I have never found leaf mold sold commercially in my area. Leaves here - if not utilized by the homeowner - are included in the yard waste pick up and recycled into compost with all the other yard waste ingredients.

Just an FYI, but an organic component in a container potting mix is not recommended. Any organic material will decompose and break down in the mix and that will adversely affect aeration and drainage. That is why better potting soil mixes will consist primarily of inert or very durable/slow to decompose materials like peat, bark fines, perlite, turface, etc.

Of course you can include if you wish but just be aware the soil mix will not hold up well and will need to be replaced seasonally.

Yeah... both kimmq, and gardengal have detailed the same experiences I have found. Here in the Mid-Atlantic East, leaf mold is not a commercial product. The city collects fall leaves, but since I collect my own, I have never inquired what they do with them.

I've been working through the 6 large loads of wood chips I had dumped in my driveway last summer, and have found an interesting thing with pine needles. These are not the long pine needles though, these are about 1" - 1 1/2" long (shorter after the winter of composting.) There were more pine chippings in these loads than in past years. Where the leaves have completely composted, and are giving me loads of useful compost, the needles have only partially decomposed. They are passing through the screen and getting incorporated into the compost. I'm using them in my transplant medium, and they'll go into the garden beds as any other compost would (turned under the soil, and used as mulch.) I don't expect any special advantage of including the needles, but neither do I expect them to cause any problems. Perhaps, because of their structure, they'll allow more air and moisture pockets (potentially a good thing,) we'll see.

Here is the original article that inspired my post. Unfortunately, that grower raises champion plants and he is dealing with a level of perfectionism that just does not scale to large numbers of pots and containers. I'm just not ambitious enough to do my own composting.

Just for kicks, a neighbor's tree sheds many thousands of these cute little cones every year. Each of these cones is a little larger than a quarter in the long dimension. How would it be to add these to soil mixes? It looks like the individual seeds on the cones might come off over time and would probably be below 1/16th of an inch.

It's hard to find a good combination of organic value and stable sizing.

It is your choice but that is NOT something I'd consider adding to a container soil mix!!

For one thing, all those seeds are going to sprout in your containers.