Susan,

My mix is not exactly like Al's 5:1:1 but is adapted from the recipe for one of his earlier mixes that he mentioned several years ago. I substitute compost and composted manure for the peat, and mine doesn't have as much pine fines because a mix high in pine fines drains much too quickly in my hot climate, especially with the containers that are in full sun.

This year I went with a slightly higher ratio of pine fines than usual, and my pots are draining more quickly than I'd like. Plant growth is great, but I have to water every day (every now and then I skip a day but the plants sure don't like it when I do) and on the hottest days I have to water in the AM and in the PM.

I do add a handful of lime to each pot as 'insurance' against the mix being too acidic, although avoiding peat helps in that area too. I don't necessarily think the lime is necessary, but I use it anyway.

In early spring, I poured the soil mix from all of last year's containers into the raised beds in Maddie's garden and filled my containers with a fresh mix for this year. Her garden has grown like mad, especially the potatoes in the 4' deep stock tank. I don't necessarily start with new mix every year, so in the years when I use the old mix I just add compost, composted cow manure, Tomato-tone and lime. Sometimes I add bone meal for the roots. Sometimes I add blood meal for nitrogen if I think that the plants were running low on nitrogen at the end of the previous growing season. I don't measure quantities of any ingredients of the mixes as I'm making them. I just guesstimate as I go along, having done it for so long now that I know what each size pot needs and I vary it a bit depending on whether the container will have veggies, flowers, or both.

I like making my own mix because then I know what is (and isn't) in it, and because I can tailor it to the kind of weather we're expecting here....so the mix I use in a drought year can differ a lot from the mix I use in a rainy year.

Dawn

I mix my own, roughly based on the mix by Tapla, and by Dawn, but tailored to my own wetter growing conditions. I still have to add fertilizer again later because all that isn't used gets washed away by the rain. We haven't had nearly as much rain this year as I would consider normal, but we have had a few rains that were just heavy, drenching rain, that just washes through the pots.

The hardest part of the process is finding pine fines. Some years I do OK, but other years the pieces are a lot larger than I would like them to be.

I also re-use my soil the following year by just mixing it with the new batch.

Susan,

Where did you find the pine fines? In OKC? I'm in OKC also, fairly close to you from what i've read (23rd and Drexel). I've become increasingly disappointed with the commercial mixes and I was thinking of making my own. The only mixes that I can find that don't contain synthetic fertilizers (miracle grow) tend to turn into concrete fairly quickly, especially the Green Country brand. In fact, all of the Green Country brand products usually sold at Lowe's and other places seem pretty horrible. I hold my nose every time I go by their mushroom compost. It smells like roofing tar.

-Matt

What vegetables can be raised in containers fairly sucessful, besides tomatoes and peppers?

Charlie

Woo! I wouldn't use the Green Country based on your analyses, Matt, for sure. I had been using Sta-Green, which Lowe's carries, but they are out of it right now, and don't know when they will get it back in. That's kinda what spurred me into the decision to make my own. I got the fine pine bark at American Plant Products. Normally, everything they sell is on a wholesale basis, but they are usually quite willing to sell it in small amounts retail, at the wholesale price, which is why it is so inexpensive. Be sure to ask them what the cost is for anything you ask about, though. The 3 cf. bales of 1/4" pine bark fines, are huge IMO, and you can't beat the price. They also sell perlite and peat, among many other products as well, but I had already purchased some, and had some on hand, so I didn't get it.

I'm wondering if Vermiculite would be able to hold some water in the mix, Dawn??? It should. I guess one could also use the water crystals, but they are so darned expensive, I'd rather find something else. Also, I think that they can dry out and once that happens, it is difficult to get them moist again. I've also noticed that the only time they seem to absorb water is during a really good rain. I find them afterwards, floating on the top of the pots. Since that is the case, I wonder how effective they really are in the potting mix. If they are floating to the top, they really aren't doing their job down in the potting mix as intended.

I may add some chicken manure, since I prefer it over steer or cow manure. It does add some additional phosphorous and potassium that the steer/cow manure is lacking and it also adds some water retention ability to the mix. Also, dolomitic lime, or even Dolomite "flour", a finer grade resembling flour, because the finer the grade, the more quickly it is available to the plant. It's also harder to "over lime" with the DML.

This has become a rather fascinating subject for me and I keep passing on info as get it.

Susan

Sidebar: I found this interesting. Al posted that he waters in mid-day rather than early morning or evening because it tends to cool the containers down during the hottest periods of the day. I am going to try this on my black containers to see if it works.

