The phosphoric acid is highly concentrated- I am adding only 4-5 drops per gallon, not enough to influence the phosphorus content. I don’t think the soil is inherently alkaline, it is the water we are getting from the city- I tested a few different ways and it seems to have a ph of 8-8.5… mixing up 20 5-gallon buckets of water gets tedious and tiring.

I fertilize every other week…Also I just discovered that starbucks will give me 30lb bags of used coffee grounds pretty much anytime I want…

All the plants are thriving with 2 exceptions – one variety of cucumber is dying the moment we plant it outside, and our most advanced tomato (actually started it indoors by accident last fall and decided to let it grow over the winter in poor light until spring when it was ~7 feet tall and we moved it to a pot outside)- it survived and thrived and starting to fruit- but is developing yellowing leaves which my wife fears is a bacterial infection that can spread to other plants so we may need to euthanize it even though its the first to start bearing fruit… we have 22 other plants some of which will be starting to fruit in a few days, so not a big loss… and we have a few dozen ‘backup’ tomatoes started from the suckers we have trimmed off of other plants…

Your garden looks great!

After all the rain we’ve had, ours is doing well. The cherries, apples, and peaches survived the Mother’s day cold snap (32.5 degrees) and the fruits are swelling quickly. The bee hives need new boxes. They’ve been very busy on the raspberries. More salad stuff than we’ll ever eat.

Spraying with neem oil and soap solution has staved off any pest infestations so far, added millions of beneficial nematodes to hopefully prevent a recurrence of the flea beetles that plagued us last year, regularly checking for the squash vine borer that wiped out our squash last year, and plan to spray the peppers, tomatoes and potatoes with an aspirin solution soon to boost their resistance to pests- supposedly aspirin tricks them into thinking they are under attack by pests and triggers them to boost their natural defenses however the research is FAR from conclusive, so I may try spraying some of the plants with aspirin and see if I can tell a difference- not a scientific study, but the best I have time for…

One of the 8 or so squash plants:

The overflow section, where we have put younger peppers and tomatoes we have no space for in the main garden:

Potatoes, sweet potatoes, peppers and carrots:

more potatoes:

Salad greens:

The MAIN garden:

Tomatoes coming soon:

LOTS of pole beans already growing with more on the way:

I added ~5 tablespoons of jobe’s sulfur soil acidifier to each 5 gallon bucket… have no idea if that is enough…

Any suggestions?

So far we have only attempted potatoes outside the fenced in area…wildlife seems to ignore them.

And yes, innoculants! Especially for favas.

The best cucumber success has been in containers where we let the vine drape off our deck.

When remixing the soil from last year the mass of roots from the beans was surprisingly dense… I could see that possibly creating a problem for other plants in the same container. The nitrogen fixing that the bean roots do supposedly is only a benefit to the soil once the plant dies and the roots break down…

We also do use legume innoculants on the beans…

Have you heard of this? Many gardeners believe that certain plants planted together help each other thrive, others, not so much.

The most famous companions are the “three sisters” from Native American folklore: Corn-squash-beans. All planted so their roots interact.

Here’s the first article that comes up on a search:

https://www.thespruce.com/companion-plants-for-tomatoes-1403289

We have filled ~30 five gallon buckets with this mix, 6 ten gallon containers 4 twenty five gallon containers and in the process of filling some 7-gallon containers… some other shallower containers for greens like Kale and lettuce beets etc…

The _plan_ is to plant ~15 tomatoes of varying types in 5-gallon buckets with 1-2 pole beans- pole beans will be trained to a lattice behind the tomato row so the beans do not shade the tomatoes.

The remaining buckets will be used for peppers, 1 plant per bucket, carrots, beets and potatoes- these will all be planted ‘in front of’ (as viewed from the sunward direction) the tomatoes since they are shorter.

10 gallon containers will be used for squash and cucumbers -2 maybe 3 plants per container.

Lots of herbs, garlic, onion and marigold will be interspersed to help deter pests…

The garden is fenced off to deter the deer, groundhogs and rabbits- none got in last year. the area is ~12×25 feet

25-gallon containers will be for potatoes-3-4 plants per container- those can go outside the fence since last year’s experience was that the local wildlife leaves potatoes alone- more potatoes will go in 5 gallon buckets with one per bucket.

I plan to plant pole beans along our yard’s hurricane fence and aside from occasional watering they will be on their own- we will see if they produce anything and survive the deer- I doubt they will- a herd passes through our yard nearly every night- we have hundreds of beans to plant from last year’s crop… so plenty to spare….