How it looks from my perspective: If the decision to reuse container soils is an economic one, who can disagree with the decision? If you aren't concerned about expense and are willing to go to some minimal extra effort to build a good soil, that is what I would elect to do. Here's why: Container gardeners need to direct primary focus to insuring that the soil they are using will remain able to provide adequate air to roots for the expected life of the planting. Along with the ability of the soil to hold ample air, comes good gas exchange and drainage for rootage. All the other major cultural variables affecting growth are easily manipulated. Water, nutrients, sunlight, and to some degree, temperature can all be controlled easily. Aeration cannot and its consideration is as important as water and light to plant vitality. The breakdown or collapse of soil structure occurs at an exponential rate. If we imagine the usable life of a peat based container soil from a bag, it deteriorates from a reasonably good soil when fresh to unusable after 2 years. It's not unreasonable to expect the soil to lose at least 20-25% of its air holding ability by the end of the first growing season. In the first half of the second growing season, it will lose about another 25% of its air holding ability and in the second half of the second year, near total collapse is likely as the remaining 50% is lost. Though this is an example of an imaginary soil, it is very close to what actually occurs. Another way of saying it is: Even though a soil might be performing acceptably at the end of the first growing season, you should expect a rapidly accelerating collapse in the subsequent year. So, if you use a soil for 1 year and mix it 50/50 with a fresh, similar soil, 50% of the soil will have totally collapsed by the end of the growing season, and the other 50% will have lost about 25% of its ability to hold air. If a soil is not holding enough air, it's holding too much water. Water and air retention vary inversely in soils and when one increases, the other decreases. When soils hold too much water, you have to hope that the plant will use enough water or that enough water evaporates to prevent root rot issues and even minor cases of over-potting can mean terminal misfortune. At risk, I speak out often against the use of compost in container soils. It supplies nearly nothing in nutrients and clogs the soil macro-pores container gardeners should covet. Containers are not gardens and much of what works in the garden can cause difficulties in containers. Additional possible considerations are carry-over of fungal spores, the possibility/probability of insects in various stages (eggs, larvae, etc) and carbonate precipitates from your watering water. A slow soil will also have accumulated fertilizer salts and possibly insecticides that you may have applied and forgotten about last season. I suggest that container soils be turned into the compost pile or garden and fresh soil used in its place unless monetary considerations prohibit. Al

At 10.6-4.4-1.7 NPK %s its pretty high in P and quite low in K for houseplants, but it's still a so-so fertilizer and a better choice than any of the fertilizers with P (the middle number) as the highest %. How you fertilize to get the most out of your plants depends on your soil and watering habits. If you water in sips, you might fertilize at low doses infrequently - like maybe every month or so. If you flush the soil regularly when you water, it would be more appropriate to fertilize more frequently at higher doses. W/o some knowledge of the type of soil you're using and some knowledge of how you water, no one can really give you any meaningful advice. It took quite a bit of looking to determine the NPK %s of the fertilizer, but I have no idea what other nutrients it contains. It's important that your plant gets all the nutrients essential to growth - do you have any information that points to its complete nutrient content? It's NPK %s indicate it would be ok for any of your plants, but for the slow growers you might want to cut back on the concentration. It's just another soluble fertilizer, cut from the same cloth as Miracle-Gro, Peters, Schultz, and others. Tell me how you water and I should be able to give you a dosage that will work. Al

Thanks Dave. I've never seen a specific acidity for green tomatoes. I've always heard that they are more acidic than ripe tomatoes, but I've never seen a reference to how much more acidic. Going on the assumption that you cannot swap low acid ingredients (for instance you can't swap onions for peppers, even though they have similar acidities), it made me wonder why tomatoes for tomatillos were a safe swap - even though the tomatillos are much more acidic than tomatoes.

Okay I'm in San Antonio and moving to Bandera. Hold off on the fertilizer unless you want to use an organic like alfalfa pellets or corn meal. If you've never seen those flowers then you don't have buffalo. Can you take a picture on a cloudy day from a height of about 3 inches. If the grass has flowers or tassels or anything on it, that would help. You have not used the really hard stuff, but then you did use 7x too much, so I'd let things rest for a couple weeks. Today's herbicides often don't show progress for at least a week. If you have St Augustine, for example, 2,4-D will kill it. Applying anything at 7x the rate would probably wipe out St Aug. St Aug is a very hardy grass, but one weakness is sensitivity to most herbicides. It's weird. Let's figure out what grass you have before going crazy with treating it. If you water the fertilizer in immediately after applying, it should not hurt a normal grass. The problem comes if you don't water it and then the morning dew creates a very salty solution that will kill most grass (but not usually St Augustine - weird). If you have a hand sprayer of Weed b Gon, you could spray those dandelion looking weeds. Just spray the leaves - don't drench the soil. They might be thistle, which looks very similar before it flowers. As for fertilizing the lawn, I'd just enjoy the bluebonnets for a couple more weeks.