Don't panic, patients is a virtue in gardening. Just make sure to keep everything moist enough (but not waterlogged) in the heat. You can always add organic matter on top of your soil as a mulch that will slowly break down and feed the soil microbes. Aged compost and worm castings are always safe to add and won't burn your plants. I like to fertilize using things like used coffee grounds or other seed meals since they are slow release fertilizers. If I have some greedy plants that like lots of nitrogen and phosphorus, I give them a small hand full of alfalfa pellets. Be careful with the blood meal as it is really strong and a little goes a very long way. Enjoy.

Leava, We drill a ton of holes into the bottom of the molasses feed tubs. Tim does it for me and he usually drills them all about the size of a dime. It is very important for the water to be able to drain well. Excessively moist soil causes more problems in terms of disease than soil that drains well. To prevent the soil-less mix from draining out of the bottom of the containers, I cut a layer of landscape fabric in the shape of the tub and put it inside on the bottom of the tub before filling it with a growing medium. You can use any soil-less mix that is high-quality and drains well. Remember that purchased soil-less mixes are, by nature, sterile and contain no nutrition to speak of unless the manufacturer has added some sort of nutrient/fertilizer to the mix. For many years, I largely made my own using Al's 5-1-1 formula from the Container Forum, although I tended to substitute other organic material (generally home-made compost, mushroom compost or thoroughly composted cow manure) for the peat moss. Now there also is an Al's Gritty Mix that is similar....but different (of course). For pine bark fines I used a bagged product sold at Home Depot that often is labeled as Soil Conditioner. It is just a mix of humus and bark fines. While many people on the Container Forum search high and low for just the right ingredients, I just do the best I can with what I find readily available in stores near me. By "near me", I generally mean at stores in Ardmore or Gainesville, either of which is dozens of miles round trip because there are no stores actually near me that carry gardening supplies. Sometimes if there is an ingredient I really want and cannot find, I'll go as far as Denton or Lewisville to get it, but only if I'm only going down there for something else anyway. Turface can be hard to find, but there are other ways to get your grit if you're making the gritty mix, and expanded shale is sold in nurseries I go to in the D-FW metro area. I also have used chicken grit, which is available at farm supply stores. And, I want to add, that while Al's Mix is formulated to drain well (and that good drainage is why people love to use it), we often have the opposite problem here where temperatures in the 90s-100s daily for months on end make everything dry out too quickly, so I try to find a balance between a mix that drains well during occasional heavy rainfall but also retains moisture well in insanely hot summer weather. That means that in years when I expect extra-heavy rain, I try to make a mix that drains extra well or in years when I expect constant dought, I try to make a mix that retains water better than usual. Remember that I also layered old, half-rotted wood from our woodland at the bottom of each molasses tub to help nourish the microbe herd in the container so that organic fertilizers would be effective. The old half-rotted wood soaks up moisture and holds it really well, so that's a case of killing two birds with one stone. Sometimes I just buy and use Miracle Grow soil-less mix. When I do that, I prefer the Moisture Control one because our summers here tend to be very hot and far too dry, so the plants in containers need all the help they can get when it comes to moisture retention. While I prefer to garden mostly organically, I don't have a problem using a soil-less mix with a pelleted sythetic fertilizer in it. Because we have to water containers so frequently here in the summer months, it can be hard to keep the plants well-fed without a pelleted fertilizer. There are, by the way, pelleted or granual type fertilizers that are organic, and they are what I use for my tomatoes. I can't think of the exact name now, but one of the ones I buy comes in a round bottle that sort of looks like a large tomato. I also use the Espoma Tomato-Tone and Garden-Tone fertilizers, which are organic, both in containers and in my raised beds. You do have to add these to the container frequently as they get used up or leached out quickly during periods of heavy rainfall or heavy irrigation. I'm not sure what brands of soil-less mix stores near you carry in bags other than the uniquitous MG brand that is found everywhere, but if you are trying a brand that is new to you, I'd suggest buying one bag first and testing it before buying a lot of an unknown brand. Some of the stuff sold cheaply in bags at stores is just junk that isn't suitable for growing plants in. I will say that the worst stuff I ever bought was the Miracle Grow Organic mix. There was something wrong with it, and I wasn't the only person who thought so. I bought it and tried it in the first few years after it was introduced. It stunk to the high heavens and I believe they had used chicken manure or something similar in too high of a ratio and it killed plants right and left. I tried one bag the next year. Same issues. I waited a couple more years and tried it again. Same issue. Never bought it again and never will. ProMix makes absolutely the best stuff, but it is hard to find and pricey. And, by the way, always, always, always wear gloves when handling potting soil/soil-less mixes of any kind. Because they are sold in bags, air flow often is restricted while they are in the bags and dangerous microbes can grow in the mix inside the bags including the ones that cause Legionnaire's disease. Just by handling the mixes with your bare hands, you can contract some really nasty diseases, including some fungal diseases that are almost impossible to get rid of once you have them. I've heard some real horror stories over the years. Finally, I have had the best success with container gardening of veggies in the summer when I have put them on a drip irrigation kit and a timer. That ensures they get watered enough when I'm busy canning or away at wildfires a lot. While I prefer to stand and water them with a hose so I can check the moisture level in each container before watering it, the reality is that doing that often takes up more time than I have. A drip line system on a timer can be adjusted to water more or less often as needed, but it ensures the plants still get watered during times when I am very busy with other things.

Thanks, Pagan and ewwmayo :-) I love my little blobs; I'm not sure why I find Pseudolihos so intriquing. Are they grown for their beautiful growth habit? uh, no. Beautiful flowers? Nope, again. Maybe it's their fragrance? Not unless your favorite perfume is eau de dead mouse. So far I've head good luck with mine (knocking on wood and crossing my fingers). I grow them under lights on a heating mat in the winter, and in the summer they're in the greenhouse so I can keep them out of the rain and close the door to keep them warm if the nights are really cool. The little ones get watered about once every 7-10 days, and my bigger one gets watered about once every 2-3 weeks. After it's been watered it feels hard, like a golf ball. I water it when it starts having a tiny bit of give when i feel it. I've had that one for 4 years now. Pagan, good luck with yours. The top part doesn't look as deflated as the bottom, so, hopefully, it's on the road to recovery. Right now I want to grow my little blobs until they're bigger, but I'll let you know if I want to get rid of any. Hopefully I don't kill them. Here's a pic of my bigger one now. Good God it grows slowly!

I am another one whose taste has not changed, at all. I have spent the past few days since this query was put up wondering if I was being honest with myself. Surely something has changed over the years, but it hasn't. My horizons may have broadened, I may have seen more things, but the style I like is capacious and has always accommodated that kind of eclecticism. I have not pared down my aesthetic as many have. I was brought up in a family with very strict feelings about overcrowding surfaces and the need for space around beloved objects- my grandmother was more sparse than my mother, but neither could abide jumbles of things. I still have the art I bought as a young teenager at small exhibit at Rizzoli in NYC. I was very proud of my purchase. I love him as much now as I did then, maybe more for all the time he and I (it's a small portrait) have spent together. There are fashion items that enter my house and then leave eventually, I suppose. I had some very pastel/Miami Vice colored cereal bowls from Williams-Sonoma in grad school. I would not have those today- they are very late 80s early 90s and not in a Memphis kind of way. I could imagine picking something like those up again, but according to today's whims, like the ubiquitous bamboo handled cutlery I see on everyone's IG (turns out that flatware costs way more than I would spend on a fashion item, for me, but if it were cheaper, I might have gotten some.)