Gosh, I hope she hasn't been playing with fertilizer! I've seen osmocote advertised but am not familiar with it in person. I'll have to pay a little more attention. These are soft when we find them as they are already in moist potting material. OK, I looked up osmocote on the net and I do believe you're correct. I guess I won't be buying her a bottle of osmocote for her birthday! LOL Thanks for the feedback.

Oh yes! Please put me in the drawing. My husband is a Ward/June/Beave and Wally fan (he's 63 this year, I think he harkens back to a simpler time). Me- I just really like cooking the recipes (not the canning ones though). I have 2 old favorite cookbooks. One is from 1941-called "America's Cookbook. (It says on the cover- "The cover is washable"), compiled by the New York Herald Tribune Home Institute. It is, quite honestly as good if not better, (and at over 970 pages, as extensive), as both of my "Joy of Cooking"s. There is nothing not covered including wines and cocktails, foreign recipes, table setting and service, the well equiped kitchen and even foreign words every cook should know... (Knackebrod=whole rye, hard, flat bread, or Soubise=flavored with onion.) But the recipes are just plain wonderful (Rhubarb Butterscotch Pie, Apple Cornflake Pudding, Lentil Curry, Corn & Sausage Fritters, Shrimp Stuffed Eggplant, Martha Washington's Potato Rolls and of course what would any good cookbook be without a recipe for Braised Opposum?) My other old cookbook that I love and still cook from is "The Modernistic Recipe-Menu Book of The DeBoth Homemakers Cooking Schools of Chicago and New York", published 1920. (Apricot Cheese Turnovers, Banana Puffs in Custard Cups, Cooked Salad Dressings, Bird's Nest Soup made with Irish Moss-I haven't made that one..., Graham Flour Muffins etc.) So please put me in the mix. Nice of you to do this. Rebecca

Yep one thing I learned at the end of some growing seasons, was that the plant I thought would fill up the pot with roots just barely had a small rootball, not worth putting it in such a large pot. So as Nick said, knowing that may help you save some soil. This is why some pots with various plants in arrangement look so great, because you would think the roots are all competing with each other, but in fact, they are growing at different depths or different areas of the pot, not really growing into the entire pot. I have used the techniques of putting stuff into the large pots, or even growing smaller pots in a larger pot, and you can replace the smaller pot with any plant in a similar pot whenever you want. I really recommend that method if soil quantity is a concern. At the same time, you have the beginnings of a good soil mix. The leaves may not be at the right stage for being about 1/3 of your potting mix, but you can also get some bags of compost and mix it with what you have. If the leaves have composted to the fine dirt look, it's good, but if it is still in some rotting stage, it might not be. There are also more topics on what kind of pot soil is good, but you can learn more on that as you go.

Donna, good luck, it sounds like you have a lot going on. Life doesn't get boring, does it? I often freeze things and can them later, mostly fruit for jam because it's so much more pleasant to make jam in January than it is in July! As Dave said, though, sometimes texture suffers. If you're going to make mincemeat or relish, though, you could probably simmer it enough to thicken to a point where the watery textural difference wouldn't be noticed. Annie