What I understand is that generally a 3:1:2 ratio fertilizer with all micronutrients will meet all your plant's needs through the growing cycle. I have found this to be true in my vegetable garden and with my house plants. In fruiting annual plants like tomatoes, reducing the amount of N at the point in the life cycle where the plant is flowering and forming fruits can slow down vegetative growth. If the plant continues to get adequate P and K, while getting slightly less than adequate N, the theory is that flowering and fruiting will be enhanced. The way I have tried to do this in the past is to cut the amount of Dynagro Foliage Pro I give the plants in half and also give them Dynagro Protekt, which has a 0-0-3 NPK formula. Recently I found some FoxFarm Grow Big hydroponic liquid fertilizer on sale for 80% off. It's formula is 3-2-6, and it has almost exactly the same micros as FoliagePro including calcium and magnesium. Plus, it doesn't use urea as a nitrogen source. I bought it and intend to use it to try to encourage my clivias to bloom this winter and my tomatoes to fruit next summer. I have only just started using it on the clivias, so I don't know how it will work. It's normally about $25 a quart, but I got it for $5. Note that I am talking about container plants, not garden plants. The grower needs to be more focused on providing all nutrients in the right ratio to one another in a form the plants can use when confined to a container. This post was edited by Ohiofem on Sun, Nov 24, 13 at 19:04

No - do not put any scraps or kitchen waste into the containers before filling. The reason for this is that there is simply not enough bacterial and fungal life in potting soil to be able to properly break down and decompose this stuff. That is one of the issues with adding raw organic matter or even granular organic fertilizers to container plantings - the soil biology is not present in any populations sufficient to assimilate and process these materials. Without more specific information as to the composition of your potting soil(s) and specifically what nutrients they may possess, it's a bit difficult to suggest what additional fertilizing they may require. Because of the need to water containerized plantings so frequently - and even more so in your climate - you will need to fertilize frequently. If you can manage, a liquid or water soluble fertilizer would be my first choice unless you have some sort of slow release product (like Osmocote) available. And then the suggestion would be to water "weekly, weakly" - or every 7 days during the growing season at half strength. If no liquid/water soluble fertilizer or slow release product available, I'd make a compost tea out of the manure and use that. As to your watering practices, I think you are on the right track. Just don't let the pots sit in water, like some sort of saucer. It also helps if the pots are raised above grade so that the drainage hole is not obstructed. As long as the potting soil itself is freely draining and the container has a sufficiently large drainage hole you should be fine. FWIW, container growing is very different from growing plants in the ground, including the medium and how and when to water or fertilize, so that info tailored specifically to that task is most beneficial. With that in mind, I'd suggest you visit the Container Gardening forum for lots of excellent advice. I'm linking to one thread that is perhaps the most informative to someone new to this activity. Here is a link that might be useful: potting soils and water movement

Having broken a good bit of bahia pasture, culled out the grass, mixed in a lot of well-rotted cow manure and/or mushroom compost, I can report: the heavily enriched sand grows super crops for a short time, and the amendments waste away quickly and the nemotodes will come with any kind of typical weekend garden assortment of plant species, as mentioned above. Not being here most of the year makes the necessary rotation plan difficult to enact, so most of y'all have the advantage in that regard. However probably most do not have the necessary space. I am beginning to think that five to ten times the square footage in veggies at any given time needs to be in various stages of rotation, including back into grass. I think the lasanga method is a good choice if one has the materials, though one could also make use of the sod itself. Take a sharpened shovel and shear off the sod mass from an area the size of a desired planting bed and place it upside-down on top of the grass where another planting bed will be. Soak it down good and cover that with cardboard or something to exclude light but allow moisture through, keep it damp for several months and there will be the second bed ready for planting and moderately rich from the double amount of rotted sod. The first area that the sod was taken from can be used right away if there is some compost enough on hand to boost it up. After the first crop of vegetables it could be put into legume, then chop down the crop residue and cover and keep moist. And so on. It'll surely work long term with little outside input, especially with irrigation, but a fair amount of space is required to produce fresh produce for several people.....

But let me try again to make myself at least more clear and hopefully unmistakably about the main subject (I of course agree with that point). What about exact NUTRITIONAL VALUE one can actually achieve through growing with hydroponics and specific mixes? I have to admit that I have little knowledge about scientific data on this particular topic. During the topic I started about "taste and flavour" with hydroponics, gringojay came up with many information that was truly interesting. But I guess that on the topic of nutritional value, scientific data should be more conclusive -as taste is and remains a rather subjective matter after all. With this topic we also understood that nutrients have clear limitations concerning taste, as some of the taste may come through decomposition processes in the soil. What about proper nutritional facts, may there be limits too, compared to soil culture? Ones intentions and goals are one part of the equation only, aren't they? Have you investigated the topic from your side (but from a objective and rather scientific perspective), and what is the outcome and your conclusion? No test here or any other hidden alogations - I am truly interest and curious.