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.

Al, I've appreciated the thoughtfulness and vigor with which you approach your subject and have learned a lot from you while browsing these forums. I have around 300 plants in containers, in and outdoors, orchids, ferns, common junk stuff, lots of epiphytes on wood, begonias, vegetables, maples, succulents, cacti, etc. I haven't given them a lick of inorganic fertilizer in three years and would agree that the results can be mixed. Lately I've been brewing my own actively aerated compost tea using homemade worm compost, kelp emulsion, a handful of good garden soil, and a few other organic additives in small amounts. This mixture is aerated and vortexed for 18-24hrs during which time the microbial populations multiply, making a rich actively biological soup. I use this regularly on all my plants, and fertilize between compost tea applications with organic seaweed or fish emulsion type fertilizers. I also keep a small anaerobic compost tea brewing and I'll use small amounts of this every month or so. Since I've started using the compost tea my plants have all seen a remarkable uptick in both foliar growth, blooming, and just general "health" as compared to just organic fertilizers. My take on it is that the compost tea supplies a steady stream of microbes that the plants can symbiotically partner with to convert the organics into usable nutrients. I totally agree that good drainage is key and if the soil is too heavy the compost tea can quickly turn anaerobic in the pot and result in all sorts of problems. A fast draining mix combined with regular compost tea applications and organic fertilizers seem to have a lot of advantages and to keep my plants reasonably healthy. I can't tell you exactly what proportion of NPK the plants are getting, instead I rely on an entire ecosytem with all of its sloppy redundancies to allow the plants to orchestrate their ancient microbial dance and get what they need. I understand that chemical fertilizers work, it's just the widespread and longterm impacts that these substances have on the larger ecosystem (gulf dead zone, algal blooms, groundwater nitrification, etc) that makes me want to avoid them, even for container culture. Nurseries are large contributors in this nutrient-pollution overload, but if you add up all small-scale homegrowers who put miracle-gro on their tomatoes it equals a whole lot of nutrients that are being converted from fossil fuels and released into our larger environment. Historically nitrogen has been a severely limited nutrient on the earth, thus the biosphere's incredibly tight hold on it via the humus and soil building processes. I totally respect that you seem to be solely interested in what's best for the plant when it comes to container culture, and I agree that inorganic fertilizer do yield amazing results. But I believe we need to think beyond the individual plant, to the ecosystem in the pot, and then to our wider community or plants animals and humans that we share our planet with. We can (we have the choice!) develop new technologies and techniques that allow us to avoid the use of chemical fertilizers that imbalance our environment and tax our natural resources and instead rely on the built-in recycling and life-support systems of the greatest systems engineer imaginable, mother nature.

To Blaze of glory: I use redwood micro bark as a mulch, now that I dumped my lawn. Redwood microbark is cheap when I buy a big amount. Kelloggs amend looks like tiny bark pieces. I emailed Al to ask about substitutes in the mix, but I did not hear back. I was able to get the gravel at price I am happy with but as for the tur face and the fir bark, I have not worked out a price I am happy with yet. I want to do some tests with containers for plants to see if the gritty mix will work. http://forums2.gardenweb.com/forums/load/contain/msg0519004127574.html?19 Google words like gritty mix failure if you can't see the thread, and it should come up on top I think the problem here, (I hope you can see the photo) the gritty was too big, not screened enough. The pigeon grit could have lime in it. I bought a bonsai mix granite. I was going to use chicken grit but it was made of limestone not granite. Bonsais cost a huge amount of money so if the eBay seller was selling limestone and not granite the negative feed back from angry bonsai growers would put him out of business. The reptile bark was the wrong kind of bark, it was not fir or it was not really bark. He or she did not skimp on the tur face by using oil dri, so that can't be the problem. I think if one cheats on the ingredients you can end up with a disaster. It may be possible to cheat, but I am doing a lot of thinking it over before I start. It would be bad to buy cheaper ingredients and have a failure then go out and buy the right ingredients. That would cost more than doing it right the first time. Someone should create a cheater's guild to the mixes. I have not spend enough time working with containers to be an expert.

Hi Sarah, I'm Pam. :) I can see the advantages and disadvantages of your set up. I looked at the ingredients of the soil mix your using and it seems pretty dense to me. Quote: Contains a blend of sphagnum peat moss, compost and natural fertilizer... Sounds like a good, readily available base to start with. To me, here in the temperate rain forest, it would turn into a bog much of the year. Bog plants are nice. But... adding materials to give it more texture, so the roots have air seems the next step.I will link to the thread you want over in the container forum at the end of this post. It's a very long first post full of facts, so I suggest first scrolling through to get a feel for what's there and focusing on the relevant parts for you, right now. You may want to bookmark that one. Where I am, in a city too, I can get super large bags of pumice at an outlying farm supply store. Not sure the size of the bag, but I can't reach all the way around it and it stands up to my shoulders. One bag lasts me a couple of years. The tiny bags sold in most stores are way too expensive, so this might be something you could look around for, if you have transportation. I also use lots of 'bark mulch in my potting soil mixes. I have a gas station three blocks over that brings in medium sized fir mulch each spring/summer, so I walk my garden wagon over off and on and drag back another bag. It's funny seeing car passengers trying to figure out what that old lady is up to. When I bring a bag of manure home on the bus, in my granny cart, it seems better to wrap it in a plain black garbage bag. What they don't know, won't hurt them. LOL. My point being we each find sources that work for the individual. I like the idea of the boxes on the concrete, since it' will be easy to keep the children clean and not tracking stuff in, plus it's small enough you can keep track of things pretty easy and not get discouraged. I'm wondering how it is going to hold moisture in the heat, and how the heat will affect the center and the edges differently. A great garden experiment. I bet the heat loving herbs will thrive in just the right spot. All that extra heat from the concrete will be just heaven to them. My first idea for the plants like a tomato that wants deeper soil. What about adding some bottomless boxes. That could look really nice. Carefully arranged to look good from the window, but with the taller things not shading the other plants nearby. Yeah, this is where you move things around a few times.Any deeper container will work. I'm picturing the tomato roots going down through the container and then spreading out to where ever in the bigger 4X4 box it finds suits it needs. I wonder if somebody on http://pinterest.com/# has done something like this, it could look so interesting. You have a good base to build on. Two budget tips, since this garden thing doesn't get built in a season, would be 1. at the end of the season some places that only sell soil amendments part of the year, put it all on sale. That's a great time to stock up and have ready for next year. And 2. This is the time of year many counties run composting workshops, and also sell smaller plastic bins at a greatly reduced price. The one sold here is the Earth Machine. It's a nice way to start out. Doing a spring clean up around the area may give you some older fall leaves, then add the weeds and some kitchen compost, and your on your way to having more to add next year. My other two thoughts are you may find once it gets hot, it's drying out too fast. Adding a mulch will help, plus be adding for next years total. As far as next year. I don't have a crystal ball, but I'm imaging these boxes going higher, building the same box shape, just adding it on top. Doing it all at the start is just too much expense. I'm so curious how this is going to work where you are. What fun ! Here is a link that might be useful: The promised link