Growing Organically and Soil Balancing

[lubadub]

I was wondering if many of you were growing your tomatoes organically and using soil tests to balance your soil basically using a variant of the Albrecht formula as put forth by Steve Solomon in his book "The Intelligent Gardener." I am in the process of switching over to organics at least for my tomatoes. If you are balancing your soil I would be interested in hearing about your experiences as to difficulty doing so and what your outcomes were.

[Lindalana]

I garden on community plot and my soil tilled twice a year by village. I also have no control over them adding compost to the site/ thankfully they do not do that often.
Otherwise I tend to do my soil testing and follow accordingly. I think providing that I garden same group of plants on same crowded piece of land I think I do pretty good compare to rest of 50-60 gardeners near me.
I follow and use help from Phil at Smiling gardener https://www.smilinggardener.com/organic-gardening-blog/

I’m growing all my veggies and fruit trees organically. I grow vegetables (including tomatoes) in fabric grow pots and fruit trees, blueberries, etc. in the ground.
There’s not much mystery about what kind of soil you get here in N. Florida so I’ve only tested it once. Sandy, alkaline and with lots of nematodes.
I recycle all our kitchen waste into vermicompost and put that around the fruit trees and new plantings. For veggies I’m in the process of moving to a 5-1-1 type mix; I was using various other bagged soil brands but it got too expensive.
The fruit trees are doing pretty well. A bigger issue is getting enough chill hours, lol!

[bower]

I grow organically but don't have access/haven't accessed soil testing. I don't know the Albrecht system. I mostly try to source materials from local sources and anything you don't buy in a bag doesn't come with N-P-K or anything else specified, so I am winging it one way or another. This has worked fine for me for a period of time, but got into trouble when I changed out my container mix and started from scratch using a fair bit of peat instead of the original stuff a mix of garden compost and commercial compost which ultimately had far less peat involved, and got better every year. I since learned that the organic standard requires at least 50% compost in container soils, but I think the amount of peat really needed is less than that.

[velikipop]

I grow organically and do test soil for PH with a meter. My main issue is that the amount of rain we get tends to favour acidity. I add some lime in the spring and compost and other organic material throughout the year, such as bone meal, kelp meal and a pelletized organic fertilizer.

Alex

[bower]

Originally Posted by velikipop

I grow organically and do test soil for PH with a meter. My main issue is that the amount of rain we get tends to favour acidity. I add some lime in the spring and compost and other organic material throughout the year, such as bone meal, kelp meal and a pelletized organic fertilizer.

Alex

We also have to lime regularly here to make it tolerable for most crops. Even my container soils get so much watering in a season, they need lime too.

I give my tomato soil as much crushed kelp as I can get, which is entirely consumed in the season.
Also each tomato seems to need 7-8 oz of bone meal in the hole to set well in the cold early season.
Have tried a couple of bagged chicken manure products which tomatoes seem to like, bigger and more fruit when I've added those.

[velikipop]

Yes, the chicken manure is good and I always have some on hand. I also use some other organic products that are mixes of bone meal, kelp, feather meal, alfalfa and flax meal.