As a general rule of thumb for a conatiner veggie gardener, how much lime should I be using to be sure I'm covered. 1 tbsp per gallon of mix? That is plenty. I bought some Espoma Garden Lime recently, would it help to pulverize the small pellets and make it into more of a fine powder? Kind of, but not really. The smaller particle size will make it more readily available, but read on please. Reason I'm asking is I think I under estimated how much lime I should put in my mixes last year with mediocre results. I suspect your mediocre results are not really related to lime. I would ask you to consider light exposure, water retention of the soil (particularly if it was a fine particled growing media) and overall nutrient supply before looking to lime issues. Without enough light nothing grows well no matter what we do. With a soil that retains too much water roots die and sap energy from the part of the plant we see. Without a proper nutrient program plants won't direct their food energy (from sunlight) into the kind of growth we want. Lime (calcium/magnesium) is important, but it's pretty far down on the list of things that may have gone wrong. Your mediocre results could be explained by too much/little lime, but I would consider overall light exposure, potting mix drainage properties and overall nutrient program before zeroing in on the lime.

Hum, It really is a matter of personal choice..Usually anything will grow in just about any type of soil mix if it is just for a couple of months..But then you have to decide how long you want your soil mix to hold up, and how will it affect your plants, and your growing area. For me, no matter where I lived and what I plant, and for how long,I would still use the 5.1.1 mix and use Foliage Pro.... I like to get the best growth out of all my plants, even if they are growing for one season..Big roots, massive growth, large yields, and very happy plants.. That is my idea.. But if you decide to go another route, I can't believe that I am saying this, I would buy some bagged soilless mix,and depending on how long you want your mix to hold up, add perlite or some other sort of ingredient to make your mix drain well. I use to use everything from cow manure, to fish, and compost in my containers for vegetables, with tons of perlite, and they seemed to grow ok, that is the ones that out grew their pots and died before the first frost. You can pretty much use any type soil, depending on what results you want.. My father shovels dirt out of the ground and uses this..He gets about a month or two out of his plants, and they are pretty much stunted compared to mine, always turning yellow before summers end,with less yield.. So, I would decide just how vibrant and healthy do you want them to be..I would question just how much yield do I want? How long do I want them to stay wet? Do I want healthy roots that breathe to create huge plants? How long do I want to soil to hold up in structure? From there, you will pretty much decide what will be best for you. You might get a hundred different recipes and mixes suggested, which will only confuse you. So ask yourself what is expected from your plants, and realize the best thing you can do for them is to provide a good porous, well draining soilless mix, that will hold up over time. A mix that will not compact around the roots, and that will stay evenly moist while allowing the roots to take up the nutrients needed with no problems because of the good gas exchange you will want your mix to provide, every time you water.. The 5.1.1 mix does all that and more,while the Foliage Pro provides all the nutrients that plants need, that most fertilizers do not.. Good luck Mike..:-)

Hi Jenn. I've used John Rowley's Interbay Mulch method of composting with great success on an existing raised bed of amended clay garden soil. As long as you have a good mixture of varied ingredients, without too many browns or too many greens predominating, Interbay Mulch should work for you. It's also important to make sure the ingredients stay moist. (Like the ingredients in a compost heap, somewhere close to the dampness of a well wrung out sponge.) And like a compost heap, it helps if the ingredients don't pack down so much that there is no air flow. You want air to continually circulate so the decomposition stays aerobic. You ask about mixing native soil into the layers of the pile as you're building it. If it was me, I'd drop the extra soil at the bottom of the pile, and keep any mixing to a handful of soil per square yard, per 1-2" layer deep. This will help the ingredients to be primed with the existing local soil microherd, but it's really not necessary -- the local microherd is already omnipresent on all the living and dead things in our gardens, fields and forests. :) However, some gardeners advocate for adding clay soil to compost heaps as a growth site for nitrogen-fixing soil bacteria. Personally, I've done both and haven't noticed much difference. YMMV. Any grass, including grass with ripe seeds, which you add to an Interbay Mulch pile, is likely to get consumed pretty darn quick by the microherd. (Although if you have persistant stubborn perennial weed grasses like crabgrass, you may want to keep them out, or keep them to the center of the heaps. Others here could likely advise you better on that issue, if it may be a problem for you.) Some years ago I built an IM heap in the fall. It was originally stacked up about 4-5 feet tall on an 8' x 4' raised clay bed, but it slumped a foot or two within the month. Then I built it back up to the original height, covered it, and left it alone until the following spring. When the snow melted and warm weather arrived, I removed the cover and started raking thru the largely decomposed ingredients. Aside from fresh wood branches over 1/4" thick, nearly everything had broken down into a rich brown-black compost. The breakdown was far more rapid than I usually see here with standard passive compost heaps -- and far more uniform throughout the pile. Even the larger wood branches which remained whole had been stripped of their bark, and the bark reduced to fragments the size of small wood chips or less. There was about 8-10" of compost left once all the branches were removed. I raked it smooth, covered it with a leaf mulch then a wood chip mulch, and transplanted thru it all into the soil surface. The tomato, pepper and basil plants in that area of the garden produced bountifully the following summer, with no weed, pest, or disease problems. Just make sure you follow the standard composting guidelines. Varied ingredients with a good balance of browns and greens; damp as a wrung out sponge; pile loosely so there's room for airflow. Summer rainfall here where I live is enough to guarantee any IM or other compost heap usually stays moist. Depending on your local weather, you may want to check the heap once every few weeks to make sure it hasn't dried out. I found IM a surprisingly fast, efficient and low-effort way to produce large volumes of compost. But if I was doing it again, I'd reduce the number of green branches over 1/4" thick. Though older and thinner deadwood broke down quite well, for me. Good luck! All the best, -Patrick p.s. When I built my IM heap, I had no burlap handy. So I covered the pile with a single layer of the heavy brown paper from torn-open yard waste bags. Weighted down with light boards and small stones, they kept the heap dark and moist enough to keep working through the winter.

Agreed. I wouldn't put it in a springform. I use a rolling boil but it probably doesn't matter urgently. I just drizzle it in while beating in the way one adds oil to mayonnaise. I'm told that the recipe at Add A Pinch is based on the Hershey's recipe--I haven't made the latter since I was a kid, I've made the Add A Pinch recipe a couple of times using Valrhona cocoa powder, which is a revelation if you want a real chocolate experience. It also calls for espresso powder. When I made it with the nine-year-old we left it out and it was still good. The bitterness of the espresso powder punches up the chocolate flavor and gives it complexity, but doesn't make it mocha. Which is a long way of saying coffee would be good. :) If you want to make it parve, you can sub out the milk. It will affect the crumb, but still make a fine cake. Compare this recipe at King Arthur Flour.