Welcome Juliemae! The seeds you've chosen require different treatment and different sized containers. They all will grow better if they each have their own containers. For example, carrots require a container that is at least 8-10 inches deep, and they can be planted fairly close together. Zucchini and squash can get huge. For each plant, you would probably want a container that holds at least 10 gallons of soil, which would be about 16 inches wide by 12 inches deep. Lettuce can grow in a shallow container, but it would need to be pretty wide (2 feet.) to provide enough lettuce for more than one dinner salad. Some of your seeds need to be started in spring, others in summer. I suggest you start slowly, with only a few containers. Herbs are a great place to start. Maybe do one zucchini and some carrots or lettuce. You'll have to buy (or find) containers and learn about what kind of potting mix to grow them in. (You can't use garden soil.) There are some books you could buy or get online that give you a good basic introduction to growing vegetables in containers: The Bountiful Container and The Vegetable Container Bible are pretty good. You could also visit the Vegetable Growing Forum To learn about what each kind of vegetable needs to grow well. Do a Google search on "growing X in a container" for free advice. Good luck!

I did use Miracle Grow fertilizer at first, but then I switched over to Tomato Tone and I liked it a lot better. For one thing, the Tomato Tone seemed to lead to a massive growth spurt. Also, (I'm not sure if this was due to the Tomato Tone or not) but when I started using Tomato Tone the problems with Blossom End Rot pretty much went away. I was losing peppers and tomatoes left and right before that. As far as the dirt, I used the Sta Green primarily because it was relatively light (we live in an upstairs apartment so it all has to go out on the porch) and seemed to have a good consistency. I liked the results, so I will probably use it again this year.

Al and Nathan, I hope that you don't mind my sharing a humorous story about Turface, that really highlights your points and underscores how respected a product Turface is in the industry. My son is a Turf Grass Agronomy major at a large Southern university, and did an internship last spring/summer at one of the major league baseball spring training facilities in Florida. Turface is used for excess water on the fields that occurs during rainstorms, especially those "popcorn" showers (downpours) that occur frequently in Florida. It has helped prevent many a game "rainout" due to its effectiveness. It takes many bags of Turface to do this (for one game), which can become a bit pricey---so it's a protected commodity in the baseball industry. During one sudden torrential downpour, the Grounds Crew quickly pulled the tarp over the infield, and then took cover in the visiting team's dugout to wait out the storm. The Turface bags were kept to the side in the visiting dugout, near where the Grounds workers were standing. The visiting team's pitcher had a bad inning just prior to the rainstorm, and came into the dugout kicking and throwing things, as they sometimes do. As he looked for things to use to vent his frustration, he eyed the bags of Turface to the side, and the Grounds workers caught his glance, and could tell that he was tempted to kick them, also. They immediately, in *unison*, said "don't even think about it!". Throw your glove, knock over some bats, kick the bubblegum containers over, but don't mess with the Turface...unless you want to take on the Grounds Crew... :)

Philoz, I used Air-Pots last year. I used them only for rooting (which will change this year) but they come in sizes to 120 gallons. One of the nice things about them is they are shipped flat. Therefore, the assembly involves one to wrap the flat sheet and secure it with a "fixing" (in my case its something very similar to what holds the upholstery into your automobile sheet metal.) When it is time to repot/root-prune, you can remove the fixing, and unwrap the container from around your tree in place. This is necessary because of the design of the container, but it comes in handy for other reasons as well. The overall design of the container is suppose to prevent (or at least minimize) many root problems associated with container growth. I found it to be moderately successful. I posted on the use of the pots in this forum. I think I just titled it "Air-Pots". I seem to remember a distributor in Australia. good luck, ~james