MIchele, I am a newbie, but I did see a post regarding soils, and someone said they have used it successfully. Below is a link to that thread.

Here is a link that might be useful: Container soils

I have used it for years with peppers, herbs, tomatoes,eggplant, etc. I Use a dilute 15-10-15 fertilizer when I plant them out and then only a couple of times during the season. It's easy to make growing peppers much more complicated than it needs to be. They want to grow!

"It's easy to make growing peppers much more complicated than it needs to be. They want to grow!"

^^^truly wisdom.

promix will work just fine...

Thanks everyone! I appreciate the info. Now if the weather would just cooperate, I can get my peppers outside to harden off, and get them planted.

michelelc,

What John (fiedlermeister) said... never doubt a Master.

It's been miserable up north too. I hope the weather improves for both of us ;-)

Bill

I use ProMix, it's a nice peat/perlite mix, great success with it for tomatoes and peppers, I fertilize my containers with Foliage Pro added to the water per the directions. My only advice for your containers (courtesy of Raybo and Al) is mix some bark fines (1/4 inch or smaller) if you can find/afford it, peppers like mixes to drain and containers, unless in very hot sun, can get a little compacted and soggy which peppers do not like. The only peppers I grow in "straight" Pro Mix without bark fines is my raised bed which drains because it is raised therefore drains naturally, and gets full California sun all day.

I beg to differ with Robert. I have grown several hundred varieties of peppers in straight Pro Mix in pots and have never had a problem with it getting soggy or compacted.

I value your expert advice John, thanks, my inclination to amend Pro Mix with bark fines or similar amendment stems from others' advice on this Forum and last year's tomato crop grown in straight Pro Mix, which was prolific yet disappointingly mealy in texture, perhaps I did something else wrong with my self watering containers, inconsistent moisture level perhaps

This comment is for the newbies who may not know the history.

The debate about potting soil, peat-based vs. quick draining and drying pine bark and gravel mixtures, has been going on since the Garden of Eden. It amounts to two religions, each with adamant adherents. After a while these arguments get tedious and boring.

My take is that God and Mother Nature don't care what you believe about it, the proof is in the results you get yourself.

John Feidler is the undisputed World Champion Pepper Grower simply because he has been doing it so many years and he has grown so many thousands of pepper plants and conducted and published such careful research on so many aspects of pepper cultivation. His beautiful photos (pepper porn) are all over the internet.

My apologies to Smokemaster, who has been so uncommonly generous to me and other pepperheads over the years with the seeds and wisdom he has so generously shared, and lots of pepper porn to his credit, but com'on Smoke, you gotta admit John is the King. Don't worry, John will retire some day, and you are the King-elect.

So the results you get personally will be determined by your own particular factors and cultivation procedures.

If you plant in huge pots and faithfully water all 200 of your plants every day, and twice in August, you will do fine with the gravel and bark, but if you skimp by with 8 or 10 inch pots and forget to water every day, you will do much better with a peat mix, and the best of class is clearly Promix, not Miracle Grow, certainly not Sta-Green or the K-mart stuff, and heaven forbid you ever fall for Hyponex.

I have never lost any plants with Miracle Grow unless the drainage holes clog up after a lot of rain, but Promix is the best.

Hope this clarifies the story behind the debate.

Rick

Robert--

I have not used self watering pots so that may be a difference. Most of my pots just sit on the drive without saucers to hold the water.For those on the deck with saucers I do empty the saucers if we get too much rain and the water stands in them.

Rick

Thanks for the compliments but I don't have all the answers. I try to share my experience rather than theory and, as you say, different conditions yield different results. Everyone needs to find what works for them in their situation.

Home Depot is carrying a version of ProMix that is different than BX. I purchased some of it because it is in smaller bales that are easier for a 70 year old guy to handle than the 3.8 cu ft bales of BX. I'm not really happy with it. It is much finer that BX and has a lot of sticks and some stones in it. If I were to use it again, I think I would add some perlite.
John A

John1184: Is Homedepot carrying the bigger bags of BX?