I started using 5-1-1 for my vegetables and flowering annuals in 2011, so this is my third year. I have been so happy with the results, that I am growing more container plants each year. For example, i grew four tomato plants in 25-gallon smart pots in 2011. Last year i grew seven, and this year i am growing 10. So part of the answer is that I use some of the old mix to make up the mix for the new pots. I also grow about a dozen hanging baskets of flowering annuals each year. At the end of the season I dump them and the soil they grew in into my compost bin. At the end of the vegetable growing season, I remove the plants and their rootballs from my containers and add them to the compost pile unless the plants have shown any diseases. I make an exception for tomato plants, which i dispose of completely so as not to risk carrying over soilborne diseases. I remove the top 5-6 inches of mix from each vegetable pot and use it like a mulch under shrubs at the edges of our yard. The last couple years I decided to leave the rest of the spent mix in the smart pots with a layer of shredded leaves on top. When spring arrives, the mix has reduced to fill about two thirds of each pot. I remove about half of the mix from each pot and use it as an addition of about 2 extra parts to the fresh 5-1-1 I make for new plants. Then I mix controlled release fertilizer and gypsum (for calcium) into the old 5-1-1 in the pots. I top each pot off with fresh 5-1-1-2. I have used the spent soil left over after all this to "hill" potatoes in large containers and to create a few small raised bed garden plots in my yard for things like garlic, herbs and flower bulbs. I grow almost everything in containers because my small yard is surrounded by black walnut trees that poison the soil for most of the things I want to grow. If I could add the used 5-1-1 to a raised bed, I would. What I do may not be ideal, but it saves me a little money and effort and it satisfies my Scottish sensibilities.

You shouldn't have to depend on soil fauna for aeration, it should be built into the soil and you should be sure that the soil is able to remain structurally sound enough to ensure that it will retain adequate aeration for the intended life of your planting. If it will not, you invite those several issues associated with a collapsed soil and you should be thinking seriously about replacing it and turning the old into garden/bed/compost pile. Also, it's best if you resign yourself to the idea that you, not the medium, is ultimately responsible for the plants' nutritional needs. There is nothing the earthworm can offer in containers that you cannot find in other organic or chemical products. In short, their contribution to a more rapid deterioration of a soil that is already well advanced in it's structural collapse is not something I would welcome. Cut/pasted from another of my posts: In my estimation, the only case to be made for reusing container soils is one of economics, and you'll never find me argue against making that decision. If you can't afford, you can't afford it. That said and setting economics aside, you might decide to reuse soil for reasons other than economical. Perhaps the effort involved with acquiring (or making your own) soil is something you might not wish to go through or be bothered with. In any case, it would be difficult to show that soils in a more advanced state of structural collapse can somehow be preferred to a soil that can be counted on to maintain its structure for the entire growth cycle. So, if the economic aspect is set aside, at some point you must decide that "my used soil is good enough" and that you're willing to accept whatever the results of that decision are. All soils are not created equal. The soils I grow in are usually pine bark based & collapse structurally at a much slower rate that peat based soils, yet I usually choose to turn them into the garden or give them over to a compost pile where they serve a better purpose than as a container soil after a year of service. Some plantings (like woody materials and some perennials) do pretty well the second year in the same bark-based soil, and with careful watering, I'm usually able to get them through a third year w/o root issues. Watering habits are an extremely important part of container gardening. Well structured soils that drain well are much more forgiving and certainly favor success on the part of the more inexperienced gardeners. As soils age, water retention increases and growing becomes increasingly difficult. If your (anyone's) excellence in watering skills allows you to grow in an aging medium, or if your decision that "good enough" is good enough for you, then it's (your decision) is good enough for me, too. The phrases "it works for me" or "I've done it this way for years w/o problems" is often offered up as good reason to continue the status quo, but there's not much substance there. I'm being called away now, but I'll leave with something I offered in reply on a recent thread: "... First, plants really aren't particular about what soil is made of. As long as you're willing to stand over your plant & water every 10 minutes, you can grow most plants perfectly well in a bucket of marbles. Mix a little of the proper fertilizers in the water & you're good to go. The plant has all it needs - water, nutrients, air in the root zone, and something to hold it in place. So, if we can grow in marbles, how can a soil fail? Our growing skills fail us more often than our soils fail. We often lack the experience or knowledge to recognize the shortcomings of our soils and to adjust for them. The lower our experience/knowledge levels are, the more nearly perfect should be the soils we grow in, but this is a catch 22 situation because hidden in the inexperience is the inability to even recognize differences between good and bad soil(s). Container soils fail when their structure fails. When we select soils with components that break down quickly or that are so small they find their way into and clog macro-pores, we begin our growing attempts under a handicap. I see anecdotes about reusing soils, even recommendations to do it all over these forums. I don't argue with the practice, but I (very) rarely do it, even when growing flowery annuals, meant only for a single season. Soils don't break down at an even rate. If you assign a soil a life of two years and imagine that the soil goes from perfect to unusable in that time, it's likely it would be fine for the first year, lose about 25% of its suitability in the first half of the second year, and lose the other 75% in the last half of the second year. This is an approximation & is only meant to illustrate the exponential rate at which soils collapse. Soils that are suitable for only a growing season show a similar rate of decline, but at an accelerated rate. When a used soil is mixed with fresh soil after a growing season, the old soil particles are in or about to begin a period of accelerated decay. I choose to turn them into the garden or they find their way to a compost pile. Unless the reasons are economical, I find it difficult to imagine why anyone would add garden soils to container soils. It destroys aeration and usually causes soils to retain too much water for too long. Sand (unless approaching the size of BB's), has the same effect. I don't use compost in soils because of the negative effect on aeration/drainage. The small amount of micro-nutrients provided by compost can be more efficiently added, organically or inorganically, via other vehicles. To boil this all down, a container soil fails when the inverse relationship between aeration/drainage goes awry. When aeration is reduced, soggy soil is the result, and trouble is in the making. Al

