How retentive do you find your mix with all that stuff in there ;-)

For my mixes that may be too well draining, I'd be flushing all that liquid gold out .

Re: the myco. I posted this once as AFAIK it's all one big marketing $$$$. It's plently in native dirt. I have seen all the rave++++ on myco from those mary-ju-wanna growers. I think there is some benefit on myco for pots, since the medium is so sterile. It's been a few years since I bought somo ProMix/Sunshine, but they did use to tout they has some Myco in it

Well....I used to think I knew what to do with pots/soil. But then I tried the 5-1-1 mixture (for a few years) which drains super fast (found in the soil forum) and that didn't work well for me...too acidic. I'm going back to my original type of soil...which is like Deborah said (lots of everything mixed in)...it's really water retentive which is fine for more mature roses, but is tricky for bareroot roses. Don't water the bareroots very much in a rich soil as the roots can rot.

There are lots of people here who are more knowledgeable than I am about what to put in their pots....I feel like I've made a mess of things and am learning all over again.

I read somewhere that mycchozorial (sp.) can be killed in transport to the store...too hot.

I don't think I'd put in manure.

Deborah - my goodness...your gophers are so destructive!!

All my roses are in plastic pots, 5-12 gallon.

In Europe the vast majority of roses are grafted onto Laxa, so best to keep things on the slightly alkaline side.

In my coastal zone 11, the tricky bit is to provide enough water retention to help them through the insane summer heatwaves, but also enough drainage to avoid root rot in our very wet winters.

After a few mistakes in my earliest plantings, my typical mix is usually about 40% Plagron lightmix (peat-based with perlite, neutral ph), 40% Stender potting mix (bark based but ph7.5), and the remainder is a pumice, perlite and clay mix. To that I add multiple scoops of composted sheep &chicken manure pellets. And of course the mycorrhizal fungi on the roots themselves.

I use this, or some variation of it, not just for my roses but for most of my plants, unless they have special needs, like acidophiles.

I wish they sold the Fox Farms products in Europe, that stuff looks great!

Maybe I am missing the boat on this one but all I ever put in the pot is MG potting soil or Kelloggs if I can find it.. i have always been to nervous to add anything else

Most of the MG box mixes is primarily peat and some bark/wood in the mix. Often, you may find superb results in year 1, as IME, it's loaded with Fertz . For a year 1 BR planting, I'm planning to just keep it lean on the feed and want it focus on the roots

@seasiderooftop I've used fox farms here multiple times (not for roses) and it's good soil but it's not like... miracle soil or anything. And it's super expensive. And I'm starting to feel wary about all the different ingredients that some products boast about using... when I consider the carbon footprint of these bags of soil with imported ingredients that are probably being removed from their native areas, hurting them, to be sold elsewhere... I don't know. That doesn't seem worth it to me. I don't think we need all sorts of trendy ingredients to improve our soil, there have got to be better ways. I am not great at container gardening but I'm going to try again this year, feeding with liquid feeds that I will make with materials from my garden. If it works decently well I'll be ecstatic.

@Mischievous Magpie (CO 5b)

Definitely agree with you on the sustainability issue, in addition to better drainage that is a great reason to use less peat. I think in the US/Canada there's still a lot of it but here in Europe it's definitely getting depleted very fast.
Another ingredient I am cautious of is so-called "algae", I really look closely at what kind of algae they use.
There is one kind known under various names (maerl/ rhodolith/ lithothamnium/ phymatholithon), that is used as a soil conditioner and source of calmag. They call it algae but it's actually an extremely slow growing coral (about 1mm/year) that is scraped from seabed deposits by dredging. Some countries have banned maerl dredging but not the sale of maerl products, but with awareness increasing the industry rebrands it as "algae". It's pretty bad.

@seasiderooftop wow that's horrendous. It's industry of course, there's countless articles you can read about the virtues of gardening for the environment. Of course a garden, especially a well-planned eco-conscious one can benefit the environment that it is immediately located in. But what is the cost of that garden in terms of materials harvested from other parts of the world and the fuel it costs to refine them and ship them all over? Where are all the articles reminding people of that side of it? As you said, it certainly isn't all on the peat industry alone but the many soil supplements and fertilizer products as well. We see incredible gardens on social media and then we buy products that we think will help us replicate them.

That was long. I'd better pack up my soap box for the day.

Magpie - really? You're going to make your own fertilizer? I sure hope it goes well. :)

Seaside - oh, that does sound terrible.

