Pam, "My" recipe is just my adaptation of Al's 5-1-1 mix from the Container Forum. I've tried to tailor it to the kind of conditions I have here, as well as to my wish to largely avoid peat as much as possible. I even vary what I put in it and in what proportions depending on whether I'm expecting a year that is wet, dry or average. For example, if we were expecting an El Nino spring with heavy rainfall, I'd mix it so it drains better but if I was expecting a drier year, I'd add coir to help it hold moisture. When it is very hot and dry here, even 20-gallon and larger containers often need to be watered twice or three times daily in hot weather so my container plants suffer in a dry year if the mix drains too quickly. As far as the ProMix, that's a lot of peat. If I was going to grow regular plants in it, I'd add pine bark fines for sure. If I was growing acid-lovers like blueberries or azaleas, I'd still add pine fines, but less of them. I can only dream of growing anything here that likes acidity because my soil and water both test at about 8.2 to 8.3. I can modity the soil and lower its pH pretty easily but not the water, so I don't grow anything that prefers highly acidic conditions. Peat is so peculiar. When it is wet, it can hold moisture forever, and that's what I don't like about it. And, when peat gets really, really dry it is hard to rewet it. In climates where the weather can swing from dropping several inches of rain in a few hours to virtually no rain at all for weeks or even months, I feel like mixes that have a heavy peat component underperform compared to mixes that have only a moderate amount of peat, or no peat at all. I do agree that pine bark fines improve any mix heavy in peat, and would drastically improved most any mix you can buy. The heavier peat component in starter mixes is necessary for great drainage, but I don't like that heavier percentage of peat for growing plants beyond the starter stage. Pine bark mulch seems controversial in terms of being used in a veggie garden and I suppose it might not be helpful in every situation and every climate. However, I have used it in years when I couldn't find much hay to use as mulch, and I loved it. It looked wonderful, didn't wash away in heavy downpours and didn't cause me any problems. I read a magazine article once that I think was written by a Texas gardener who was coping with high clay content...as in almost pure clay. Defying the conventional wisdom, he routinely rototilled huge amounts of pine fines and pine mulch (the smaller pieces, not the gigantic ones) into his clay and had huge improvement in a pretty fast time frame. He didn't even state whether he added additional nitrogen to compensate for whatever nitrogen is depeleting as the bark decomposes, but he had enormous soil improvement and was very pleased. His article made me smile because I had started adding some pine mulch to my soil about 3 years before and hadn't noticed any problems and also had huge improvement. For me, the amazing thing is how fast the mulch rototilled into soil breaks down. If I rototill it into soil in January or February, it is largely gone by the following winter. Only a few pieces that were larger than average to begin with will remain a year later. I started adding the pine mulch because so much of my compost was disappearing every year (as the old saying goes, "heat eats compost") and it seemed like I just couldn't add enough to the red clay to fix it. And, I should add, that my red clay is flower pot clay---I believe I could wet it down and work with it and make flower pots---so it takes massive amounts of improvement to make it workable. I wouldn't necessarily add pine bark to fairly normal soil. Having never had fairly normal soil, though, I use lots of pine. This year I added vast amounts of pine fines and humus to one 8' x 4' raised bed that had amended clay that just was not well-amended enough for potatoes. I then immediately planted the potatoes. That was probably in late January or very early February. Those potato plants are growing incredibly well and are about to flower. By contrast, the four long rows of potato plants planted at the west end of the main garden are 1/3 their size and a lot way from flowering. Those were planted in an 8" deep trench and I covered the seed potatoes with a couple of inches of soil, and then continued to add soil as they grew until the trenches were filled in. It really isn't even fair to compare the performance of potatoes in a raised bed to those in grade-level beds, but it is such a striking difference that I cannot believe it. I do think heavy, heavy rain that filled those trenches with water for several days likely had a negative impact on the potatoes and slowed them down. Clearly I need to add a gazillion tons of pine bark fines and compost to the west end of the veggie garden before next season. It is a sandier-clayier loam than the rest of the veggie garden, but no matter how much compost I add to it, it still seems like it isn't as improved as the heavier clay. I usually grow either sweet potatoes or potatoes there, but then find the soil rock-hard at digging time. It probably is the least-improved soil in which I grow veggies because it started out in better shape than the clay, so I kind of ignored it and didn't amend it nearly as much. Now that the rest of the soil is so much better than the west end, I need to work on the west end a lot to bring it up to speed. Susan, I'm sorry you couldn't get the soccer goal. That would have been so perfect. I find