Hi Patty, I actually bought Peter's book as a preorder from Amazon after reading about him and his book in Fine Gardening. I gave him his very first Amazon review and got a very sweet thank you note from him! I love the book and he seems to be very realistic and non biased in his assessment of a rose's performance when guaging his assessments against the few roses I already had like Easy Elegance 'Centennial' and 'Julia Child'. I had purchased several roses prior to his book and was happy to see that many I purchased came highly recommended by him. I have 2 'Poseidon' and these so far have bloomed nicely and are very healthy, and performing as he stated. We both garden in same zones and similar conditions although he is more coastal ME and I'm more inland MA. I would love to see his gardens but don't know if they're open to the public. He's only about 2 hours from me so it would be great to meet him and discuss roses with someone who is so knowledgeable. Whiteout is interesting. I just bought (against my better judgement since it's so late in the season) 2 Radler Rambling Red Climbers from High Country Roses (gallon size so hoping they'll be well established) 2 own root Double Pink Knockout Roses and 2 Livin Easy from a vendor on Etsy. Keep your fingers crossed that we have a loooong fall, lol. It's always a gamble here on when old man you know who will arrive! Sharon

I am a novice gardener but I'll still throw in my two cents. I just can't bring myself to discard used soil. I do get that "fresh" soil is best for plants like tomatoes and cucumbers and understand not reusing soil for tomatoes, cucumbers, strawberries and certain other plants but I would consider re-using the soil next year and blending it with manure for other hardier plants like flowers and herbs. This year I did not do anything with my leftover soil until I was ready to plant. My leftover soil was from a few containers from two years ago. Based on research I did I put boiling water on the soil and then added manure to the soil at a 3:1 soil to manure ratio, i.e., for every 3 scoops of used container soil, I added one scoop of manure. I did not have a great growing season but I strongly doubt if it was related to the soil choices, things that were planted in new soil did not grow and things that were planted in repurposed soil did. I will share my game plan for the upcoming year as I planned to create a post about it to get feedback but maybe I can get feedback here. At the end of the season, I am in zone 7 so it will probably be late October/November, I am going to pull up my non-perennial plants and will likely do the boiling water thing again. Hopefully by then I will have acquired a big receptacle and will dump my unused soil in that and then during the colder months basically use the receptacle as a compost bin and add food scraps, leaves, grass clippings, newspaper, coffee grinds, saw dust (if I can get some), comfrey (if I get a chance to plant) to the pile. I'll definitely be mindful of making sure that I am adding the right balance of greens and browns but won't be fanatical about it unless it presents a problem like there's a smell, but at some point, during the coldest months, probably January or February, I plan to carve out a couple of weeks where I will give it my full attention and do hot composting. The next phase of my scheme is that once things start to warm up a bit (early March), I may either buy some worms or capture some worms and add those to the compost bin, add more food scraps newspaper and let them do their thing. And then when the planting season comes around I will use that soil for my plants, note that soil will likey be amended further to add other nutrients and moisture control. After all that I am still wary of planting tomatoes in repurposed soil and as of now I will likely buy the soil for tomatoes and cucumbers, but it really depends on how much planting of those particular plants I plan to do next year. If I only do a few containers of tomatoes and cucumbers I will likely buy the soil, but if I go hogwild, and it appears like my repurposed soil is the good stuff, I may plant some of the hardier tomatoes and cucumbers in the repurposed soil. Also, I'm not sure if extension offices analyze container soil, but if they do I may stop by my local extension office and discuss what I'm planting and how I'm planting it with one of the master gardeners.