@rosecanadian I'm going to try, anyway. I'm going to try to make fertilizer "tea" from certain garden trimmings, kind of like the way people do that with comfrey. Basically you just put the green trimmings in a big bucket, cover them with water (and maybe weigh then down with a brick so they stay submerged) and then cover the bucket for a few weeks until it's fermented. Then it's like a concentrate that you'd mix with water and use on your plants.

I'd be careful about anything you're going to put on food. Like I don't put my worm leachate on my strawberry plants, etc. But otherwise...sounds like a great experiment!

@rosecanadian OK I will keep that in mind 😊 I've got plenty of borders I can use it on instead.

No doubt! :) :)

I agree with Sheila and keep it simple

@Sheila z8a Rogue Valley OR What clems are you growing in pots? Any pics? I'm on a clematis kick lately.

I am just growing two in pots ATM. Multiblue and Miss Bateman. I just grow them up for a year before I put them in the ground. I have other older clematis growing around the property. Here, the heat is a challenge for them. Perle d'Azur is my favorite. Diamantina is very strong. I don't have many photos.

I'll try to take more photos this year. Romantika here.

I don't have the money to spend on expensive soils and mixtures that I don't really understand, roses here are pricey enough, and I spend plenty on them every year.

What I use instead is what I already have; very heavy clay soil that i mix it with perlite in a 40/60 ratio with some additional water retention granules scattered into the mix. The idea is that it should provide amazing drainage in my rainy climate and still provide a good base for water/nutrients to stick around the soil. I will have to water daily anyway during the summer so as long as it doesn't get bone dry within 24 hours I can say that it's done it's job.

If the soil shrinks over the years then I can always just top it up with more garden soil, saving me money since perlite doesn't degrade. As for fertiliser, well, I just use a slow release chemical form 3 times a year. Whatevers easiest for me I will do.

DISCLAIMER: I've only done this for one season so far on a single rose as a test (before I rapidly invest in more pots that flood the rest of my garden) and the results have been exactly as expected. We'll see how it does this year before I start officially endorsing this everywhere I go lol

Magnus - I hope it goes well for you! Keep us posted. :) :)

I love that everyone has their own answer to this question.

I think @a1an made a good point that perhaps a lot of the additives are a bit of a scam. We want to feel that we are doing the right thing for our plants and there's money to be made in selling us various things to give us that feeling.

I don't know if there's a definitive answer to this thread's original question, although, if you went to the container gardening forum, they would tell you there is.

I have learned a lot from reading the posts over there and it has moved me to try to improve drainage with bark, clay pellets, pumice, perlite etc. But maybe adding all this stuff doesn't really make a huge difference unless you follow their full method.

I see that both @Kristine LeGault 8a pnw and @Sheila z8a Rogue Valley OR stick to potting mix, and obviously that has worked very well for them to grow beautiful roses.

@Magnus - England there is a poster on the organic gardening forum, @strawchicago z5 , who grows wonderful roses in her clay soil.

To each his own I guess!

Magpie, here's a pic of my fave clematis, General Sikorski, gowing up into a potted tree of Shockwave. It was a random temporary placement the first year I got Shockwave, and it really rang my chimes. I've decided to leave this combo where it is.

Shiela, Perle d'Azure was one of my top fave clematis, but I lost it when we had to have the fence it was on replaced. I've wanted to get another one it ever since.

@susan9santabarbara well that is just a fantastic photo. Also, I can't remember what that black succulent is called but I'm jealous of yours! Can't grow that here.

Magpie, It's an aeonium. I just call it my black aeonium, but a gardening friend in OK told me that one of its names is something like Swatrzkoft (sp), so I remember it for Stormin' Norman General Swartzkoft (sp) from back in the day. But I think it's spelled differently. It's beyond spectacular when not blooming, b/c of its black leaves, but it has the added benefit of making fabulous spires of yellow blooms from Feb-April. If you look closely, you can see a few spent bloom spikes of it in the background.

@susan9santabarbara Thanks! Great info.

Susan - that's beautiful!! You made a great choice!!

a1an Our local Walmart and even the big box stores have pots on clearance now...I picked some up. I think that potting soil is somewhat climate related and gardener related. We need well drained like Magnus because of the winter rain, yet we have drought all summer. So far MG potting soil (and ones like that) retain too much water in our winter. The nursery seems to use about half perlite, half potting soil, but I can't source that. Several nursery youtubers swear by bark, but they aren't growing roses. I tried a 50% sandy silty loam 50% bark and it worked well, but too hard to get.

The last is one I haven't tried, but he shows and hybridizes roses https://tlcfocus.com/paulbarden/main_august2002.html