Here is a link that might be useful: American Plant Products

Charlie, I think most any veggie can be grown in a container, depending on the vegetable in relationship to the size of the container. Dwarf varieties can be grown in much smaller containers than say, indeterminate tomatos. There are so many veggies suitable for containers now than there used to be. I am growing some of my bush beans in containers and they are doing fantastic. Corn would be the only thing I can think of off hand that might not do well in a container, unless it was something humongous like a stock tank, as Dawn mentioned, and even then it might not be practical for the harvest you'd get. I've attached a fact sheet from Texas A&M on veggies suitable for containers and the ratio of plants to container size FYI.

I think some of the folks here are growing squashes in containers - was that you, Carol? And I don't know what else. I do it primarily because I can move them around and I can find places in the sun that I don't have available in-ground.

Hope this helps.

Susan

Here is a link that might be useful: Vegetable Gardening in Containers

Thanks Susan,

Yes I too have some sunlight issues to deal with, so I am adding some containers.

Charlie

Matt,

I'm sorry you've had bad experiences with the Green Country Soil products. We've used them for over a decade now and have always found them to be a quality product.

This year, specifically, I've used numerous bags including mushroom compost and have had the best garden we've had in several years. With that said, we don't buy top soil (regardless of brand) since it has the tendency to harden when wet but I've not experienced that problem with any other soils we've purchased. While I know the amendments (Tomato Tone, Garden Tone, bone meal, epsom salts, etc.) also help, I believe our soil has been the key to our success so far. Given the excessive amount of rain we've experienced, if we were going to have a 'concrete' problem we would have certainly had it by now.

Again, sorry you've gotten an unfavorable impression of Green Country since it's been so reliable for us. Farmer's Grain (in downtown Edmond) carries several "Back to Nature" products which are excellent as well in case you might be interested in using that line.

Lynn

Matt, I have also used Green Country with good luck up until this year. I bought a lot of it this year, mulch, compost, and manure. You're description is probably more right than mine, but everytime I watered, or walked past the containers on a really hot day, it remined me of cross ties or something similar. I didn't notice it with the first batch I bought in the spring, but after that it was terrible. I still have a few bags of mulch that have not been opened and I am just letting them sit outside for awhile in case they are the same.

I bought a truck this week so I will be able to buy bulk compost, so I think I have that part fixed. I now have chickens so the manure part should be taken care of. I was given a chipper/shreader, but it wasn't working and the guy that was going to fix it seems to have forgotten. Anyway, I am tired of the commercial product and I am trying to get away from it completely.

I use the Back to Nature chicken manure that I get from Horn's and have found it to be an excellent product so far. I've used it for about 5 years now and since it has been composted for many years, not just for ONE year, it doesn't burn any of my plants.

The only question I can think of now is that I bought a potting soil called Garden Magic. I didn't realize it at the time cuz I didn't read the bag, duh, and later discovered it is made by the Michigan Peat company, that produces that dark reed sedge peat that I really don't care to use. However, I am wondering if it will work in the 5:1:1 mix or not. Just in case I bought bags of the spaghnum peat to use. Do you guys think I should just throw the Garden Magic soil on the compost pile, or what could I possibly use it for - my blueberries? It is supposed to have some perlite in it also, but that is the single difference between it and the regular Michigan Peat that is so often sold at the big box stores. I have read recipes that use equal parts of the sphagnum (brown peat)and the reed sedge (black peat).

Susan

Well...to be fair, who knows how long some of that stuff has been sitting in the bags at Lowes. I've seen bags of soil just sitting in giant puddles there before, so it's not entirely Green Country's fault I guess. It's the same thing with the plants. They come from good quality nurseries, but once they get to Lowe's, they are not taken care of properly, so it's a mixed bag.

Susan, for some reason, I never get around to Horn's. I don't know why, I just always forget about it. I live near the Lowes at May and 36th, and I work in Edmond, so TLC is on the way home. I'll have to make a point to stop by there.

-Matt

You are very close to my house, Matt. I know how you feel about not getting around to some of the garden centers. I always shop Horn's for my Chicken manure and my Espoma products because I don't know anyone else who carries them. I also occasionally shop at Precure (63rd & Meridian) for a lot of my butterfly plants and they are very reasonable. But, I've never looked at their soils and amendments, so I should check them out. No doubt I will be shopping at American Plant Products even more because they carry a ton of stuff that the retail nurseries do not. I would like to get some plastic pots from them, too, because they are so cheap. I'm sure I'll think of a couple dozen things I can get from them. :)

For awhile, Lowe's plants actually looked better than Home Depot's plants, but now they are about the same. I just hate going there and looking at those poor, burned up things. If you can get them when they first arrive on the trucks, they are nice. But a week or two later and they're sad looking. At one time they were supposed to be sending their nursery employees to training, or hiring those with experience in horticulture, but if they have, I can't see it by touring the stock tables.

I try to watch TLC's Saturday morning gardening program on News 9, because they show a lot of the new introductions and some gardening tips, but I am smack in between both stores with both being quite a distance. If I'm going to drive that far, I want to go somewhere that I know exactly what I'm after.

