Quick update- I have spent all day/night (literally for the past 13 hrs and it is now almost 1am) fretting over the possible death of my guys; reading and reading and becoming more and more confused between the various websites' info. One thing that has not confused me is the confidence everyone on THIS site has in Al's GM [Al, how r u not mass producing this already?! ;-) ] The current status of my guys are that they r not sitting in water but have received 2 very hot and steamy treatments in my bathroom over the course of the night- i am hoping this will mAke due by supplying SOME semblance of water w/o drowning them.... one website I read mentioned letting the roots dry out??? Again- lil Miss Confused over here :-/ All is (hopefully) not lost bc thru my trusty google search and Turface's website, I've located a dealer who is less than 5 miles from me! :-D I'm emailing the unsuspecting manager tomorrow and hopefully will be able to move forward w/ what seems to be one of the hardest of the materials to find. *fingers crossed* I will admit that altho I have pics, I am simply too embarrassed to post them :( and also have further confused myself by reading mentions of the 5:1:1 mix but out of pure exhaustion have not fully read up on-yet. It sounds like Al's GM works for all of my guys including all of the succulents I have managed to NOT kill (yaaaay me!). From the fellow forum members' posts, sounds like I can find the proper bark and granite supplies at my local Home Depot. Al - I know you are out there somewhere and I thank you for sharing this knowledge with the rest of us newbies!!! Will post again RE: the process!

That helps, Kat! :-) The soil I was using for the demo at the swap was Sunshine Mix #1. Yeah, that's what the neighborhood cats are using as their own private porta-potty! (I'm putting the lid on the container over night now! When I'm potting things up, I don't like it when I grab a handful of soil--and it goes squish in my hand!) I never heard of Fafard until you posted it, so I don't know anything about it! When I worked at Center Greenhouse (retail location closed in '96) I think it was Premier Pro-Mix that we used for everything--which was mostly potting up and repotting house plants for the customers. I don't remember which mix it was (all the good ones have multiple mixes), but it would have been their most basic "all purpose" or "basic potting mix" one! Any good all purpose mix by Premier should work for you. That said, I don't ever, anymore, use a mix with vermiculite in it! Any time I get within ten feet of vermiculite, I overwater everything--and it dies! So if you decide to get a mix with vermiculite in it, remember that vermiculite holds a LOT of water, and be careful with your watering until you're used to it! I've posted this before, but I use Sunshine mix for everything--in pots! I use Sunshine #1. Number 1 and Number 2 are the same thing, but #1 has a "starter" shot of fertilizer in it--and it's the same price as #2! (at least at Paulino's!) Here's a page that shows you the ingredients for the different Sunshine Mixes. Paulino's carries a bunch of the different mixes, #1 and #2 are about $34 a bale--if I remember right! (I get the Little Olde Lady discount now, so I paid less than that!) Wait! Alright, I'm thinking in bales! Maybe you're not!!! If you want to save some money, I seriously recommend you buy whatever you decide upon in bales! The biggest bale potting soils come in is 3.8 cubic feet--that's about the same size as a big bale of peat moss! The bales are compressed, and 3.8 cubic feet of compressed soil is MUCH more than 3.8 cubic feet of loose packaged soil in a bag! At least twice as much--and it seems to me even more, tho I've certainly never taken the time to measure it! But a bale just goes on and on and on! (I use about a bale a year--most years! Got kinda carried away at this year's Spring Swap!) It keeps forever, and what you don't use one year, you use the next! Mine is outside by the side of the house--you were walking past it coming and going at the swap! In winter you just need to be sure to bring some inside in time for it to thaw and warm up before you use it! But for price comparisons, compressed soil and loose soil is like apples and oranges! Bottom line is you're going to pay a lot more for whatever you buy if you get it in bags rather than bales! You're closest to Tagawa, and they're a good company--they do a lot of their own growing--so I checked their site to see what I could see! They don't list specific products, but I found a picture of a bale of Sunshine Mix, so I assume they keep the stuff on hand! Having used both the Premier, and the Sunshine, for all practical purposes, they're the same thing--at least the one we used back in the 90's! I couldn't find a link to the Premier Horticulture site, but from what I found on other sites selling Pro Mix, I'm finding "other stuff" in some of their mixes, for instance one of them has polymers in it--which, like vermiculite, would have ME overwatering everything! Be sure you check the ingredients of whatever you buy so you can decide if that's what you want--and so you know for sure what you're getting! (Can't do that with MiracleGro--they don't want you to know what's in the bag--cause they don't know themselves what's in it from week to week!) Sunshine #1 (& #2) is just Canadian sphagnum peat, perlite and some dolomitic lime to help neutralize the acidity of the peat--with some nutrients in #1! A very simple and basic mix! Any good mix should have at least those first two ingredients (and probably the lime), and then there are other things added to different brands and mixes. My brother in Illinois uses Ball Mix, don't know which mix, but, again, for all practical purposes it's the same as Sunshine #1! (I've never seen Ball Mix out here!) So, Tagawa appears to carry Sunshine, Paulino's definitely carries Sunshine, and I was wondering what Kelly/Timberline carried, and he lists Black Gold on his site--which is also made by Sun Gro--who makes Sunshine Mix! The only thing I could find on his site was bags, but I can' imagine he doesn't carry a basic potting mix in bales too! The Black Gold mixes that I looked up did have other stuff in 'em--like earthworm castings! I'm sure the Black Gold mixes are good--was it Digit--or David--who was saying he liked them a lot? Go to Timberline's site if you want to check out the ingredients more! I didn't stop to look at who carries the Pro Mix, but I did see that there were a whole list of places, so if you decide on that, you should be able to easily find it. (Bonnie, I think you just didn't scroll down far enough on that site.) You asked about EKO, and I believe they have good products, but if they make a potting soil, I'm not familiar with it! The product you find most often (all over the place) is EKO Compost, and it's used as a soil amendment outside. I know they also have some kind of an Outdoor Planter Mix, but I doubt that that would be appropriate for small pots or for starting things in, a/k/a winter sowing. Ok! A whole bunch of stuff there--and I'm not real sure it's in any coherent order! I'm doing other things too as I type this! If I raised more questions than I answered, say so! About the Hyponex! Yeah, it's like concrete when you're carrying it around--or like lead--but do you remember the samples where I had added water to the Sunshine mix and to the same amount of Hyponex the night before the swap, and the Sunshine mix was all nice and light and fluffy, and the Hyponex was just some "stuff" standing in water--and none of the water had soaked in 'cause there was nothing for it to soak into? That's the "soup" I'm referring to! I kept what was left in the bag for "future reference," but I dumped the soup and the other samples into my veggie garden. Sure hope I didn't wreck my Heavy Clay with it!!! ;-) Gotta go! Let us know what you wind up getting--and how you like it. Skybird

