It suddenly became hard to find Pro-mix in the Bay Area.  Home depot has stopped carrying and doesn't even recognize it on their webiste (as recently as 2 weeks ago, they had the product in stock at multiple locations).  Lowe's is only carrying it at some locations, and the other locations also cannot find the part number in their system (taken from their own website).

At the moment, Lowes.com will tell you which stores have it, but it is becoming hard to find.

When I bought it, the guy at the counter said, "most customers don't know what this is for <wink> <wink>."

Home Depot doesn't have the best price on it. Go to your local Hydroponic shop. In Dublin - "The Lucky Garden" is an amazing shop. Tell them Scott sent you. They've got Pro-mix for days....

I'll remember that for next time.  Right now it was $25 at Lowe's. I can't remember the HD price but it was around $20 or something.

http://www.lowes.com/pd_383916-1803-383916___?productId=3745337&pl=1&Ntt=pro-mix

Hmmm, could it be the season?

The price at the Hydro stores is around there, but the product they sell is like twice as big as what home depot sells.

If you have a small orchard you can find your local distributor here

http://www.pthorticulture.com/en/distributors/?type=pro

Check both pro and indoor garden sections.

Lowe's lists it on their website, but not one of them in my area carries it, and they said unless I was willing to order a big load of it...

Any other common alternatives?

I grow tomatoes peppers, currants, brambles, potatoes, and other things in containers. I can't afford it. I make my own mix, it's a lot cheaper and I'm extremely happy with results. My mix is different every year as I experiment. I'm never going back to bagged potting mixes. Frankly I'm not impressed with them anyway. And yes I have used Pro-mix, seems to be all peat moss. I myself prefer pine bark mixes with some peat Fafard potting soil is impressive to me. Others too, as many organic mixes are on the market. I still can't afford any of them. I used to buy them in a pinch  Now I can't even do that.

Pot growers. Period.

Drew, I know i've seen your mix recipe before but can't figure out which forum it was on, maybe on GF.  Could you pm me the recipe I would love to start making my own. 

I just paid 100.00 for 4 bails of the pro-mix.

Dale

It will be helpful if Drew provides the link for his mix recipe in this thread to make it easy for other to benefit. There may be others in the same boat of affordability.

I use pro-mix for my newly rooted cuttings going into a trade 1 gal pot but not much after that so it lasts me a long time.  I buy pine bark chunks and compost by the cu yard and mix those for my large pot mix.  The pine bark fills most of the volume and the compost occupies some of the large spaces.  I add a handful of the promix to each pot for the mycorhizae.  I also add small amounts of tomato tone, crushed limestone, worm castings + azomite and maybe a few other things if I have something lying around.  Here, pine bark is $36/cu yard and a 10 gal pot is 1.6 cu feet or 0.061 cu yards.  A 7 gal pot is 0.043 cu yrd and a 12 gal pot is 0.073 cu yrd.  So from each cu yard I can fill 10) 10 gal and 9) 7 gal pots or 23) 7 gal pots, as an example. Those are the sizes my 1 gal hardened plants go in to and stay in unless they prove themselves worthy of more  :)  Rare and amazing varieties might go right in to a 10 - 15 gal pot.  So for every 100 cuttings I root I need just over 4 cu yards of pine chunks for their long term home.  The pine chunk part works out to a little over $1/hardened plant upgrading to its final home.  Even a 40 gal pot only costs $9 to fill with pine chunks.  All the other stuff will add $1-2 per pot depending on size.  The tomato tone is by far the most expensive.  Now that I know that I may not buy any more once I use it up.  That would bring me down to 50 cents to $1/pot   :)

In contrast, the $38 bale of promix costs me 53 cents per gallon trade pot or cutting.  One 3.8 cu' bale fluffed to 7 cu' gives me 71) 1 gal pots.

I always find the hydroponics store carry this