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!

Hi Cheryl! This one is T and T. I have made it several times. Hot Buttered Rum Mix 1 lb. light brown sugar 1 lb. confectioner's sugar 1/2 lb (2 sticks) butter - room temp 1 qt vanilla ice cream - slightly melted Light rum ground nutmeg Combine the first 4 ingredients with a mixer and store in the freezer. For one drink, put 2 tbsp of ice cream mixture in a mug. Add 1 shot of rum and fill the mug with boiling water. Garnish the top with nutmeg. Enjoy! Stacy

That's pretty much the problem. Commercial potting mixes were originally made for seasonal things, annual flowers and/or veggies, and they do a fine job for that purpose. Most mixes were never meant to last for more than a year or two, and yet many plants in pots these days are long lived shrubs and trees, such as citrus. And actually there is another area where we can look to for advice, in addition to the fine folks who've developed Gritty Mix and 5-1-1 Mix; Bonsai enthusiasts. They've figured out a lot on how to keep looooong lived plants in pots, often the same pots(!) for decades. Really, Gritty Mix is very similar to Bonsai potting mix, without the painstaking layering of various layers of different sized particles. A well planted bonsai pot mimics the layering of soil in nature. But we don't need to do that for Citrus, just a well draining, long lasting mix is fine.