so many interesting things at garage sales that can be used in the garden. I got a wooden ladder for $3 once, painted it a medium purple, and now grow purple hyacinth beans on it. It is just the coolest-looking thing when you see only hints of the purple ladder peeking out through all that bean foliage and flowers. Mommyrosalyn, You're welcome and be sure to let us know what you end up with and how they do for you. That's how we all learn from one another. I did forget to list one favorite (not hard to do when you have 100 or 200 favorites) that doesn't get a lot of attention but which does produce very well in our climate, and it is one called Fantastic. There's also an improved version of it called Super Fantastic. I actually prefer Fantastic, which I have to raise from seed myself because I usually don't see it in stores, but I see Super Fantastic in stores pretty often. When you are tomato shopping in chain stores or nursery chain stores watch for tomato plants from Chef Jeff. That particular line carries oodles of heirlooms. However, if you can shop at The Tomatoman's Daughter or at any of the festivals where Duck Creek Farms sells heirloom tomato plants (see link to Duck Creek Farms website below---their schedule of farmer's market and festivals is available there), then any variety they sell likely would please you. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: Duck Creek Farms

Teri, They don't look seriously ill to me, but rather they seem to have a bit of phosphorus issue as Busy1 said and look a bit too dry as Carol said and may be staying a little too cool at night if they're being exposed to temperatures below about 55 degrees. The phosphorus issue is not at all uncommon in new plants and happens for a combination of reasons. The reasons can include any or all of these factors: --young plants have small root systems so nutrient uptake can be compromised --the plants do not take up and use phosphorus when they still are exposed to cold nights --the problem can occur only with some varieties and not with others. Usually, the purpling self-corrects itself when cool nighttime temperatures warm up a bit, and/or when the plant matures a little and becomes more efficient at absorbing and using nutrients, including phosphorus. I think it is likely they're staying too dry in the smart pots and that is why they aren't absorbing nutrients well and aren't growing. I would assume your temperatures have been the same as mine this week, and we've had daytime highs in the mid- to upper-80s since then and lows in the low-60s or maybe down to 58 or 59. (On Monday night, though, we went to 26 degrees so the cold hasn't completely gone away yet.) Between the mostly high temps and vigorous winds, I think the plants' growing medium likely is drying out too quickly and then the plants can't absorb enough moisture to grow and/or to absorb nutrients. It may be that the Medina is being evaporated away by the wind before the roots can absorb it. I know that sometimes I leave my seedlings outside while I'm gone to a fire for a few hours and then when I come home, they look just awful. In a few hours they've gone way downhill. Why? I guess the same high winds that make fires spread quickly also suck the moisture out of the growing medium. As soon as I water the plants they start to improve and a couple of hours later they look fine. I don't see them go downhill like that when I am at home with them, but of course, if I am at home, I'm watering them if the wind is blowing like mad and they don't dry out like that. They aren't wilted when I come home after being gone on a day like that, but their color has taken a nosedive and a couple of times they've had windburn. I'd try watering the plants really well so that the soil is moist but not soggy and then try to keep it consistently moist. If they are drying out a lot at midday, the swing from moist to dry and back to moist again may be stunting and stalling them. If you think they need a nutrient boost, I'd try some other fertilizer than the Medina. That's not meant as an insult to the Medina because I think Medina makes fine products, but clearly something isn't working so a supplemental feeding of something like liquid seaweed wouldn't hurt and might help. You plants will perk up and look fine in a few days, I think, as long as you can keep them moist. There are a few varieties that turn purple more easily than others. I have about 45 tomato varieties sitting out on the patio in 20-oz. plastic cups and probably 90% of them look fine, but every now and then one here or there looks a bit purple. I ignore it and continue to treat the purplish plants the same as the others and the purple goes away on its own. As with children, I think there are some plants that behave themselves and do as expected and there are others that are just "problem children" and behave differently. Right beside the plants in 20-oz. cups I have much larger tomato plants (about 18" tall with main stems as big around as my index finger and with fruit already formed and enlarging) in 2 to 7 gallon pots. These are my 'early tomatoes' planted in mid.