Rocks? What are these things you speak of? No rocks along the coast either.
I used to have many I brought from my son's home in the NC mountains but they got left with the last home.

I've been using Nature's Premium Potting Soil I get from our local feed store at about $8 for a 2 cf bag. To that I add a scoop of garden lime, a couple of handfuls of fertilizer, a gallon of vermiculite and a gallon of perlite. That's my base mix for my tomatoes and peppers.

embermason said: I've been using Nature's Premium Potting Soil I get from our local feed store at about $8 for a 2 cf bag. To that I add a scoop of garden lime, a couple of handfuls of fertilizer, a gallon of vermiculite and a gallon of perlite. That's my base mix for my tomatoes and peppers.

I can't find that brand anywhere online, not even out of my region. The closest thing to it is Nature's Care, which is a Miracle Gro product and more expensive than their regular potting mix, sold only in smaller sized bags.

Steve lives right in the heart of potting mix country. I think a lot of potting mixes come out of the Pacific North West, by products of their big forest products industry.

ardesia said: Steve lives right in the heart of potting mix country. I think a lot of potting mixes come out of the Pacific North West, by products of their big forest products industry.

I was thinking something along those lines. I've searched our more remote areas for something cheaper from farm or feed stores, and couldn't find anything priced similar.

One giant yard pot with ground dirt. It has Brugmansia, Crossandra, wax Begonia, Coleus, Swedish ivy (Plectranthus verticillatus) and some lilies.


Another pot with more Brug, Coleus, a few other snips.



Loose brick raised area, about knee-high. Not a pot but it needed to be filled with something.

Tiffany, your containers are always so pretty and healthy. You are indeed fortunate to have such good rich soil. It is generally advised not to use soil in containers as it can contain pathogens, nematodes or what have you. There is also the issue of aeration, most soils around the country would be too dense without plenty of added amendments like perlite. My soil is almost pure sand and as I am not the original owner of this property, I do not know what chemicals might have been applied over the years. For me personally it is safer to use a sterile product like a potting mix. https://web.extension.illinois...

Thank you very much! Yes, there could be residue of motor oil or gas in the dirt because cars used to park everywhere. Our house was built in 1900, so we're not the original owners either.

It's horrible dirt, hard as a rock, about the color of a manila file folder when dry, but after having organic matter applied to the surface for a few years, it's good enough to grow ornamental plants.

Thank you for the link. I've read tons of those articles, and am not disagreeing with any of that stuff, but they don't make expensive potting soil magically appear. Covering ground soil with organic matter may not be actual magic, you have to wait a while, whether you want to just grow plants in that spot or harvest some soil for pots, but it does produce magical results.

An alternative that I've done many times is when pulling weeds, throwing the pulled weeds & shrub trimmings into the giant pot that I want to fill. Fill it so it's heaping like an ice cream cone by fall and forget about it until spring, add some fallen leaves if you have some. Then in spring, add plants. I've done this many times and the result is always really great, a micro compost pile that you don't have to move to use, and poetic justice for your efforts at pulling weeds.

I'm not saying that anyone shouldn't use something store-bought. But if you don't want to, or have more effort than $ available, that doesn't mean you can't still have containers. There are other options. Just make dang sure you put the big ones where you want them unless you happen to own a crane. I've always enjoyed digging in the dirt, since I was a kid, so it seems like the most normal thing in the world to me. Not a week goes by when I don't do anything at all with a shovel or hand trowel, unless I'm not at home.

I have accidentally composted like that. I usually keep an empty pot nearby for weeds and I often forget about it. When I come across it again it looks pretty good but I have a lot of Chamber Bitter, the most eveil weed ever, and their seeds stay viable for 6 years.

I'm almost done planting all the containers for the summer, just have about a dozen 12" planters to do today. One thing against the Pro-Mix is that it's taking 3x as long to do the planting because of having to uncompress the soil mix from the 4 cu ft bags. That is really tedious no matter what I think of to do it quicker. It did save me almost $100 though compared to current prices in my area for Miracle-Gro, and it looks like I'll have one bag left over. But the time involved will make me think about this again come next year. I'm going to plant one identical pot with Miracle-Gro just as a comparison to see if either one really performs better than the other.

If you have a large wheelbarrow it is best to just put the compressed brick of ProMix into the barrow and add water and let it sit overnight. You want to rehydrate it before use anyway. I have never had good luck using Miracle Gro mixes. I think they are fine for annuals in some cases but I have learned never to use it in any sort of long term planter.

I've read that others recommend rehydrating it like that, but decided it's not the best option for me. That would mean doing only 1 of the 7 bags each day worth of planters, and that would take even longer. I set up in the garage like I said, one reason being easy cleanup with spilt potting mix, dead leaves, old plant containers and seed trays. Another reason is to keep me out of the direct sun all day while planting, usually it's much hotter here than yesterday and keeps me out of the hot sun, plus every loose particle of dirt sticks to me then. If I worked with wet soil, I'd be one huge muddy mess, plus the weight of the planters would make it that much harder to move out of the garage into its permanent spot in the yard.

