Ok...to be fair, it's not that I'm lazy, it's just that I have a crazy work schedule, and work 10-11 hours per day and I haven't convinced myself to start making my own soil (or non-soil potting mixture) yet. This is my first year gardening in containers outdoors, as I have moved to an area with very nice weather (Southern California) and we have two balconies.

I have read COUNTLESS threads (all of them awesome) about mixing soils....Start with 25% Coir, add 25% Perlite and Vermiculite, 40% mulch and 35% compost, a drizzling of worm poop, a dash of nutmeg, eye of newt...and viola...you have an amazing do-it-yoursel mix. Ha ha...(Yes, I know that adds up to more than 100%) I enjoy this info very much, and will eventually graduate to making my own mixes, but right now I feel realy "lazy" and want to know what's best for me to start out with.

Currently I am growing Cherry tomatoes, habaneros, jalapenos, serranos, basil, mini bell peppers, chives, cilantro, some lettuces...

I am currently using Miracle-Grow POTTING soil after starting the seedlings in peet pots. The strong plants eventually get potted up to 3 and 5 gallon "smart pots", cloth pots. Is this blasphemous? I definitely don't recall reading any other soil threads touting the benefits of miracle gro. :-)

Thanks for any advice.

In all fairness, I did pick up some coco coir bricks also....so I was thinking of maybe adding some of this to the potting soils to bulk up the volume of the soil, as well as to hopefully avoid compacting. I noticed that after watering my 3 or 5 gallon containers, I often lose 10-20% of the volume to compacting, and I'm guessing that's not good for the roots to have such a compact soil.

Thanks again.

It is true that it would be better to make the mix, but the ingredients are much harder to get then even what you posted. If only it was just a few things I could pick up locally, but I found out you need Turface MVP and crushed granite. I tried to substitute chicken grit for feeding chickens but that turned out to be filled with lime, so I could not use that. I would have drive out to all kinds of far away places to get that stuff whole sale and they only sell 100 pound bags. Sometimes you have to bag it yourself.

But miracle grow is kind of inferior, although the best I can get all in one bag. It will not drain well enough. But, the hydroponic stuff could be a good idea. I have to try that out. I can easily get to a hydroponics store.

If I put things in pots they do so badly that soon I put them in the ground before they die. This is all because no "company brand" will put right mix in a bag and sell it.

Miracle grow is only peat moss, a wetting agent and some perlite, it may have "forest products", but I don't see any. Supersoil used to be the best, but it got sold and now it is the worst mix I can buy. If I use it the plants seem to die instantly.

If I use miracle grow I at least use the organic one that they sell at big lots. I used to use the "water proof" MG in the blue bag but I found the only difference is is that they add perlite. So I bought a big bag of perlite and add that to the organic bag.

If you look on the citrus section their is a citrus mix called "gritty mix". I dont know how good it is for veggies but it works wonders on citrus.

Also alot of the MG I used to buy had gnat eggs in it. Sometimes I get a good bag with no gnat sometimes I get mucho gnats.

The regular vegetable mix (miracle grow) should be fine for the rest (I haven't grown lettuce so I'm not 100% sure on that)

1 part turface, 1 part perlite, 1 part shpagnum, 1 part crushed gravel or something like that? Im probably off a bit but I know it goes something like that.

That mix is probably what I will be using for my Mandarin when I transplant it after I harvest the fruit in the next couple months.

If I'm not mistaken, somebody makes & sells bags of Mel's Mix (fella on youtube was at home improvement store sorting through all the options there).

FWIW, I've had good luck with Miracle Gro potting soil (lots of folks like to dog the big guys, but that's not always fair).

I want someone to sell me Al's mix, so I don't have load 100 pounds of crushed not (decomposed granite) and buy Tur face, which I think is baked clay online.

I would spend money gladly if someone would sell me that. Or maybe I could just buy the granite and the Turface since the other things in it I could get. But what about the fir bark? I was hoping I could substitute Kellogg amend for fir bark.

I would never buy compost from anyone else, since I can make it myself better then they can.

That is SOOOOO not the case!! FWIW, MiracleGro in any of its formulations would be the last potting soil I'd opt for simply because the particles are too fine, too uniform and too easy to collapse. And a collapsed potting soil spells disaster by providing poor drainage and insufficient aeration. We do a test planting each year at my nursery of the various potting soils we offer - same plants, same watering regime, same light, same fertilization. MG comes in at the bottom of the ratings every time - the poor performance of the plants testament to the gooey, dense mess the poor things are trying to grow in.