I used to shop Warren's in Midwest City once or twice a year, making big purchases when I went, but since Mr. Warren passed away and O'Higgins took over, I don't go anymore. They don't offer the range of plants that Warren's did.

Also used to shop Satterlee's on occasion. They were expensive, but often they carried things I could not find elsewhere.

Now, I shop online a lot for plants and seeds, because I grow a lot of plants, including many natives, that are notr found locally. As a butterfly gardener, many of my host and nectar plants come from sources in other states. I have found I also like ordering from Bustani Plant Farm in Stillwater, Oklahoma. Steve carries many natives and hard to find tropicals that I love to grow, too. Steve used to host the Oklahoma Gardening PBS show.

My mail order sources include dogwooderitternet on Ebay, Mail Order Natives, Bustani, Woodlanders, Prairie Moon (seeds and plants). and Everwilde Farms (seeds). Dogwooderitternet is in Arkansas, so he's not too far away.

Susan

Susan, I don't use vermiculite because of the risk involved in inhaling asbestos from it while handing it. I've very picky about what I'll use and even though there are some forms of 'organic vermiculite', I just won't use it. To me the possible health risk outweighs the potential benefit of using it.

My chicken manure eventually makes it into my containers via compost, but first it goes from the chicken coops to the compost pile. I only use one brand of cow manure, Black Kow, because of its high quality and the fact that it is 100% compost with no fillers added. Some brands are as much as 90% filler material and usually the filler is a poor quality black clay soil. I used to use "local" manure given to me by local ranchers but stopped doing that after manure contamination with herbicide residue became a big issue in the 2000s---an issue that continues to this day. Even if my friends aren't spraying the suspect class of chemicals on their hay pastures, most of them buy hay to supplement what they raise and that hay could be contaminated.

Dolimitic lime is the kind I use, and one bag lasts me forever because I don't use that much.

I don't care for those soil-moist pellets you add to your pots. Been there. Done that. Not doing it again. They're great in a hot dry year, but in a very wet year, they kept my soilless mix too wet and I lost a lot of plants. To me, good drainage is more important than the capacity to hold water. After all, if the mix is draining too quickly, it merely means I have to water more often. However, if it is holding too much moisture, there's not much I can do to 'fix' that in the short term.

I think the containers that are draining too fast this year will be fine next year after some of the pine bark has decomposed. When I add new ingredients to the mix next year, I just won't add pine fines.

We have lots of sunlight here and relatively little shade in the non-wooded areas where I garden, but I do try to position my containers so they get either morning shade or afternoon shade. My containers are too large and too heavy to move once they're planted, so wherever I put them in March, April or May in the year I redo the soil mix is pretty much where they stay until the next time I completely redo the soil mix, which is about once every 3 years. I do plant trailing plants in almost all my containers so they can cascade down over the sides and shade the containers from direct sunlight and that helps a lot. The ones that are drying out too quickly are close to the driveway and get more reflected heat than I'd like, as well as full sun from sunup to sundown, and that's just a few.

I have over 100 containers and it will be a cold day in hades before you'll hear me say I stood outside in the hot, midday sun and watered them! I used to do that, but then found that planting trailing plants to shade the sides worked pretty well.

I bought some Green Country mulch this year and I think it is the first time I've used that brand. (I've never used their soil products, but glad to hear they've worked well for Lynn.) I have not been happy with the smell of it either and don't plan on buying that brand of mulch again. The smell drives Tim crazy. He thinks it smells somewhat like whiskey barrels and somewhat like railroad cross ties. Lots of the cheap wood mulch sold in stores is just ground-up wooden pallets, and I avoid that stuff.

Lynn, I agree completely with your assessment of bagged top soil. It is the worst junk on earth and I think it is 100% clay or close to it.

Charlie, I have grown just about every vegetable there is in containers. You can grow dwarf varieties, and you can grow regular varieties as long as the container holds enough soil for them. I use a few dwarf varieties (for example, the dwarf okra varieties 'Little Lucy' and 'Baby Bubba') but mostly plant the same stuff in containers that I plant in soil. The most important thing is that the mix has to be well-draining and you have to provide consistent moisture. There's a guy whose GW name is "Raybo" who posts on the Tomato Forum and he raises tomatoes and corn in home-made self-watering containers he calls Earthtainers. He seems to have a great corn crop every year as well as tons of tomatoes.

Carol, Woo hoo! Hooray for having a truck! Now you can haul home anything you need for the garden.

Susan, I don't know about using that black peat. It is the kind of thing that could come back to haunt you by ruining your mix. I've never seen it recommended anywhere, so I think that's sort of a 'clue'. My concern is that if you get a bad component in your container mix, it can be hard to fix it since you can't easily remove the black peat once it is in there.