-February from already-large transplants purchased in 5" peat pots. The larger plants haven't shown any of the purpling I see every now and then in a younger plant, and I think it is because they are larger and have more mature root systems. That's one reason I think it likely your 'sick' plants really are suffering more from immaturity than anything else. Finally, from the ingredients you're using it seems like you're attempting to grow the plants as organically as possible. Is that correct? I garden as organically as possible myself, but there are some limits to gardening 100% organically in containers. I'm not saying it cannot be done but rather that it can call for a lot more effort to keep the plants fed. For several years I tried to raise heavy-feeder type vegetable plants like peppers and tomatoes in containers, everything from 1 gallon size to 20-gallon size. I was using only organic products and found it very hard to do. Organic fertilizers are, by nature, very slow release, and that is fine in the ground where there is steady moisture and the roots can spread out and grow and search for nutrients. In containers, though, the frequent irrigation needed to keep the soil moist can leach out the organic fertilizers before the plant roots can absorb them and this can leave the plants in a perpetual state of hunger. You see it in less-than-optimal leaf color, somewhat slower growth and less fruitset. After trying for years to 'fix' the problem with only organic fertilizers, I started feeding them every week or every other week with a synthetic, water-soluable fertilizer and haven't had problems with the plants since. I still use organic fertilizers, including Tomato-Tone and Garden-Tone, in the soil mix, and I regularly feed with liquid seaweed, but when the plants look off-color or stunted, I feed them a little Miracle Grow and they perk right up. I don't have the same fertilizer uptake problems with plants in the ground so that's why I concluded the slow-release organic fertilizers, when used alone in containers, are inadequate to meet the needs of heavy-feeding vegetables grown in containers in our brutally hot climate. I think if a person put their containers on a drip-irrigation system that waters the plants several times a day (so plants never dry out) AND used an injector to feed a water-soluable fertilizer at low rates every time the drip system watered the plants, you could raise heavy feeders in containers in our climate without nutrition issues caused by leaching, but I haven't tried it myself. It is just so much simpler to give them a quick shot of a synthetic water-soluable fertilizer when they tell me they need it. With the drought quickly deepening here, I already know I'll face an uphill battle this spring and summer keeping the plants both in the ground and in containers well-watered and well-fed. I think it is likely I'll grow fewer tomatoes in pots this year than I originally planned. It is a challenge to keep them all watered in regular summers and in drought summers (and springs!) it is almost impossible. Dawn

Thanks for remembering Brian. They were recovering from the cold nicely and then last week slow down with no weather change. It turns out I made two blunders with them. 1) I planted out too early, March 23, and 2) I didn't give them enough water. Next year, most likely I will plant out around April 7. I only gave them half a gallon of a water a week where before I used to give them 2/3 gallon every 4 days. My water meter told me it was moist. I finally just used my gut feeling and stuck my finger in the dirt which turned out to be dry. So I am now mulching and putting them on 2/3 gallon every 4 day regimen again. Hopefully, I didn't do any permanent damage. Frustrated with myself and seeing your nice 5 gallon buckets, I decided to create my own. I don't have a reciprocating saw so my wife was laughing her butt off at me trying to cut a big hole using small drill and then "connecting the dots" :-(. I found a 3 inch Atrium Grate which turns out to fit the bucket nicely and also stayed put all by itself. It's sturdy and has a place for the top bucket to "rest". Here's a picture and also one of the retaining wall which my wife took. I was too ashamed to take the picture. lol. Tammsf: Nice cages ;-). I am in the same boat as you are. I am inland so nights are colder than Raybo or bdobs.

gonefishin, I should have provided a litte more information. Haha... I don't want to hijack this thread...but maybe people making these cages will also be interested in spacing too! This is my first summer to have my garden up and running. So I can't speak from any experience, but I hope that my soil and setup will work out very well. It should be very fertile soil. Here is my setup: Raised garden bed: 20 feet long x 40 inches wide x 16 inches deep (made with split-face cinderblocks 2 high). Soil: I made my own with some inspiration from Mel's mix and SFG. Here is my mix... 1/12 part vermiculite. 1/6 part Soil Pep (Mostly decomposed bark/wood chips). 1/6 part compost from landfill (made from trees, bark, grass clippings, various greens composted for 1 year+). 1/4 part Nutri-Mulch (Turkey manure composted with wood chips). 1/3 part Peat Moss. I actually took the time to mix all of the above with a cement mixer before filling my raised bed with it. So it is well mixed and hopefully provide a lot of nutrients. Drainage should be great as well as water retention. I tilled the soil under my beds (silty-clay loam) before adding my soil. Climate, I live in UTAH near SLC. We are very dry here and pretty warm in the summer (90's usually). I wonder if I should consider one of korney19's triangle cages. If those are 10 feet total then I assume they are a little over 3 feet per side. That would fit about perfectly in my 40 inch space... Thanks again for any help. And sorry to hijack this thread with some of my questions slightly off-topic! (Although hopefully helpful to others as well)