In containers, it is our job to provide the plant with a medium that provides ample oxygen, water providing capabilities, a good physical support system, AND those missing elements that plants need in order to manufacture their own food. It matters not one whit that there are no dissolved minerals in a soil-less container medium. That's what fertilizers are for. Your workshop leader, I am afraid, was not very well informed. Do you know how to do a 'SEARCH' right here in this forum? Go back to the title page (of Container Forums), click on the little 'search' word and type in SOILS. You will find many discussions about the benefits of soil-less mediums for containers. To boot, it wouldn't take long at all for plants to use the dossolved minerals that may be present in the 'dirt' content of that potting soil they made. And there you are, having to fertilize anyway, but stuck with potting medium that is mucky, bereft of large air spaces, and without the ability to drain rapidly.

If skinned properly the skins are pulled off and are like a tube of skin and fir on the inside. We used 1/2" plywood forms to pull the skins onto (fur on inside toward the plywood). We made several different sizes of plywood forms so that the hides were stretched very tight. They were then hung up to dry for about a week to 10 days at which time the fats were pealed off the skin carefully as not to tear the skin. Then we would sell them to a fur dealer who would give us $2 for pure white and for the different colored furs as little as $.50 each. That was good for the late 1950's to early 60's. During the summer I would keep them in large fenced in areas and the feed cost was nothing. We buried the fence 1' deep and 1' flat away for the fenced area like an "L" for a total of 2' under ground. We used several 4'x8' sheets of marine plywood and put these on top of cement blocks so the rabbits had a place the was shaded and gave them cover form weather and hawks and owls. There were many bushes and pines in there for them to nest and hide in also. Only one buck and 20 does were in each 3/4 acre pen. We usually culled the young every 30 days or so and pen raise them to butchering size-about 8-12 week depending on the breed. During the winter only the buck was left in the pens. There was enough food for 1 rabbit for the winter months. Sometimes we would give them so hay if we noticed that they were over browsing the shrubs due to deep snow. They were so much healthier this way. Ma would fry the rabbit that she dipped in her herbal blend of flour mix. After they were 1/2 way cooked she would transfer them to her famous 'Dutch Oven' over low heat and added a cup of cheap wine (MD, it was the brand Charlie Weaver used to push on TV) and of course the cook always saved herself a wee bit of wine to sip on while preparing the rest of the meal. VERY TASTEY-the rabbit I mean.

"From what I can see every site Eric listed is a "Big Pharma" site." Not a single one of these sites is run by or for a drug company. Unless you're using "Big Pharma" as a generic term for "anyone who disagrees with my health care philosophy". Another poster in this thread (with whom I disagreed on the proven efficacy of an herbal cancer therapy) also cites governmental and university-based information sites. The PubMed site is a searchable database of herbal and other medicine-related articles published in a huge variety of journals, and has been frequently linked to in this forum by those who fervently espouse herbal medicine. Do you label everyone who uses and appreciates the information from these sites a "Big Pharma ad man"? Few of us have the time and resources to do original research. But we can use these sites to get good, reliable information to guide us on what therapies to use - as opposed to the scaremongering, conspiracy theories and distortions that are so common on many "alternative" websites.

I cannot claim to be an expert on chilli thrips, but I know how we control them, and how most successful programs work -- they are based on soil-applied imidacloprid as the primary control measure. Then supplemental sprays with unrelated chemicals help prevent any build-up of resistance to the imidacloprid. It works very well. There appear to be a few roses that at least tolerate them, if not being actually resistant -- 'Mrs. B. R. Cant', 'Trinity', 'Smith's Parish' 'Tausentschoen'. Probably lots of others. Unfortunately, some of the most otherwise carefree roses (Belinda's Dream, all of the Knock-Out series, Don Juan) are unusually susceptible.