Justaguy, Here are the questions you asked and my answers. I am interested in hearing about the care practices you used to use your hyponex/peat mixture successfully. I used a kitchen colander full of mix to determine saturation and penetration rates with different mixes. What was the ratio of hyponex to peat and was the peat sphagnum peat? The final mix rate of Hyponex to sphagnum peat with the old soil was 70% soil to 30% peat. I think with the new soil it would be 80% to 20%. I wont know for sure until I plant some containers next spring and test it with the colander. How did you water? Did you water to saturation each time or did you water in sips to avoid the mix staying wet too long? How did you determine when it was appropriate to water again? I used drip irrigation with a timer that let me set three different times per day I could water. It also let me set the duration of each water cycle. The drip system I used had three different drip heads or emitters which controlled the number of drops per minute provided at 60lbs of pressure. The emitters were colored brown, blue, and white indicating the drip rate of each. I normally would use three emitters of the same size in each pot to ensure equal distribution of the water. I would set the timer to water for short periods on each cycle in the spring when the plants were small. I would set the duration longer in the summer when the plants were large and the weather was hot. I would decrease the duration in the fall when the plants were nearing the end of their life cycle. I would also set the early morning duration shorter than the noon duration. The evening duration would usually be longer than the morning duration, but shorter than the noon duration. The plants normally would transpire more liquid from noon until late afternoon than any other time period. The evening duration required more fluid than the morning duration because by observation and measurement I determined that my plants grew the fruit more at night while the plants grew more in daylight. I set my pots on 3/8" tiles on top of large, round landscape stones. I could observe the amount of moisture leaving the pot through the drain hole/holes. I always wanted a small amount of water under the pot after each cycle, but I didnt want any runoff. I planted cucumbers on the outside circumference of the pots in order to watch their leaves to tell me if they were getting enough moisture. I would also monitor the tomato leaves, but they dont respond as quickly or obviously to stress as cucumber leaves. (That is the short answer to the question. If you want the long answer, I can get technical) I never watered to saturation. What sized containers did you use and for which plants? For example what sized pot for a pepper or a large tomato? I typically would line up 10 to 15, 15 gallon containers. I would space them about two feet apart. Each pot would be setting on its tiles on top of the landscape stones. I would run a single ¼ " black plastic water line from my timer which would cross over each pot. I would cut the line at each pot put a plastic tee in the line and drop my emitters from that tee. I planted all my plants in the same size pots. I didnt plant all the pots every year but I did some years. I experimented some years with plants I had not grown before. I unsuccessfully tried kiwi one year. It also depended on how much time I had each year to play with my system. Any special 'tricks' you developed that you believe increased your success? Sure, every gardener does. I could write a book on the tricks alone, but Im not going to. The problem with tricks is they dont always work the same for everyone. A few of the simple ones are as follows. I determined many years ago that I got better results (total output of product) by planting common, compatible vegetables like tomatoes and cucumbers very close to each other. I would typically plant four tomato plants per pot. I would plant eight or ten cucumber seeds around the circumference of the pots with the tomatoes in the center of the pot and then determine which plants were the most viable and pull all but four. I planted three bell pepper plants together with the root balls crammed tight this year in my raised beds. I have some single plants also for comparison. The three plants occupying the same space have a total of eight peppers while the single plants only have two. The plants are still young and are only about 18" tall. It seems that each of the three plants retained its own identity and genetic need to reproduce and produced fruit even though they share the same space. Tomatoes react differently. They dont mind other plants growing close, but they dont seem to like being planted root ball to root ball. I have no interest in growing tomatoes from seed. I probably will next year because I want to grow some heirloom varieties. I usually buy my tomato and pepper plants from a local supplier. I always try to find the tomato varieties I want and then select the most spindly plants I can find. Most people want short plants with thick trunks that look ready to grow. They seem to love plants that already have fruit on the plants not realizing most of those fruits will probably drop due to stress from replanting. I want the tall spindly plants because I always strip off the leaves up to the very top set of leaves. That lets me plant them as deep as possible causing them to grow roots at different mineral, moisture, and nutrient levels. Pots and beds may develop layers of each over a growing season. I think the trick I related in another post about increasing my tomato cage in pots to eight feet tall by inverting one on top of the other and wiring them together was pretty good. Thats enough. Let me know if you want the long answers Ted