So I've been cutting the bales of the Pro-Mix in half, dumping the half into a large yard tub I use and breaking the clumps up by hand and filling the containers from that. That's been quicker than trying to work directly out of the bag and filling containers from them, but still not near as quick as just pouring the Miracle-Gro bags into the containers. If the Pro-Mix gives me better growth and flowers all summer than the Miracle-Gro, I'll probably still do it though, as much as I'd dislike the extra time and work.

Seriously, that is the worst thing you can do, the compressed bales are designed to be rehydrated. Planting directly into that dehydrated mix will cause the mix to pull moisture from your plant roots. A bag of Miracle grow is already slightly damp when you open it, that is a big difference to your plants. When you allow a dry mix to rehydrate, you do not make a wet mix, it should be just slightly damp, like a bag of MG, and this takes hours to achieve.

The compressed stuff isn't totally dry, at least not the bales I've got. I don't think I'd be able to breath doing it if they weren't slightly moist. The containers are watered well after planting... very slowly and many, many, many times during the rest of the day until the water begins to trickle out. It takes time, but is easy enough to do between the harder chores, I consider it my break time. But I'm really not worried about leaving any dry mix at the bottom of the planters the way I'm doing it. I will burrow down really deep in one of the larger planters today though to check and be certain, I do appreciate that warning. I didn't think that much about it, but I really think the way I've been watering solves the issue.

Edit: I checked all the way down 1 of the 20" planters by hand and with my moisture probe and they are indeed wet all the way down. So the repeated slow waterings I'm doing right after planting seem to be working well for me.

It is not dry mix at the bottom you have to worry about it is the particles of peat that take forever to hydrate. It takes a lot of heat and pressure to dry those bales and just as much energy to reverse that. This is not a personal observation but something advised by the industry. Like I mentioned it should not be drippy wet, just more like a fresh bag of Miracle Gro would be.

I've been doing a lot more reading about people's experience with Pro-Mix and whether they rehydrate before or after planting. I've read that the compressed bags do come in varying states of moisture content, with some being totally dry and some like Miracle Gro bags. Mine was honestly nearly the same as Miracle Gro bags, you could feel the moisture just handling it. When I looked at pics at Pro-Mix' website, the potting mix they're shown scooping into plant holes looks the same as mine was, no wetter. Maybe it depends on how fresh the bags are? Pro-Mix also contains a wetting agent, so fresh bags coupled with their wetting agent is probably why the way I watered worked well. It doesn't need overnight wetting like pure peat moss does (or using warmer water works quicker for peat), just wetting and using it right away works.

But plants look very good the way I did it, even the ones I planted yesterday have already perked up, showing no stress at all from planting or being dry.

I have seen the regular bags of loose ProMix but the bales are compressed, just like peat moss.

I contacted Pro-Mix through their website and surprisingly they got back to me in a few hours! Customer service like that might change my mind to use it again even if it does take longer. But I wanted to know if I had really screwed up badly. But their answer is:

"There's no need to soak or wet the mix before using it. All PMX products are ready to use."

And I know from watering it that it had no trouble at all absorbing the water. When you water straight peat moss, the water can just roll around on top of the peat, it's not absorbed unless you knead the peat, keep watering, knead, water, for awhile. That's not at all what happens when watering the Pro-Mix. I'm guessing if I tried to water it while it was still compressed, the same would happen, water would most likely roll off the bale. But I had broken it up by hand first, and then it quickly absorbs any watering. Plus the wetting agent they include I'm sure helps as well.

Ah Ha, so they have added a wetting agent, ProMix is peat based. That would make a difference. I started using the bales, they were cheaper than the loose mix, back in the 1970's when I had a small nursery. I used it almost exclusively until we moved 4 years ago, it is difficult to find where I am now living. I am using Ocean Forest, Happy Frog or Black Gold now, they are expensive but good quality.

I looked into at least Happy Frog and Black Gold that I can easily get locally, but you're right, they're much more expensive in my area than even the Miracle Gro is. Before Covid, I could get Miracle Gro at a decent sale price in early spring, lowest I paid in the past was $8.47 for a 2 cu ft bag. But not so this year though, which is why I looked into alternatives and found the Pro-Mix. And some places sell what looks like the 2 cu ft bags of Miracle Gro, but are really 50 quarts, a bit smaller than the full 2 cu ft bags, for the same price.

So the compressed bags of Pro-Mix really saved me a good amount. I'll be curious to see which of the 2 performs better during the summer for the 2 containers that I planted with identical flowers.