Good job, rjm! ;-) For container growing, it really boils down to making (or finding) a sturdy, coarse textured planting mix that doesn't need holes poked into it! We ALL agree on that, for sure! This needn't be a discussion about the pros and cons of core aerators....but I have GOT to say.....if you pull plugs from the soil, you are creating a large void. That surrounding soil will loosen to fill that void, creating MORE SPACE between the soil particles. Simple as that. To simply punch a bunch of holes in a soil (no matter if in ground or in container) is not productive. You know, the golf course green is a pretty good example to use for this conversation. That teensy bit of real estate is a completely constructed mix! Because of the constant foot traffic (spikes or no spikes) and equipment traffic, the compaction is such a problem that the golf course industry turned to what is almost entirely a soil-less medium. (This is just for the greens, mind you.) They needed something that would hold up to the abuse. It's funny....a high quality green 'soil' will consist of a great deal of sand, peat (usually), and typically a long lasting product like Turface (WHERE have we heard THAT before???). Interesting, huh? I don't play golf, but have only consulted for several. I found myself wanting to swipe buckets of greens mixes for my container plants, lol. I've been modeling my own container mixes after those golf course greens mixes for many years.

The reason you can't trust the volume of nursery pots, Jim, is that those black nursery containers are all "nominal" sizes. That means the volume of the pots is vaguely related to the stated gallon size. A "5 galllon" nursery can is 10.5 in. diameter and 12 in. tall. My online calculator says that is only 3.75 gallons if you pot 2 inches from the top of the pot. That isn't large enough for any rose past the first year or so if it puts on vigorous growth. The foot stomping is an old landscaper practice. It's just a cheap way of determining settlement without taking the time to water a plant in. I wouldn't do it. Water your plant in to settle the soil. I've seen people planting roses into dry potting soil. I wouldn't do it. Many potting soils have peat moss which sheds water once dry. Those of you in climates with steady rain year round may not have this problem, but in the desert West, once peat dries out, it takes a concerted effort to dampen it. I open the bag of soil, stick the hose in, fill it up and mix. Then I pot with dripping wet potting soil and also water it in. It's mud pies for grownups. It assures that the soil comes to the optimal height in the pot (about 2 inches down) and fills major air pockets. I unpot roses all the time and have never found an air pocket. I don't drop pots on purpose. Our summers are too hot to grow a lot of roses in pots well. We can't keep the roots cool enough through June and July. I overpot extensively. A 3 x 3 rose goes in an ornamental pot that is 22-24 inches high. I use various decorative pots from the big box store and always buy the biggest size. Why? They bring to rose up to height and look more in scale with a landscape. It's funny how a pot looks big in a store and miniature in the garden. Also, with those big pots I'm approaching the 15 gallon actual size I find any healthy rose needs. I do a seat of the pants volume-of-cone calculation to guesstimate the volume of the pot, taking into consideration the potting soil is probably 3 inches from the top of the container. Here's a nice online volumetric calculator. http://www.online-calculators.co.uk/volumetric/conevolume.php

Lots of good replies here. In a nutshell: Sand is weathered rock. Tiny little pieces of rock, broken down by wind and rain and erosion. Silt is weathered sand. These are primary minerals, broken down rock. Clay is different. Clay is a secondary mineral, created from the chemicals given off by sand and silt as they break down into smaller particles through exposure to acids like acid rain or organic acids. Clay particles are tiny plates that fit together very tightly and are attracted to each other by electrostatic charges. Time is the main difference. It takes longer for clay to form than either of the others. Sand, silt and clay are moved around by wind, water and ice. Vermont is rocky because it was scraped bare by glaciers and has not had time yet to develop new soil. Same thing where I am, in the Puget Sound area which was carved out by glaciers. Our soil is what the glaciers dumped as they melted off after carving out Puget Sound and the Strait of Georgia and Hood Canal. It's like gardening in aquarium gravel. Rocks, gravel and sand. No organic matter. I wish I had clay. The river valleys have really nice loamy soil, because they get what's washing down off the mountains - organic matter from the forests, clay from weathering, volcanic ash off Mt Rainier and Mt St Helens etc, and not least, thousands of dead salmon every fall. Migrating salmon returning from the oceans, going up the rivers, spawning and dying and washing up on the banks. The best fertilizer on earth. Prairie soils develop when thick grasses trap wind blown silt and clay. A nice loamy mix of organic matter and soil. Clay soil is what it is. Best to learn to work with it, not against it. You can't change it, only replace it in small areas. Organic matter disappears because the soil microbes eat it. The sand disappears because it gets lost in the clay matrix and sets like concrete. Clay soil is much more fertile than what I have. Clay particles have a very large surface area to volume ratio, so nutrients have lots of surface area to stick to, and stick they do because clay particles are electrostatically charged. In my gravelly soil nutrients wash right through, there's no clay or organic matter for them to stick to. Sand and gravel have no electrostatic charges. All you need to do is add compost and mulch every year. If you have a good worm population they'll work it in. When I had clay I did dig in organic matter whenever planting something not native to the area, and then mulched every year. But if you add a lot of amendments to a hole in clay, you're just creating a clay pot and the plant can drown because water won't drain from the amended soil into the clay. Just add a little bit in a big hole.

I have a really pretty large ceramic pot with no drainage, and it is an odd shape (not round) so I can't find any cache pots that sit correctly. I did read about the masonry bit to drill into pots, but this one is glazed so I feel like it would crack easily. I also don't have a masonry bit or a hand drill. To solve my problem, I went to the store and bought some rocks (~$4 for 40lbs) and some sturdy 1/2 in plastic tubing (~$0.33 per foot). I put the tubing in the bottom of the pot and layered up larger rocks around it, then put in some smaller rocks in between the cracks so that I could not see the bottom of the pot anymore. I chose larger rocks for the bottom layers to avoid clogging my tubing with small rocks, and small rocks at the top so that my soil wouldn't fall down in between the larger rocks. The total depth of the rocks was around 3-4 inches. I added soil/plants on top of my contraption allowing the tubing to hang over the side of my pot. I am hoping that the rocks will allow good drainage to my soil and that I can siphon off extra water in the bottom of the pot as it collects. I just put this together yesterday so I can't attest to how well it works, but I am hopeful since I read reference to this method earlier in the thread. As a last note, the tubing doesn't look pretty coming out of it, but I hope plants will cover it up. I am also worried that the tubing will be yanked out of the soil, so I think I will tape it down to the back of the pot.