yaso, My primary reason for suggesting buying an organic potting soil from a producer you trust is the company has done a lot of the hard work, assuming they are honest, adjusting the potting mix so that the critical components are where they should be. This may be too much information, but those parameters are total porosity, air space, container capacity, available water, unavailable water, bulk density, pH and cation exchange capacity. Also, nutrition (fertilizer) in some form is typically added so that you can grow at least for an initial period without additional nutrition. All of those things are actually pretty easy to test, but most folks understandably don't want to be bothered. If you can not find good organic, potting soil at one of your local garden centers (I avoid HD or Loew's), try a hydroponics store. Irrespective of what you feel about what their primary customers grow, their selection of high quality potting soils and organic components is far superior to the standard garden centers in my area and I hear everywhere. I have been successfully growing blueberries in pots for several years. I grow Jersey, Rubel, Rancocas, Bluecrop, Elliott, Legacy, Misty, Patriot, Revielle, and, as of last Fall, Elizabeth. Yes, I like the old strains. I agree with shazaam that pH management for blueberries is atypical from most of things folks grow. I did a lot of research before I chose my media and I chose not to use the 5-1-1 media and instead went with a media recommended by Dave Wilson Nursery. http://www.davewilson.com/community-and-resources/videos/blueberries-planted-container http://www.davewilson.com/home-gardens/growing-fruits-and-nuts/growing-vine-and-bush-fruits/blueberries-containers I did it because the water & nutrition management of the 2 media are different and I prefer this media which I find more forgiving. That said, you should be able to get excellent results using the 5-1-1 with careful management. Two words of caution. First, be aware that all components vary in their physical properties EVEN from the same producer. Here is one scientific publication outlining meaningful differences from various Canadian peat mosses. http://hortsci.ashspublications.org/content/42/2/349.full.pdf The same is particularly true of pine & fir bark where tremendous physical differences have been noted in barks from the same producer harvested at different times of the year or locals tens of miles apart. The second caution is to test the pH of a test batch your media with all the goodies added prior to adding the soil sulfur. I got very lucky & the components I used following the DWN recipe landed me on a pH of 4.9 without any added soil sulfur. The same is true of the 5-1-1 or any other mix. Your blueberries will not do well at the wrong pH. I apologize for adding to your reading list, but here are some excellent blueberry resources: http://nysipm.cornell.edu/organic_guide/blueberry.pdf https://attra.ncat.org/attra-pub/summaries/summary.php?pub=14 http://www.umaine.edu/mafes/elec_pubs/bulletins/b852.pdf http://hortsci.ashspublications.org/content/43/1/51.full.pdf+html Good luck with your blueberries!

UPDATE! i wanted to report back with some preliminary results if anyone is interested. per everyone's advice, i ditched the vermiculite and went with a strictly bark-peat-perlite mix. last weekend, i whipped up 16.4 cu ft of mix, which filled 5 big sterilite tubs. it worked out to: 36.5% (6 cu ft, 3 bags) bark fines 36.5% (6 cu ft, 1 bale) peat moss (expanded) 27% (4.4 cu ft, 1 bag) coarse perlite (plus 1 gallon of dolomite lime (1 cup/cu ft) for ph balance and 2 gallons (2 cups/cu ft) of espoma garden-tone fertilizer). THIS RECIPE HAS ISSUES. BEWARE: after making the mix, wetting it down, filling the containers, sowing my seeds, and observing for a week, it seems the proportion of perlite is much too high. the mix is supremely light and virtually impossible to compact (i tried, it just stays super loose), and there is plenty of oxygen-containing airspace. i realize that these all sound like good things. HOWEVER, the soil is so fluffy from being full of perlite that it's not wicking water up all that well. the base of the containers are soupy bogs, while the top inch is bone dry. this has made starting seeds difficult because the seedlings are too tiny to reach the vast water reserves (this would not be a problem with larger transplants). in the meantime, i am top-watering the seedlings until they are large enough to reach the moister mix a couple of inches down. next season, i will cut the mix with additional peat and bark to reduce the proportion of perlite. i have much more bulk ingredients and more containers to fill this season, and so i am revising the above recipe by using only half of the 4.4 cu ft bag of perlite per batch, which puts me at 42% bark 42% peat 16% perlite if the little veggie babies survive, i will report back with pictures of the setup. happy gardening!

@bay: I guess you got your answers from Al. I usually try to stick to same size pot when I do partial repot. Sometimes I may go a bit up if I want it to grow bigger/fatten up a bit faster. A lot of my plants are in small pots. I have two large Ficus that are in 7 gallon containers and that is the largest container I have for long term plants. I will be downsizing those. 7 gallons of gritty mix is heavy.

coco does not disintegrate, it resist decomposition and last several years.. i have made a quick video showing how airy it is, and it's certainly not "dust" like it's mentioned in that 2 line sentence about the person in that link you posted say it is, and as i've said, coco can be purchased in coarser grade too. i'd imagine mixing the finer grade coco with the coarser coco would make one hell of a mix that will put the 5-1-1 mix to shame and keep so much money in your pocket.. but i think just the normal texture coco is fine, there are plenty of people who use it on thehotpepper forum by itself with amazing results. it does not compact at all despite how hard it is squeezed. very fibrous which is why it does not really need any additives such as perlite, bark, etc..which saves huge amounts of money. the amazing thing about is it has tremendous water holding capacity while still staying light and airy and not suffocating plant roots. there are so many other reasons why it's superior to just about every type of planting media out there. research and very much doubt you'll find many valid negative things about it.