That is very impressive, SWilliam. You should have some fabulous vegetables this year. How do you modify Al's 5-1-1 mix? I'd sure like to have a recipe I could make with ingredients found locally that isn't as complicated as Al's. I have Oil Dry, lime, and Osmocote, as well as fish emulsion. And an old bag of pine mulch. The grit and minerals are harder to find.
Sunny

Sunny you can get perlite 4 cubic feet at the Botany shop. William, I hope you will explain again. I'll bump that post if I can find it. The pine bark fines are hard to find unless you can use just pine mulch like they have at Lowe's. William said before he uses planting soil for shrubs which is made of pine bark and other stuff. I am usually impatient and cheap and just use potting mix to germinate. This year I used jiffy mix and it holds too much water in my opinion.

finding al's ingredients in this area is difficult.
what i ended up using was stay green shrub and tree mix. i put 5 cans of this and then added 2 cans of perlite. this is as close as i could get last yr. the stay green is 65% pine bark fines and some peat and they have some lime and ferts also. as i said this is a modified version. al's mix is 5 parts pine bark fines 1 part peat and 1 part perlite with a tablespoon of lime. al's gritty mix is different.
got the staygreen at lowes. lowe's also carries outside on their shelves micro nutrients. just look in the fertilizer section next to the back door outside.
this has made a believer out of me.

william

William I have looked at the fertilizers and still don't know what to get. I have tomato tone and various miracle grows and osmocote. This tablespoon of lime is to 5 cans of the shrub soil and 2 cans of perlite - what size is the can? My lime is pelleted; do you think that will work? What is on the sack of your lime; some of it is dolomite with Mg and some just Calcium Carbonate lime. When you talked about your mix before I looked at the shrub mix at Lowe's and thought with those ingredients I could just buy Miracle Grow, but I was thinking of my many pots of stuff I have here in summer. The little dab of potting mix it takes to grow starts is well worth the effort and expense. Something I used this spring was bad and I think it was the jiffy mix. Some of my plants are doing very well and some are not. In that bitter weather I had the jiffy mix inside and my real potting mix outside. I think I potted some stuff in just the Jiffy Mix and I think those are the duds. You were smart to do an experiment and note the difference. I rely too much on my bad memory plus when I want to plant something I want to plant it now.

That is an amazing difference. I am glad you made the comparison. I have never heard of Al's mix. I did a Google and found a lot about it.

One site stated: l T dolomite limestone to l gallon of the mix.

I found this site that seems to have all the info you could ever want:

Here is a link that might be useful: Al's 5:1:1 mix

i am not saying what i did was correct, it's just what i could find. the sta green tree and shrub mix was about 65% pine bark fines, peat and already had lime mixed in. i basically added perlite. it is also cheaper then all the other stuff. about 7 bucks for 2 cu. ft.

helen- i will go to lowe's in the next couple of days and try to locate you a micro nutrient product. i think foilage pro is what al uses.

it doesn't make any difference about the size of the can you mix with. just keep the same ratio. in my case i went 5 2 instead of 5 1 1 cause the peat was already in the shrub mix. it also drains really well.

william

7 bucks for 2 cubic feet of perlite? Where did you get it? They charge $20 here and I got it from two different stores. Is there perlite sold as insulation like vermiculite? William yours worked so I'm copying. I hate to be so pushy but I have been trying to make this mix for a few years and the lime and fertilizer part is what I am most unsure about. When I made the mix before it was just for coleus and pots in the yard. Starting plants in little containers is more critical.

It is about $20 for 4 cubic feet so that isn't so bad.

no helen- the sta green is about 7 bucks. i think i paid the same as you for the perlite but i think it will last for 4 yrs.

i was at lowes today and the only thing i found with micros was a product called garden club. comes in a blue labeled pastic container and has about 5 micro nutrients. about 8 bucks for a bottle. it is about a 3 1 2 fert and is slow release.

if you buy the sta green, i don't think you have to worry about lime cause there is some in there.

hope this helps.

william

Yes thanks William that should be all I need to know. Now that it is spring, I'll need lots of potting soil. My toads are pairing up in the pond and making a racket. Pretty soon I'll have strings of eggs and then tadpoles. I got a North Star cherry on my porch today(no dogs to bark at the mailman and alert me). I am thinking of planting that now in the dark. I have to get it planted. Certain very bad dogs were missing most of the day and who knows what they were up to. I have been working on their fence and looking for them all day. They came home muddy and tired with dirt on their noses.

Helen, I think that is what my cherry tree is. I never spray it or anything. It will keep you supplied with cherries. The birds don't even both mine much, except for the Mocking Birds and they can have all they want; I don't even bother to pick all mine.

William, you must be the most patient man in the world. Thank you for the instructions!
Now I have one teeny question -- do you have to water more or less with this mix or fertilize more than with a potting mix? I'm just about ready to dive into this way of potting, since I have so many containers.
Sunny

sunny- i was watering about 12- 14 pepper plants twice a day during this past summer. this was a hot and very dry yr for us. i think al fertilizes everytime he waters about 1/4 strength so he doesn't have to keep records on when he needs to fertilize. i am no means an expert on this. you have to remember that container soils are much different then planting in the ground. the containers with this mix drain very quickly. so if you fertilize, when you water you are flushing the plants. so what he does makes sense to me. last summer i fertilized about every 10 days. i don't know if this was right or wrong but i had a ton of peppers.

william