Container gardening

This is a little off topic, because I don't intend to grow my giant tomatoes in containers, but I'm going all-in on container gardening this year for my eating tomatoes. I've noticed for the past couple of years that my container-grown tomatoes taste better than my in-ground tomatoes, so I'm going to give container gardening a serious go.

For the potting mix, I'm going with the so-called 5-1-1 mix, made popular on the Gardenweb container forum: http://forums2.gardenweb.com/discussions/2842847/container-soils-water-movement-and-retention-xxii?n=127 This is a long read about how water retention in soils works, and changed the way I think about containers.

The main ingredient for the 5-1-1 mix is pine bark fines, which are < 1/2" bits of pine bark, and they're really hard to find. After 2 years of searching, I finally found the mother lode at Pioneer Sand in Boulder.

I ran about 16 cu ft through a 1/2" screen, and about 99% made it through. If I were to do this again, I'd say you don't need to screen it, but I probably would anyway because I'm that kind of guy.

 

 

16 cu ft cost me $35. That's cheap, if you've ever priced potting mix.

 

Screening a bag of peat.

 

All ingredients are ready to assemble the mix. Pine bark fines, peat, perlite, garden lime, and controlled release fertilizer.

 

The finished product.

150 gallons of potting mix, ready to receive peppers and tomatoes, if it ever stops raining!