I've linked Raybo's website so y'all can see his tomatoes and corn in the Earthtainers. He gets about the best yield from tomatoes that you could ever imagine and I think it is because there is a constant water source and fertilizer source.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Corn and Tomatoes In Earthtainers

Dawn I want to thank you for all the info as I have never raised any container vegetables and am going to attempt it.

By the way Dawn? How in the world did you get so much knowledge? This is great for me.

Charlie

Charlie, You're welcome. I think I just had the great fortune to grow up in the midst of many gardeners, not only in my immediate and extended family but in our neighborhood too. I gardened from the time I could toddle around and follow my dad and "help" him in our yard and garden. We had lots of gardening neighbors who put up with me and my endless questions (God Bless each and every one of them). I learned about 'putting up' the crop the same way, by harvesting and helping with the canning, dehydrating and root cellaring.

As an adult, I have continued learning mostly just by doing it and/or reading about it, and then by searching for answers, solutions and new ways to do things. I still learn something new each and every day and owe much of that to Garden Web and to all the Garden Web members who so freely share their knowledge and experience.

Dawn

I sure wouldn't recommend or suggest that anyone water mid-day if they were watering over 100 containers, Dawn, but you're the exception to the rule of most folks. I only have a few and they are in close proximity to my house and shade. ;)

I think I will do a half and half (peat moss/chicken manure), and a half and half perlite/DE) for the potting mix and see how that works. That would actually make my mix a 5:.05:.05:.05:.05 (pine fines:peat moss:chicken manure:perlite:DE) or a similar variation of that. I am also going to add some dolomitic lime altho I'm not really sure how much composted pine bark fines would raise the soil pH. If they were not composted, I'd be more concerned.

Dawn, Vermiculite isn't what it used to be before the asbestos scare. Presently, there is absolutely none to a very trace amount of asbestos currently found in horticulture grade Vermiculite on today's market. If someone who is still spooked by the older versions of vermiculite really wanted to try it, they could always use a dust mask. But I think it poses little threat as opposed to some of the other things we use and do in our gardens. I would use it but I've since found out that the cells in the Vermiculite that form its water holding capacity apparently break down almost immediately in the soil. I do think it is probably good to use 50/50 with perlite as a seed starting mix and have done so in the past. I wouldn't use it for seed that requires a lengthy germination time, say up to and over a year. But there are few of those.

Susan

Does anyone know a good source of pine fines in the Tulsa area? I am expanding my garden (AGAIN) and would love to throw some of these in.

Jo

Y'all from reading your thread on your various potting mixes, amendments, and the like, I truly wonder how my kinfolk and neighbors all managed to raise such wonderful gardens with nothing more than the native soil and the manure from the barn. ;) It's enough to scare off a novice.

Anna

Well, you had my interest piqued, so I had to do a quick search, and will have to do a more thorough search for my own pleasure at a later date.

That said, the potting of plants in containers began well over a thousand years ago in Egypt where the citizens wanted to grow plants to use for dyes and perfumes that could not be otherwise grown in their sandy, desert soil. Instead they used the rich soil from the banks of the Nile River. It is said that they even traveled with their plants on their journies hither and thither.

The largest and most well-known historic garden was the Hanging Gardens of Babylon created by King Nebuchadnazzar II for his wife, Amyitis. The reason? He wanted to re-create a garden replicating her homeland. Awwww. Nebs was ahead of his time! What a guy!

During early Roman times, Emperor Tiberius constructed a greenhouse out of mica to grow cucumbers during winter. The greenhouse was heated with manure that was incorporated into the soil, and the plants were wheeled outside during the day and back to the greenhouse at night.
Now Tibs was a fellow who loved his cukes! I wonder if they had E-coli back then?????

Then along came the Chinese Emperors, who, during the Han Dynasty, created miniature forests in containers, hence, the beginning of bonsai. Yippee! Baby trees. I love baby trees! Doncha just wanna pinch 'em?

Potting soil was first mentioned in an 1861 issue of the American Agriculturist, a very old, old, old, old, old, magazine, or mazzazine as my daughter used to call them. The writer advised that pots that had been sitting out in the sun all summer should be top dressed with fresh soil, and that all potting soils, sand, moss, and pots should be stored in the cellar. Now, I agree that a pot that's been sitting out on the prairie all summer long in Oklahoma would need to be "refreshed" a bit.

The whole thing though can be wrapped up in the nutshell that I like to call "bigger and better". As container culture has evolved, instead of just providing the basic needs, we continued to strive to grow stronger, more fruitful, the largest, the most floriferous, plants, and consequently, we keep trying to invent better ways of doing just that.

My great grandfather's, my grandmother's, and my father's gardens were all beautiful........at the time. But if they were to see what we can grow today, I think they'd be amazed, and I think they'd also wanna know how to do it....altho I do seem to be the more adventurous of the group...hmmm....

Susan