You say you travel quite often for work... You may need to reconsider your list of plants. Roses will need feeding and watering plus summer snipping so they remain tidy, although the Carpet Roses could be useful for you. Gladiolus - may need to be lifted to avoid the harshness of winter - unless you treat them as annuals. Alocasia/Calocasia will need to be brought in for the winter. Be sure to have a plant trolley and a place in mind. The stems are unpleasantly slimy once they've been frosted. Depending on the quality of your soil, you may have to lift your perennials every two-three years to refresh the soil and divide the bouncy ones so they don't Rule the World. Twice a year applications of compost with, perhaps, blood and bone, or a chemical compound will help you have the intensity of display you need in a smaller area. It basically has to work hard and be a visual feast for at least three out of four seasons, so it must be fed, groomed, and ruthlessly refreshed. Find a very good plant supplier so you can get your young bedding plants early. Once they're out showing their cute flowers in the store they are going to take a while to bulk up in the garden, if they ever do. Pot them up if you must so you can better catch the season, but don't let them receive any check to their growing if you want a glorious garden.

Did you do a soil test by sending in a soil sample to a soil lab or did you use those little test kits you buy at the store? If you used a soil lab, they'd tell you exactly how much to add, and I'd probably do what they said. If you used a little soil test kit purchased from a store, those things are notoriously inaccurate and I wouldn't do anything to my soil based on what one of those showed. Testing for nitrogen can be very tricky. Nitrogen is highly mobile in soil and sometimes doesn't show up well in tests, particularly when the soil is tested when temperatures are cold. Some labs no longer test for nitrogen for this reason, or they are careful to note that nitrogen can test differently in the same soil at different times of the year. Much depends on whether you're starting with soil that leans heavily towards being clay or sand or if you're starting out with a nice sandy loam that already has good tilth. You have to tailor what you are adding to your soil to whatever type of soil you start out with. It probably is an oversimplification to say this, but the answer to most soil issues is simply to add more organic matter to the soil. I don't worry about how much nitrogen, phosphorus or potassium are in my soil. I just add enough organic matter to give the soil good tilth and, in general, the organic matter contains enough N-P-K to enable plants to grow well in that soil, and it also contains all the micro-nutrients (aka trace elements) like magnesium, molybdenum, copper, boron, manganese, iron, zinc, and sulfur that plants need. Too often, gardeners focus on the N-P-K in their soil and never give the micro-nutrients a single thought. If you just focus on adding organic matter to your soil, it will tend to have everything the plants need to grow well and the more you improve the soil by adding organic matter regularly, the more fertile it will become. Because I started with dense red clay in most parts of the garden, I added 6 to 8" of organic matter (not all at once--I would rototill a couple of inches into the existing soil, then pile more on top of the ground and rototill it in, etc., until I had added 6-8") to break up the soil. All I was aiming for at that point was to break up dense red clay that was perfect for making red clay pots but not so perfect for growing ornamental and edible plants. The first few years I tried to add a variety of different materials to make up for what I perceived as deficiencies in my soil---adding sulfur to lower the pH, blood meal to increase nitrogen, soft rock phosphate to increase the amount of readily available phosphorus, etc. Once I felt like I had the soil where I wanted it, all I have done since then, for the most part, is add organic matter and let it do its job. I don't bother with soil tests because my plants will tell me if they have a problem, and you will learn pretty quickly what different symptoms indicate. For example, if nitrogen is too low, you will see decreased plant vigor, sluggish growth and yellowing of the oldest leaves on the plant. If phosphate is too low, you'll see poor flower and fruit production. If your soil has inadequate levels of calcium, your plants will be very susceptible to disease and may have tip die-back at the top of the plant. If your soil is low in potassium, you may see winter kill of plants that ought to be able to survive the winter or increased susceptibility to diseases. If your soil is low in zinc, you'll often see huge amounts of weeds. It can take time to learn what the different symptoms you observe are telling you, but once you learn how to "read" your plants, you will know if you have healthy, nutritious, well-balanced soil....or not, and it isn't as hard as you'd think to read the plants and decipher what they're telling you. The best way for me to explain what I try to do to my soil would be to say that I am trying to recreate the forest floor inside my garden. When we walk through our woodland, do we see perfectly brown or brownish-black topsoil? No, of course not. We see all kinds of organic matter lying right there on the ground decomposing---leaves, twigs, sticks, bark that has sloughed off trees, deadfall limbs or even entire trees that are rotting and decomposing right there on the forest floor. You may see the decomposing remains of insects, birds, reptiles or small animals. It all decomposes where it fell. No one goes into the woods and tries to plow, rototill or dig all that organic matter down into the soil. Over time, various creatures that dig into the soil (anything from microorganisms that are invisible to the human eye to ground-burrowing insects, earthworms, armadillos, skunks, possums, etc.) will