The "f" and "b.s." are parts of acronyms to keep my language here pg-13. Even if I ran around all day cursing at the top of my lungs, it wouldn't be an attack, and believe me, if I were cursing you out, you'd know it. If I called you an idiot, which I didn't, THAT would be an attack. If I told you that your disability somehow made you less of a person, THAT would be an attack. What I DID say was to cut it out, and in subsequent posts, that the last time you ran around posting nothing but your blog link all the heck over GW, you saw all the replies of people agreeing that they'd had enough (the reprimand I was talking about, since you seem to have missed it or forgotten that other people agreed with me about your link spam), and you apologized, citing a newly diagnosed medical condition and a depressive alcohol binge. As for your speculation about my gardenweb account and my "act", lol, you couldn't possibly be more off base. This is the same handle I use at every website I belong to, and if I'd ever been banned, this would have been the one account to go. Sorry, your feeble attempt to somehow discredit me is kind of silly. Additionally, you haven't any idea how many threads I've read through or how many searches, specific or not, I've done to glean information pertinent to my own gardening endeavors. I've come across posts regarding this "experiment" more times than I can recall, dating back to the very beginning of your "18 month" (according to your post here, and 18 weeks according to your blog post... hmm) "trial". THIS was not "way before" I signed up, either. This has nothing to do with what kind of person I am, and if you knew my history, you'd have nothing more to say on the matter, and everything to do with the fact that opening up every forum I frequent and seeing the same post sitting at the top of each one is annoying, repetitive and unnecessary. You drawing parallels to my telling you to stop spamming and blaming it on being drunk after being diagnosed with bursitis, to me telling someone with Down's Syndrome to stop talking to me, is so laughable. As far as how I should have approached you, so that maybe THEN you would have used copy and paste, all I can say is... what??? How does that make any sense? You had already spammed all the forums with your link. At that point, it was done. You SHOULD have copied and pasted your information in the new post to begin with, and you should have kept said posts to a maximum of two forums. If you want to talk about breaking TOS, here's one for you that YOU'VE broken, but I won't bother reporting it to GW because saying it directly to is enough for me: "Often a topic is appropriate to more than one forum. For instance, a question about growing roses in Minnesota would be appropriate in both the Roses Forum and in the Northern Gardening Forum and could be posted in either forum. We ask that you do not submit the same posting to more than two forums." Your threats really don't bother me. Anyone can visit the other forums you've been to and clearly see how you have broken TOS repeatedly, so I think we have a little case of the pot calling the kettle black. I appreciate all of your posts where you actually have something to say, rather than having something to link, and I appreciate that you've put time and effort into a blog, but linking it in 6 forums is too, too much, and this isn't the first time it's happened. And while we're on the subject of this pot and kettle thing, I'd like to see how you'd like to explain away some of the things you've said to me in response, but since you're totally not going to read this, and since you already told me you'd "say no more", I probably won't get a reply, unless you were just talking out of your - well, you know... ;) Oh, and being that this is an internet forum, I'm pretty sure personal opinions are half of what makes this place go 'round. Not only was my post relevant to yours, but it was full of factual tidbits that you, yourself, fessed up to in an earlier thread. If your feelings were hurt, sorry. But if nothing else, it appears that you've learned how to use copy & paste, so at least maybe some good has come of this. Down with repetitive link spam. Up with informative posts, and good times! If you can keep it to the latter, we'll probably never butt heads again. Have a nice day, Steve (because I know you're reading this, as much as you want to pretend that you can't be bothered to). :)

I should probably clarify...since it may not clear...that you should be careful how much you water the stuff, and that it's saying a lot that it both retains water and is smaller in particle size than peat moss. You can just run into oxygen/root-zone issues along with waterlogged/rotting roots if you don't water a sedge-peat heavy mix correctly. It's cheap stuff and it would be used in the nursery industry a lot more if it wasn't so picky about water. ...if you do choose to use the stuff, make sure it's not totally dried out or decomposed to the point it's powdery. The stuff decomposes pretty quickly into really fine particles if not stored/displayed-at-store/etc. correctly. It should be moist-in-bag (or however you buy it).

Nice! Your plants look happy in their ring-around-the-tree, and they're far enough out so they can get plenty o' sun. :-)