A few years back, I bought 100 5 gallon food grade buckets for 50 dollars. That was quite a deal (so I thought) and I have been hauling them around since. Now that we are on our own place, I really want to utilize them, and "grow vertically." We have quite a stand of bamboo just down the road and I can trellis to my heart's content. (I get them off the ground on pallets).
My question has to do with soil. I have a 50:50 mix of compost and topsoil, which I mixed with 1/3 peat moss. I put some Lime in (soil here pretty acidic), and threw in some calcium nitrate (don't yet have enough eggshells) and some (about a small handful per bucket) of fertilizer.
Last year I grew in beds only and the results were disastrous. Scrawny, hornworm infested, non-bearing mess. I have never used commercial fertilizer, but in desperation, I threw some miracle gro in there and BOOM! they responded quite well.
Eventually, I want to make up my own soil (I have a composting bin and am working it now), but for now, I am just buying it, treating it like above, and hoping for the best.
Question: How much water a day for 5 gallon buckets is "normal"? I don't want end rot, but I also dont want to water log the roots.
How much fertilizer before you burn up the plant? I don't want to put any more in for another 4-6 weeks, but I also don't want to have the soil over fertilized. I did dig down another 4-5 inches below the roots and put about a half a palm full of pellets down there, and now I am worried I might have overdone it. I need something to worry about!
Do you need bone meal for tomatoes in buckets? I put out some seed potatoes and was liberal with the bone meal, and wondered if tomatoes would also be good with it.
Finally, my grandmother used to have the sweetest, most tart tomatoes and she swore by Epsom Salts. I want to wait till the plants are flowering (she told me when she was living to trim off the first couple of blossoms to force the plant to fruit more aggressively), but I am not sure how much I should use. When they are "in the ground" it is harder to over-concentrate stuff as it does dissipate. There ain't much space for stuff to go in a bucket, except to get flushed out of the (8-9 3/4 inch) holes in the bottom.
Thanks in advance for the advice and the patience.
tans