carry the nutrients from the soil surface deeper into the soil, and so will rainfall. The forest enriches its own soil naturally and is self-sustaining, so I just work as hard as I can to add amendments to the soil surface in my garden and let them decompose and be worked into the soil over time. This doesn't mean that I never rototill my soil---I would, in fact, like to stop rototilling and do no-till-gardening, but I am an impatient gardener and like to get the organic matter down deeper in the soil more quickly that it would get there without rototilling. In areas where we have some sandy-silty soil, I don't feel the need to rototill it as much as I do the dense clay either. Just in the last couple of weeks, I've been going back and adding a couple of inches of compost on top of each raised bed. There is no need for me to rototill it into those beds and, in the case of something like the bed where asparagus and strawberries grow, it would be impossible to till it into the soil without destroying the plant roots. The compost will feed the soil and the soil will feed the plants and you won't see me out there in the garden with a Miracle-Grow sprayer in my hand unless I see a fertility issue that needs a quick fix, which in my garden is extremely rare. Remember, too, that just because plants need a certain amount of various nutrients, that does not mean that more of any nutrient is better. Excessive amounts of various nutrients can have an adverse impact on plant growth, often because too much of one nutrient can prevent a plant from taking up and using a different nutrient. All too often, people overfeed their plants N-P-K because it is too easy to buy fertilizers with too much of those elements in them, and then they think they've taken care of their plants' nutritional needs so they don't add anything to the soil (like compost, for example) that adds the micronutrients all plants must have in order to thrive. When was the last time a gardening friend told you "I am going to add some boron to my soil?" (grin) That's an extreme example and my point is that if you just add organic matter to your soil, you likely won't see a boron or copper deficiency. Copper, by the way, becomes unavailable to plants when there is excess nitrogen in the soil so it is common in some places to see copper deficiency symptoms in plants, but the issue more often is that the soil is overly rich in nitrogen and not that the soil lacks copper. Many gardeners focus so heavily on adding nitrogen to their soil, particularly via synthetic fertilizers, that they end up with big, beautiful, leafy plants with foliage so dark green that the leaves almost look blue-green, that they send up doing more harm than good with all that nitrogen. I went to a house once that had three gigantic tomato plants, spaced about 10-12 feet apart from one another. They were huge and their color was so dark that from a distance I thought they were three cedar trees. Up close they looked incredibly lush, thick and gorgeous. It was summer and guess what was missing? There wasn't a single fruit or flower on those plants. Call me crazy, but I thought most people grow tomato plants in order to have tomatoes! Obviously the person who had planted and tended those plants had overfed them nitrogen, and they did it, I am sure, with the best of intentions. They just hadn't learned, yet, that there is such a thing as too much nitrogen. My advice is to add all the organic matter you want to your soil, and it is best if it comes from a variety of sources. Compost (and particularly home-made compost) is my favorite and because we are in a rural area with tons of space I keep multiple large compost piles working all the time, but I add tons of chopped and shredded leaves to the top of each bed as mulch every year, and as they decompose, they too feed the soil. Sometimes I add purchased cow manure to the beds, or mushroom compost. In the early years, I added tons of pine bark and hardwood mulch directly to the soil. I didn't care if the bark and hardwood tied up nitrogen as they decomposed because I knew there were other ways I could add nitrogen to the soil to compensate for that occurrence. What I cared about at that point was breaking up the dense, red, highly compacted clay. Remember that plant roots do not grow, technically, in soil. They actually grow in the air space in between soil pores....so to have great plant growth, you need to break up soil that is tight or highly compacted so that the roots can move about freely. I've had friends lament and moan and groan and talk about their horrible clay soil, only to discover they don't have clay at all---they just have sandy loam or a sandy-silty blend that is so compacted that it resembled clay until they broke it up and added organic matter to prevent it from being compacted back into hard layers of soil again. Gardening is an adventure. People have done it for thousands of years, largely without all the synthetic fertilizers available the last 60 or 70 years. It is possible to garden without ever buying an actual fertilizer product, although I think most people nowadays amend the soil to improve it and then also use limited amounts of the fertilizer of their choice, whether it is organic or synthetic in origin. Focus on giving the soil what it needs, which mostly is lots of organic matter, and the soil will feed the plants. Actually, I should say the plants will take what they need from the soil. They cannot absorb nutrients that aren't there, but once you add organic matter to the soil, most if not all of what they need will be there in the soil just waiting for the plants to use it. In a hot climate like ours, organic matter in the soil decomposes quickly and gets used up quickly, so you must continually add new organic matter to the soil on a regular basis. The easiest way is by mulching and letting the much decompose in place. As it decomposes, it feeds the soil beneath it. I also mulch all my pathways heavily