To the OP - either the Dr. Earth or the Fox Farms would be better choices as they contain a good proportion of bark - the barkier the soil (the more texture), the better. These are not worm poop or guano based soil mixes....unless you are mistaking a fertilizer for a potting soil. Both will have some organic nutrients included (perhaps the worm poop or guano) but that just offsets the need to add some other sort of fertilizer to your container planting. And all container plantings will need added ferts. They are a closed system, which is why a correct potting medium, correct fertilizing and attention to watering is so critical.

You may have to have your locally owned garden center special order this for you, but it will be well worth your while to go to the effort to find someone who will do so. Don't settle for their retail blends, which aren't much different than MiracleGro, as far as I can tell.

Tn Grower, I'm not 'dogging on the big guys' when I say that about the MG. I honestly don't like their potting soils....not at all. They are too mucky, peaty, and fine textured.

The attached link will take anyone interested to the Fafard web site, where you can click on and read the different ingredients of their professional line of potting mediums.

For turface and gravel, any Bonzai tree website should sell them by the bag. OSH has them in small quantities as well.

This is why Al's 5:1:1 mix (5 parts fir bark : 1 part perlite : 1 part peat moss) and other nursery mixes work so much better than peat moss alone or peat-based mixes, 'potting soil,' 'potting mix,' etc.

If you have compost that you can successfully grow directly in, or can successfully use compost tea as a fertilizer then great, but in my experience the bark-based container mix far surpasses anything that amounts to a bag of peat moss and vermiculite/perlite - plants especially seedlings are comparatively stagnant in peat moss.

I have grown hydroponically as well. I have realized that "soil", in pots and our yard, is mostly to hold the plant in place and to offer some nutrients/water retention. With our help, we can grow without soil and a plant could be suspended in mid air and if the roots are misted regularly with proper nutrients and oxygen most trees/plants would do just fine without soil.

I created a home made aeroponics system that basically uses net pots with gro rocks to hold the plants above misters that fed from a 10 gallon reservoir. I have never seen such beautiful plants. Also I used straight ten gallon buckets with net pots and gro rocks with an aquarium air bubbler with an air stone in the bottom for oxygenation. The plants grew huge! All I had to do was add nutrients and adjust the Ph and top off with fresh water from time to time!

Since that mix has a lot of fir bark in it, unless I could find a cheaper supply of fir bark, that mix would cost a lot. Commercial nurseries use cheap stuff and throw out the plants that die. I have never brought a plant in which I felt the potting soil was up to par.

http://i240.photobucket.com/albums/ff101/TheOriginalHag/2010 Photos/ anov2010.jpg

$4 a bag. I use it all the time to mix with MG potting soil and perlite.

http://www.scotts.com/smg/catalog/productTemplate.jsp?proId=prod70492& itemId=cat60014&tabs=general

http://www.scotts.com/smg/products/earthgro/image/Earthgro-All-Natural -Mulch-std.jpg

EarthTainer III Guide - page 18

I want to do some tests with containers for plants to see if the gritty mix will work.

http://forums2.gardenweb.com/forums/load/contain/msg0519004127574.html ?19

Google words like gritty mix failure if you can't see the thread, and it should come up on top

I think the problem here, (I hope you can see the photo) the gritty was too big, not screened enough.

The pigeon grit could have lime in it. I bought a bonsai mix granite. I was going to use chicken grit but it was made of limestone not granite. Bonsais cost a huge amount of money so if the eBay seller was selling limestone and not granite the negative feed back from angry bonsai growers would put him out of business.

The reptile bark was the wrong kind of bark, it was not fir or it was not really bark.

He or she did not skimp on the tur face by using oil dri, so that can't be the problem.

I think if one cheats on the ingredients you can end up with a disaster. It may be possible to cheat, but I am doing a lot of thinking it over before I start.

It would be bad to buy cheaper ingredients and have a failure then go out and buy the right ingredients. That would cost more than doing it right the first time.

Someone should create a cheater's guild to the mixes. I have not spend enough time working with containers to be an expert.

Succulents for large shallow terracotta pots in all-day sun