Well - for anyone still following along here is some information. No clue if it's accurate. There's a freeware application that allows you to build custom fertilizers with a list of ingredients. You can input the list of available ingredients and their cost. You can then input a commercial formula (I put in the values for Dyna-Gro FP WITHOUT the micro nutrients). With a bit of tinkering you can get the program to give you the forumla for the fertilizer AND get a price estimate per unit according to the prices of the raw materials that you input. I just found the program today and I am not an expert. In fact I know nothing of fertilizers or this software but I did get it to give me a consistent answer for how to build the NPK + Mg + Ca portion of FP. I didn't bother with the micros because I will just buy a commercial formula and add it in. You can get the software here: http://scienceinhydroponics.com/2011/01/the-first-free-hydroponic-nutrient-calculator-program-o.html - again, I have no idea if it's safe or accurate. I installed it seemingly without issue. Here is the Dyna-Gro information I used to calculate the forumla: The MSDS for their line of fertilizers has the ingredients used: http://www.dyna-gro.com/Website%20pdf%20Files/MSDS%20Grow-Bloom-Pro%20Series.pdf The product information has the % of nutrients in Foliage Pro: http://www.dyna-gro.com/936.htm WARNINGS/CAVEATS: *There is almost certainly a mistake somewhere. *I know nothing about mixing chemicals. Just because this list is here doesn't mean it's safe to make. I put some numbers into a program and this is what it gave back to me. I might give this a try if I can find Ammonium Nitrate locally (haven't so far - probably won't since it can be used as an explosive, sigh). *A liquid acid is one of the components. No idea how safe this is to use or in what way it must be added to the other ingredients to be safe. Don't ask me, I do not know. *The ingredients list for the Dyna-Gro fertilizer list Mono Potassium Phosphate as an ingredient which makes up "*I guessed a price for ammonium nitrate. I put in 2$ per kilogram. This seems somewhat in line with the cost of the other nitrates but I have no idea what it actually costs. *All the other prices I based on retail prices available to me locally. INPUTS: I want 1 gallon of liquid fertilizer with an NPK of 9-3-6 with 2% calcium and .5% magnesium. RESULTS: Mono Ammonium Phosphate - NH4H2PO4 - 10.75g - $2.70 Calcium Nitrate (Tetrahydrate) - Ca(NO3)2.4H2O - 22.606g - $.80 Ammonium Nitrate - NH4NO3 - 80.891g - $4.60 Magnesium Nitrate (Hexahydrate) - Mg(NO3)2.6H2O - 9.137g - $.40 Phosphoric Acid (52%) - H3PO4 - 24.323g - $5.50 Potassium Nitrate - KNO3 - 30.082g - $1.90 Total Cost per Gallon at retail: $15.90. Approximate initial cost to buy materials retail: Mono Ammonium Phosphate - 4lbs - $17.00 Phosphoric Acid 52% - 2 gallons - $50.00$ Calcium Nitrate - 50lb bag - $29.00 (you can find smaller bags online) Magnesium Nitrate - 50lb bag - $36.00 Potassium Nitrate - 50lb bag - $50.00 Ammonium Nitrate - 50lb bag - $45.00 (assumed price) Total Startup Cost: $217 + chelated micro nutrients (easier to buy imo). I remember a thread where Californian was mocking us all for buying Foliage Pro rather than making it ourselves. He seemed hostile and aggressive to me so I didn't pay much attention. Looks like he was mostly correct. The retail cost of the ingredients is somewhere around $20 a gallon. The wholesale cost I'm sure is far less. The cheapest I can find FP locally is for about 60$ a gallon. Assuming I haven't screwed anything up that means that I could make back the initial investment after about 8 months (I go through a gallon of FP in about 2 warm-season months). Tempting... If anyone else is interested it would be great if you could check my numbers. If anyone knows if mixing these chemicals is safe/effective please let me know. I'm particularly concerned about the safety of mixing the acid and the ammonium nitrate - does that need to be done in a certain way to avoid nastiness? Can all of these things be safely stored? Etc. ---- Some further information to check out: the software gives: N:P2O5:K2O = 1:1.36:1.19 N:K = 1:0.99 N (NO3-):N (NH4+) = 1:0.46 Ca:Mg = 1:0.25 Do these look right?

My dirt is heavy hard clay with a heavy Bermuda grass lawn. I cut out the bottom of the pool and left about 18 inches of the bottom attached around the edge, otherwise the the sides will kick up and everything run out under the sides. After I filled it up, I realized too late that I should have turned it inside-out, so that the pale blue inside would have been the outside. I've sort of grown fond the the little fish on the sides now. ;-) I grew the tomatoes like this last year with just compost. The compost held lots of water bit it still dried out really quickly once the vines got big. Before I set out my plants, I added three 25 pound bags of Wal-Mart Special Kitty Natural Litter to each bed. I scattered it on top and then scratched it into the top bit of compost, and it has settled further in as I watered each time. It holds tons of water and the extra water retention has really helped this year. I had a few determinant tomato vines that had finished fruiting, so I replaced them with some new transplants about a week ago. The roots had gone at least 6 inches into the underlying clay soil. Before I filled the beds last fall, I mowed the grass as short as I could cut it, I then covered the turf with 2 layers of flattened cardboard boxes to smother the grass. The worms and microbes had left no sign of the grass or cardboard in only 9 months. My basil and peppers are about 3 feet tall now. I'm permanently disabled and live on Social Security, so I was looking for something for raised beds that was really, really cheap. Cedar 1x6s lumber would have cost me about $100 for raised beds that were 16 sqft. Before I started using these pools I was growing tomatoes in 5 gallon buckets. The 6 foot pool is 15 inches deep, which is almost as deep as the buckets, but gives more horizontal space as well as roots going down into the soil underneath. If you've got some space and not much money, I could not recommend the pools enough for raised beds. I was not sure at first if the round beds would be a problem, but the really work well. On Victory Garden recently they showed a community garden in San Franscisco where they used straw-filled burlap bags to form the border of their round raised beds. There is a picture below. They were really nice because you could knell or sit on them to plant, weed, and harvest.

Languard, I'm not trying to talk you out of organic, but please don't assume, organic = safe. Some formulations of sulfur are more acutely toxic than many synthetic pesticides. For example lime sulfur has an LD50 of around 500 mg/kg body weight. Similarly, Bordeaux (copper sulfate and calcium hydroxide) has an LD50 of around 500 mg/kg. Most modern synthetic pesticides have an LD50 > 2000 mg/kg. I'm on another fruit forum tailored for commercial growers and researchers Following is part of a post from a commercial grower on that list named Mo Tougas: "We too use lime sulfur and I agree that the benefits are numerous. Twenty years ago we bought sulfur by the ton as our non synthetic fungicide of choice for the production of peaches here in the humid northeast. That ceased when a friend was hospitalized due to a severe allergic reaction to my peaches. I was told it was an allergy to sulfur. I decided not to argue with the emergency room personnel."

Rose Defense II by Greenlight is typically recommended for PNW rose growers. It is an organic control based on Neem oil and pyrethrin and has both fungicidal and insecticidal properties. Apply early in the day to allow the product to dry on the foliage. And keeping the roses in the best possible growing conditions will go a long way to slow disease and insect problems. Full sun, plenty of air circulation, organically enriched, well draining soil and periodic deep watering during summer (avoid getting water on the foliage). Use an organic rose fertilizer (Dr. Earth, Whitney Farms, Terosa) early in the season and mulch to control weeds. Planting the roses in a mixed planting rather than in a dedicated "rose bed" also helps to halt the spread of insect and disease problems from one rose to another.