I still think that some manure is added as fertilizer and manure is mainly regular soil. I can carry a 50 lbs bag of rice or other food easily. But that bag is very heavy. More than 50 lbs for sure. I think that bag is marked as 64 quart. With manure, small rocks make sense. I do not care about the $14 or so. But if I start many seeds over winter, I want the seeds to grow. I do not want to waste my entire winter just to save a few dollars. Here is what stated by the Lowe's reviewer. He is a 70 year old man, trying to lift this bag to his car. Then he had to drag it out again to return it.... Bad.... "The particular bag that I bought had been stored on a pallet exposed to rain. I first noticed that it seemed extremely heavy when I loaded it in my cart. ( I'm seventy years old and everything is heavier than it use to.) The next thing I noticed as I went to check out was an unpleasant odor that I assumed was from a broken sewer line nearby. I loaded the bag with great difficulty in my SUV. As I drove off I was overwhelmed with that same odor except stronger. Being quite sure I had not stepped in something, I associated the smell with the bag of potting soil. I returned to the store and with the same difficulty unloaded the bag and proceeded to seek an exchange. From the look on the sale associate's face I suspect that the reason for return is not often given as it stinks. From that point everything was very nice, I received a replacement bag from a different pallet and loaded it with ease (I felt young again) and later found the product to be of good quality as expected. Only point, bags can leak and potting soil left to soak in water tend to ferment..Be selective. " Remember, even composted tree barks, wood chips, etc, do not smell as stink. There has to be some animal content involved. And it smells when exposed to rain. This post was edited by RedSun on Mon, Dec 22, 14 at 12:25

Hi, Sherri - What separates a grow medium that's easy to grow in from one you'll need to battle for control over your plants' vitality (health) lies mainly in whether or not you can water correctly, that is to say to beyond the point of complete soil saturation - so you're flushing the soil of any accumulating dissolved solids/ salts as you water, without having to fret over whether or not the medium will remain saturated so long it limits root function, or worse, wrecks root health. The factor that primarily determines how much water a medium can hold is particle size - the smaller the size of the particles that make up a medium, the more water it will hold. In a grow medium, too much water means too little air and limited root function or damaged root health. So if we look at this issue from the perspective of the plant, we can say the opportunity for your plants to realize as much of their genetic potential as possible increases as the amount of water the medium it's growing in decreases. This idea must be tempered by common sense and how often the grower is willing to water. Since the primary driver of media's water retention is media particle size, taking best advantage of the improved opportunities highly aerated and fast draining soils offer means you'll need to include a large fraction (>75%) of coarse materials in your mix. Given the choice between establishing a planting that utilizes a grow medium that will actually require watering every week as opposed to a medium that will actually require watering every other day ...... use the water-every-other-day medium if you want best vitality/ growth/ eye appeal/ resistance to insect herbivory and disease pathogens, and use the medium that requires the grower to water only every week or two if your focus is on grower convenience. We all order our own priorities, so there's no judgement to be made re what path you choose - just don't go for the convenience expecting you won't need to sacrifice in terms of results. I do know that your choice of grow medium will almost certainly have more impact on your growing experience than any other factor. You can fix poor light by moving the plant, poor nutrition by fertilizing, inappropriate temps by growing indoors and fuss with the humidity level; but, once a planting is established in a given medium, there is not much top be done about it until the next repot. I don't know how interested you are in this topic. There is a LOT of information at Gardenweb regarding media, good, bad, or indifferent. You can see images of the 2 basic media I make and grow in my first post to this thread 5 years ago. I'll be around if you have questions you think I might be able to answer. I've been fussing with container media for more than 40 years now, so I've learned a few things along the way. Al