You have already many good feedback. I would like to share my opinion too. It depends on the SWC features, container size and climatic condition, indoor or outdoor. SWC without a drainage hole is very problematic when accidentally or by rain over-watered the container there is no way to fix the problems as far as I know. For regular container we can use wick to solve the over-watered problem. SWC with overflow feature such as the EarthTainer v. III will be the best, it has overflow hole and it has space between the water reservoir and the medium for air, only the Wicking Basket connected between the medium and the water reservoir. It is an awesome system. I have used homemade SWC without overflow holes, they are about 23 gallon. I have use medium 3:2:1 (homemade) I do not have problems in the rain, my stem cabbage and chili plants enjoy it. Caelian This post was edited by chilliwin on Thu, Jun 6, 13 at 9:06

Stone, those are sweet looking little pigs. Recently Countryside magazine ran a very informative article about this Aussie breed. I found it very interesting esp. in view of their enormous size. I congratulate you on helping to maintain this rare breed. Because of their size I would never have this breed on my farm. Can only imagine the size of their wallows and the types of fences/housing necessary to contain them. My father built a nice, big barn when I was a little girl....that barn collapsed due to hogs (of the usual size) undermining its foundation. Secondly, the propensity for boar hogs to become aggressive would keep this animal far, far from my place. Had a distant relative killed by a hog that he raised when he went out to the pen to feed and was caught in a corner by his boar. His family found him disemboweled and hanging half way through the fence where he had attempted to escape. That was from a typically sized hog not the chest high variety (seven or eight feet in length) that these cute little pigs will grow into. Good luck with your unusual hogs. Judy

Dynamic accumulators are plants that can mine nutrients from the soil better than other plants do, but that doesn't mean they remove all of it from the soil and leave it depleted. Different dynamic accumulators work in different ways so you generally do not end with a patch of ground that is deficient in nutrient A. It isn't like the plants go in there like a vacuum cleaner and 'suck up' all the available nutrient or nutrients that they accumulates. I wish it were that easy and that, if diagnosed with soil that has high levels of a given mineral, we could plant a dynamic accumulator that would pull the excess out of the ground and restore the soil's mineral levels to normal. Instead, if a specific mineral is excessively high, the better bet is to employ heavy irrigation to leach the minerals down more deeply into the soil, thereby removing them from the reach of most plants. Most dynamic accumulators work in one of the following two ways: 1. Some plants can accumulate minerals that aren't really present in large levels in the soil. Legumes work this way. Because of the way they are able to fix nitrogen, they can accumulate lots of nitrogen even when the nitrogen levels are low in the soil where the legumes are grown. You then can put that nitrogen back into the soil by rototilling or plowing those plants back into the ground, or by cutting them and leaving them on the soil surface and letting them decompose. As they decompose the minerals go back into the soil. Legumes are considered heavy givers and that's one reason we often grow legumes like beans, which are heavy 'givers' interplanted with corn or rotated with corn which is a heavy 'taker' of nitrogen. Legumes don't require low-nitrogen soil to grow, but they can grow in low-nitrogen soil where other plants would not thrive, and they can improve that soil and make it more suitable for other plants to then grow in. Some of the legumes that are dynamic accumulators are clovers, alfalfa, peas, beans, and peanuts. When you have an area of ground on your property that is severely nitrogen-depleted, it generally is the legumes that grow there naturally....because they can and other plants can't. After they've grown there a while and decomposed there, the soil's nitrogen levels can come up and then other plants will sprout and grow there. 2. Many non-legume plants that are dynamic accumulators can send roots extremely deeply into the soil and this enables them to 'mine' the minerals that exist in subsoils and which are, therefore, not available to plants whose roots remain in the upper levels of the soil. There are, however, other dynamic accumulators that are more shallow-rooted and they will remove some of their favorite minerals from upper soil levels, but they generally don't strip all of it out of the soil. Even though they are accumulators, they have a limit to what they can mine and accumulate. Some of these plants can grow in soil with mineral levels that are toxic to most plants. So, by removing some of those excess minerals, they actually 'rehab' the soil and make it viable for a wider range of plants. Some of this type of non-legume dynamic accumulators include dandelions, borage, comfrey, buckwheat, daikon radishes, marigolds, mints and stinging nettle. There are dozens, if not hundreds of others. Mineral accumulation isn't the only way dynamic accumulators and other 'helpful' plants enable other plants to grow in soil. Many plants have dependent or symbioc relationships with one another and a specific plant cannot grow without its symbiotic partner. The common wildflower, Indian Paintbrush, is an example of this. Indian Paintbrush needs to grow in fields that have grama grass because the grama grass produces a helpful fungi that the Indian Paintbrush needs. You can grow Indian Paintbrush in an area without grama grass, but only if the soil already contains the mycorrhizal fungi the paintbrush needs. (You can buy and add mycorrhizal fungi products to your soil or you may have mycorrhizal fungi in your soil already depending on what was grown in your soil in recent years.) When native grasses like grama grass produce mycorrhizal fungi that the flowers need, they are functioning as a dynamic accumulator for those wildflower, but they're accumulating a fungus in the soil instead of accumulating a mineral from the soil. Sometimes people try to grow wildflower seed blends or seeds of specific wildflower varieties and become frustrated when the seeds don't sprout at all, or sprout and then die. Often, the gardener hasn't done anything wrong and the seeds themselves are viable, but the micorrhizal fungi are absent from the soil or exist in very low levels. I believe that people who use permaculture methods rely on dynamic accumulators more than the average gardener does, and probably any good permaculture book or website would discuss dynamic accumulators and their usage in greater detail. I read some of Bill Mollison's permaculture writings long, long ago but my brain has arrived at middle age and doesn't remember all the details like it used to. Dawn

@Dave: Thank you for the link to that! I've tried to dig around but many times, experience is better than blind searching, so I appreciate it. I am not set on 3-1-2 itself, just the ratio. @rhizo_1: the 3-1-2 ratio is what most plants want to use, as far as I can read up on, via container gardening and it seems, lawn care. @stevie: the only reason I was going specifically for liquid is because I use a siphon hose-end sprayer, and I thought maybe the water soluble might not be efficient. But I suppose water soluble is water soluble, eh? @daninthedirt: thanks for your addition. I think I overlooked that MG somewhere; for some reason I was convinced I couldn't find a MG 3-1-2! Thanks again for advice and pointers. I am not opposed to a water-soluble fertilizer, but just have been unable to find one in 3-1-2. Hopefully now I have a lead on one!