Best Soil for Containers?

15 years ago

I used Miracle Gro Moisture Control for my tomatoes planted in containers this year. It is very expensive and if I can use something better and cheaper, I would like to.

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daylilyfanatic4

15 years ago

I use a jiffy vegetable potting mix. It is better than miracle grow I'm not sure about cheaper. If you want cheaper you'll have to make it yourself.

Get your hands on realy high quality compost. It can be home-made but it has to be aged and sifted well. Get a bale of peat moss and a bag of sand or if you want better quality get perlite or vermiculite. If you can get your hands on worm castings either mad at home or purchased that is great too.

Take
4 parts compost
4 parts peat moss
2 parts sand/perlite/vermiculite

If you have worm castings replace up to 2 parts of the compost with castings.

Perlite and vemiculite cost a bundle but are worth the expense in my opinion.

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Comments (6)

digdirt2
15 years ago
My personal preference is Pro Mix BX and it is frequently recommended by many others too.

There are several brands of ready mixed container mixes on the market that are less expensive than the one you are using (and better too) but as daylilyfanatic said, if you want cheaper than most of the ready-made mixes you'll need to mix it yourself. There are several different recipes posted for container mixes over on the Container Gardening forum here.

Dave
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californian
15 years ago
It is hard to find places that sell it, but if you can get pumice I would use it in place of perlite. The reason being it is denser and doesn't separate from the potting soil when you water it and float to the top like perlite does, since perlite is less dense than water. When I pot up seedlings I always dip the whole pot into a tub of water for a few seconds immediately after transplanting the seedling, I find this minimizes transplant shock. When I do this some of the perlite separates from the potting mix and floats on top of the water. After transplanting several dozen seedlings my tub of water has a layer of perlite floating on the surface.
yumtomatoes
Original Author
15 years ago
I am taking notes for next year! My tomatoes for this year should be ripening soon and I will report back on how the Miracle Gro Moisture Control worked.
tomncath
15 years ago
10b, where in Florida are you? If you're close to the coast Moisture Control may become problematic in our humidity, especially when the rainy season starts. What's the soil volume of your containers?
yumtomatoes
Original Author
15 years ago
I am in Bonita Springs close to the coast. Once rainy season starts here, usually mid-May, it is too hot for tomatoes to set fruit.

My tomatoes are mostly determinate and semi-determinate this year so I expect to get my fruit harvested before May. My plants look like they got some early blight or maybe root rot when we had some unusually heavy rain in January so maybe that was because of the MG MC holding onto too much water. There are brown spots on the stems and some yellow leaves and some brown spots with yellow around them on the leaves. I looked for pictures to compare to on the Internet and early blight or root rot seemed like they might be the cause. The fruit looks good so far. Some had brownish/blackish spots on them. I removed those and discarded them. The remaining fruit looks good.

I sprayed the plants with copper fungicide and neem oil and that seemed to help. I just got some Daconil and will try that next.