusiast. Like I said, if someone is looking for just 1 variety or so, I often help at no cost or SASE if it's something I have enough of and easy to get to & have time. Hope this helps. Mark, who must harvest peppers, take a "non-compliant" diabetic mother shopping for Halloween candy "for Trick or Treaters" she says, carve 2 Atlantic Giant pumpkins in the cold, and hopefully finish planting my garlic. Still no frost yet here in the metropolis named after "beautiful river", but expecting one tonight, almost a month later than usual...