Growing in the ground is different from containers for these reasons,
mainly:
Containers heat up more than the ground in the hot summer sun.
If your containers are black, it is good to protect them with some
kind of sunscreen (a shade, low plants, light colored plastic bags,
whatever is convenient).
Containers tend to drain better and dry out faster. (If they do not drain
better, your plants are in trouble.) So they need to be watered more
often, usually, and fertilizer washes out of them faster. One of these
meters will help with keeping track of how often your containers need
water:
http://www.acehardware.com/product/i...ductId=1279441
(Product quality varies.)
In the ground, "soil aggregation" by fungi combines smaller particles
into larger ones, restoring air space to the soil, so organic matter
decaying to silt is less of a problem than it is when reusing container
mixes that have a lot of compost. (Most of the non-compost stuff
in container mix takes a few years to decay to fine particles.)
So "soil makes its own air space", basically. (Except for complete
lost causes, like clay with no gravel or roots in it.) In containers,
we have to be sure that what we fill them with has air space,
and that it lasts for the whole season.
That is the kind of soil you have in the lower elevation parts of
the Midwest US, "silty loam." Plants grown in it depend on soil
aggregation to maintain air space in the soil.
I have a good link on lime and soil pH from Missouri:
http://extension.missouri.edu/p/G9102