and then, in late winter, I scoop up all the decomposed mulch from the pathways and dump it onto the adjacent growing beds. I then put down a new layer of mulch---usually some combination of grass clippings, old spoiled hay, and leaves that have been chopped up by the lawnmower and caught in the mower's grasscatcher bag. I add mulch throughout the growing season, both to the surfaces of the growing beds and to the pathways. The mulch suppresses weeds, and it helps keep the soil beneath it cool and moist, but the main reason I regularly add more mulch is because it is like doing composting in place. To me, it is so much easier to use my pathways as a sheet composting site than to have a compost pile 100' away and to have to carry one wheelbarrow load after another of compost into the garden. It all goes back to the forest floor analogy---Mother Nature doesn't go through the forest and clean up all the 'garbage' that has fallen to the forest floor, pile it up someplace, let it decompose, and then carry the compost back to the forest---it all happens in place. I try to garden in such a way that most of my soil improvement (after the initial effort to break the ground and add 6-8" of organic matter rototilled into the soil) takes place from the top down as organic matter used as mulch decomposes in place. Don't be afraid that you'll be adding too much organic matter to your soil. Unless you are in the rainiest part of OK, which is eastern OK, where rainfall is often 40-60" or more a year, you likely cannot add enough organic matter to create a problem. In some of the rainiest parts of OK, I do think a person could add so much organic matter that their soil holds too much moisture for too long, but for most of us, that's not going to be an issue. Most of us deal with the opposite issue of not having enough moisture for much of the growing season. Sometimes we humans overthink things and try too hard. The truth is that enriching soil is pretty simple---just add compost. Making compost is also something that some people put huge amounts of effort into---adding this to the pile, adding that---turning the pile, watering it, etc. I am a lazy composter. I pile stuff up. It rots. I use it. Could it be any simpler? No, but it can be a lot more complicated. I feel like my life is busy enough and complicated enough without me making my composting and soil amending complicated. I try to keep it simple. For me, if I try to make gardening too technical and too complicated, it sucks all the fun out of gardening. Above all else, in order for it to be rewarding, gardening has to be fun. I try to focus more on having fun and less on doing things that are technically and perfectly correct. Dawn

i can only tal from my own experience and after gardening since childhood this is my own experience, soil preparation is much more important than the side dressings(not that side dressings dont help. another thing i found to be very important is oxigen in the soil, the lighter and fluffier the soil the better the plant growth and production. peat moss seems to do wonders so does horse manure compost, and very light fluffy compost. some of that bagged cow and steer manure i find to be counter productive because it is so dense almost clay like. i use that to add to sandy soil along with compost. for side dressing i use any organic fertilizer with a nitrogen ratio no higher than 6. makes very little difference which i use. if i find rose food on sale i'll use rose food same for bulb food and flower food, the only thing i stay away from is tree and shrub food and food for acid loving plants. i sometimes add a little more calcium in the form of bone meal,hydrayted lime and gysom if the soil is too alkalaine. i'm still confused about foiliar feeding as far as how effective it isbut in general the first feeding is liquid fertilizer, when flowering both liquid and granular, when fruit forms granular, at first harvest granular, if they look like they need a boost one more feeding around the second week of august. so far so good, but the plots with lighter soil the plants are twice as healthy with twice the yield. plus i would give them at the least 3 square feet per plant to grow, too close blocks necessary air flow and the second most important element--- the sun !!!!!!!!!!!!!

I looked up the two products mentioned in the previous thread. The Miracle Grow Performance Organics ($9 FOR 26lbs) looks like an organic compost blend with some organic NKP added as well, but I couldn't find any mention of biochar in any of the literature I dug around for. The Scotts Foundation ($30lbs for 14lbs) product shows to be 60% volcanic ash, 30% Coconut Biochar and 10% Attapulgite Clay. The product that I'm looking at for turf maintenance is 47% compost 47% biochar 2% bacillus & mycorrhizal. (40lb bagged and I'm still waiting on an exact price as I'm buying a whole pallet, but hopefully around $25.) Seemingly to my eye quite different--or more focused on the biochar and the "soil food web." The stuff I've read about biochar indicates that you need to "inoculate" or "charge" the biochar with compost or it will suck that OM from the soil and tie it up until things get balanced out. That creates a delay or "worse before it gets better" situation. I'm definitely going to pull some bags to be tried out in the garden, so we will see. About green manure: I've looked into it, but I'm not willing to risk pastures being offline for so long. I do throw some clover seeds in when we over seed with fescue, but not a lot. The clover I get only germinates well in the better areas of soil. My pastures are usable and I don't want to take one offline for not just the time to grow the crop but then to regrow the grass. Regrowing grass for pasture can be a year before it's really up to grazing and if you have a bad growing season after planting you can lose another year. Another thing I do is mow and leave the clippings instead of allowing it to be hayed which probably helps a little too.