Sorry for all the bad info you were given and the wasted $$$ it has cost you and now the many problems you'll have to deal with. Is the Garden Soil a bad idea in containers? Definitely. It compacts badly, drains poorly and leads to plant root rot. Thus the warning on the bag. You'll find many discussions about the other problems it causes over on the Growing Tomatoes forum and the Container Gardening forum here. You'll also find many discussions there about all the issues of trying to grow upside down. It is a passing fad at best and a bad one. While the Celebrity 'might' do ok in a proper sized container of 10-12 gallons and right side up and the Big Beef will need a container of at least a 12-15 gallons for success, the Sun Gold is a HUGE plant - by far the biggest of the varieties you have as it often reaches 4-5' in width and 8-10' tall. It seldom does well in even a 1/2 whiskey barrel sized container without a great deal of extra work and care and feeding. Next year stick with varieties that are bred specifically for growing in containers. There are many of them available. Your plants are young enough and small enough that they can still be transplanted into a proper container mix and proper containers and do well IF you want to invest the money in making the needed changes. Good luck. Dave

Hey there, Aggierose. I haven't used all the different types of liners available. I have had to research and ask questions just as you are doing. While I respect Gary's opinion and recommendations, I would hesitate to use the fiberglass tarps myself because of all the critters that seem to use my pond. The raccoons and the muskrat would have torn up the tarp very quickly. You might have tree roots and rocks that could eventually cause problems. I went with the 45mil EPDM made by Firestone 11 years ago and have been quite happy with it for my 1000 gallon pond. It seem to be the most popular and cost effective way to go but others have different opinions based on their experiences. On my first liner pond I got a 45mil EPDM liner on sale at a pet store at the end of the season for half price. Since then I have used roofing rubber (45mil Firestone EPDM) from Menards. Just about any home improvement store that sells roofing material sells the same thing. It is frequently on sale at a reasonable price. If there is a lot of construction near you, you might be able to get a bargain price for a left over piece. There has been some discussion as to toxicity from the roofing material on this forum but I have not come across any post that claims it was harmful in any way. I have seen references to roofing material that was treated for resistance to moss and molds but I haven't actually seen any EPDM that included that for sale. There have been numerous threads on this topic on this forum so you might want to do a search. As for the underlayment, it depends on the soil composition. I have almost pure clay with no rocks and the tree roots grow around the pond rather than at it. Since the drainage is really bad, the materials I tried out rotted very quickly and I wound up using none at all. The smell was awful.

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Interesting reading. For ME that is! I learned something from it. ------------------------------------- Early in our cooking-baking life, we learned firsthand the enormous difference between making chocolate chip cookies with butter that is essentially melted, with room-temperature butter, and with butter at refrigerator temperature. The temperature of the ingredients has a lot to do with how the cookies turn out. If you put a warm, melty dough into the oven, your cookies will spread before they begin to set up. Too often they'll run into one another, becoming a single crisp, crunchy mess on your cookie sheet. The cooler the dough when it goes into the oven, the less it will spread. Another reason that cookie dough is refrigerated is that it gives the gluten time to relax. You don't want to mix a cookie dough containing wheat flour any more than absolutely necessary, as the more you mix it, the more gluten develops, and the more rubbery your cookies will be. Letting the dough rest in the refrigerator for at least half an hour does wonders for relaxing the gluten and letting you produce cookies that are soft or crunchy (depending on your preference), but not tough and rubbery. Finally, letting the dough rest in the refrigerator also gives the flour more time to absorb the liquid more fully. This allows the dough to become drier and firmer, which produces a better consistency in the finished cookie and also better taste. Even Ruth Wakefield, creator of the Toll House Chocolate Chip Cookie, said she chilled the dough overnight. A writer for The New York Times recently conducted an experiment with a batch of chocolate chip cookie dough, where he baked a portion after chilling the dough for 12 hours, for 24 hours, and for 36 hours. The 12-hour cookies were fine; at 24 hours "things started getting interesting," with more even browning and better flavor; at 36 hours, the cookies browned still more evenly, and had "an even richer, more sophisticated taste, with stronger toffee hints and a definite brown sugar presence." In an informal taste test among his colleagues, the 36-hour cookies won conclusively. We have been speaking mostly of chocolate chip cookies � the dough of which we generally can't muster the fortitude to store in the refrigerator for even a few hours � but the rules can be applied to nearly any cookie.