Dear angierainbow83, Please think about the info from Jodi and Al. I add my own story below. Since thinking through my own experiences will help me too, I hope you don't mind. I believe for me, I need to separate the garden beds from my containers; just as a two bedrooms can be used differently while still being a room, a separate approach to garden beds (to use Al's words, more "organic") vs. containers (more "inorganic") is still gardening. Good luck on your journey! Over the past few years I seem to be suffering from a case of harvest envy. Due to space and location, I do not have the ability to grow vegetables in the ground due to shade, but I do have a very sunny spot where containers work fine. I have "successfully" grown various vegetables (and am lazily including tomatoes in this category). I say "successfully" since I have never been able to come close to the level of harvest that neighbors get when the essentially identical plants with similar methods EXCEPT the plants are grown in the ground. In fact, I can say this with with confidence since I have provided them with their plants. I have experimented with various combinations of top soil, organic potting soil, compost and small gravel. (I won't go into nutrient supplements I have tried.) I have used about 15gal lightly-colored plastic pots raised off the ground. Given my growing climate, young plants move into these pots in early May and typically are taken down sometime after Columbus Day. The plants are still producing, but the colder temps negative influences many of the types I grow. In the case of eggplant, tomatoes, cucumbers, and peppers, for example, my plants are 5-6ft tall and produce a crop not quite sufficient for a small family throughout much of the season. When I take the pots down at the end of the season, I typically find the exterior soil to be damp/dry while the center below the stem and near the main roots to be very wet. Further, there are many small roots near the soil surface, possible due to the thin mulch layer I applied (thinking I needed more moisture retention). There are some larger roots that spread in the pots, but not a tremendous amount. The best fruiting, distribution and size of roots was in the year where I only used organic potting soil without a mulch cover. Although I can't say with 100% certainty that by making the soil more organic I caused this problem since from year to year I changed conditions (and growing conditions change too), the evidence is pretty well stacked against me.

Any potting mix will usually work, but it is important to remember peat and compost does not last more than one, perhaps two seasons. By then it will be too disintegrated and doesn't hold on to water and nutrients very well. It looses its' structure and can become very dense. Something odd happens when I use peat based stuff more than one or two seasons, it gets too compact and I've had weird issues with nutrient absorption in the plant. The ideal soil for roses in containers is debatable, but will usually contain varying parts of garden compost (leaves, bark, canes, wood chips etc.) sand, a bit of clay, perhaps some peat, composted cow/horse manure (I swear by it), seaweed meal... The idea is to get a good texture which drains, breaths, yet still holds water and nutrients well. With very large containers in which you cannot replace the soil every year it's a good idea to use more sand than you otherwise would do, and a bit of clay. Well composted garden waste (bark, wood chips, cut offs...) work fine as a base, and you can use some peat if you need too (holds water). If there is enough sand, and watering is not a problem, you can get by with replacing the top layer with new compost once a year, and adding some type of longterm fertilizer. It might sound very fuzzy, but if you start with a bag of potting mix you can easily blend in more sand, dry clay powder, and some kind of fertilizer. If the potting mix has a reasonable ph (around 6) you don't have think much about it, but if you make your own from scratch and use pure peat, add enough lime (source of calsium) to get the right ph. A lot of clay can result in higher ph, it depens on the type. If you easily can replace the soil every year you are lucky and usually any good potting mix will do. If you have trouble with containers drying up too quickly, you can add water crystals (the filling in diapers). Roses grown with organic fertilizer tend to live longer in areas with frosty winters, especially compared to roses who get water-soluble stuff like miracle grow. This post was edited by taoseeker on Wed, May 29, 13 at 19:00

Kristy, Different manufacturers blend all kids of different ingredients into their products labelled "potting soil" and "potting mix." In fact, the same product from a national or international company may have different ingredients in a product with the exact same name or basic label. For example, a potting soil sold under the Scotts label might have composted rice hulls as a primary component if manufactured in Louisiana or Texas, while having composted pine bark fines as a replacement for the rice hull component if manufactured in Georgia. Another thing you should be aware of is that both potting soil and potting mix might be essentially the same ingredients blended in different proportions. The fact that the label says "potting soil" does not automatically mean the product has "dirt" or "topsoil" as one of the ingredients despite what others may say. A "potting soil" may be composed almost entirely of composted bark fines, forest products, composted manure, and other products that have not necessarily ever been a part of a soils layer in the earth. However, most "potting soils" contain some form of "dirt" in the strictest definition of the word, simply because the mix may have some sand, limestone, or vermiculite, all of which are sedimentary in origin. But then again, "potting mixes" also may contain mineral components such as sand, limestone or vermiculite which begs the question of whether they too should be designated as "potting soil" instead. Now ... TOPSOIL Back when the Midwest was native prairie, the topsoil layer may have been a foot or two deep. It took 10 - 12 thousand years after the melting of the glaciers for Nature to form that layer of topsoil. It only took about 150 years of poor farming techniques to wash that layer of topsoil into the Gulf of Mexico. Since it takes about 500 years for Nature to build an inch of true topsoil, nobody is gonna sell it for 2 dollars a bag or 60 bucks a pickup load. If you buy "topsoil" in a bag, or in a truckload from a nursery, I'll bet you're actually getting river bottom dredged silt, bottomland farm soil, or a manufactured product containing sand, silt, and a variety of composted leaves, garbage, sewer sludge, etc. Read the label ... if there is one. So, back to Mix vs. Soil ... what are you getting in the bags labelled "potting mix" and "potting soil?" READ THE LABEL! If the product is packaged by a reputable manufacturer, the label will always have the components listed along with some other information that should give you a good idea what the product is intended for. Bottom line: If you're starting seeds, rooting cuttings, growing plants indoors or that require a sterile, soilless medium ... make sure the label informs you that the mix meets your needs, is comprised of sphagnum moss, perlite, vermiculite, and other products and is sterile. If you're filling containers to grow tomatoes outdoors, and the transplants are well beyond the stage where dampening off is an issue ... don't worry whether it says "potting soil" or "potting mix." Just read the label and pick a product that will give you a nice, loose-textured, well drained growing medium capable of retaining moisture but not becoming too soggy and not drying out to quickly. Bill

Basically, in lamens terms (if you want to be nice & call it that), the seeds were started at the same time. The first three plants are 4, 5 & 7 inches tall & grown in Hyponex soil. The last three are 11, 13 & 13 inches tall & grown in MG Moisture Control Potting Mix. The pictures may have been more helpful if they were all side by side, but then the one taking the picture would have to be a mile away due to container size & then you wouldn't really see the difference as much, yada yada yada blah blah blah, hence the pictures above that most (not all) people could determine size of the plants since the containers are pretty much all the same size. But then, if you were never really that good at math, you might not be able to figure that out either.