I meant to say "indeterminate" hehe.

anney - I'm trying to come up with a good way to feed my tomatoes this year, so I have questions similar to yours. But most of what I think is just speculation right now. Keeping that in mind... I think I understand what you're saying. And I don't know if plants can self-regulate. But if they can, those self-regulating mechanisms may break down under extreme conditions. So I think you'd want to at least maintain a "reasonable" balance. And giving them a "balanced diet" sounds reasonable to me. My thoughts on soil testing are, maybe they can tell you if you have a glaring deficiency in something. But you could probably get the same soil sample tested by 3 different labs, and get 3 different answers. At least that's what Eliot Coleman seems to be saying in his book "The New Organic Grower". I think it was published in 1995, so maybe things have changed since then? But you'd hope they'd at least all agree on whether or not a serious problem existed. So even if you knew what "optimal" was, you may not know if you have it with any certainty. Soil testing is good for the people who do soil testing for a living. And for companies that sell the soil test kits. So regardless of whether or not it's helpful for a gardener, you'll probably always hear someone recommending it. I've read that one of the most common mistakes gardeners make with tomatoes is overfertilizing. But I've never overfertilized, so I can't say from experience. I'm probably going to use a "balanced diet" approach this year, and see how that works. But that still leaves questions about what to use to provide that balanced diet. It can be mind boggling:) I'm trying to keep things as close to "natural" as possible. I don't think I could successfully micromanage individual nutrients, without causing some other problem that I'd also have to micromanage.

The bark needs to be slipping very well for T budding which means the rootstock in particular needs to be rapidly growing. Chip budding, which I've never done, can be done even without slipping bark. I usually have 90% or higher success with T budding in May and June. It can also be done late summer and bud not forced until spring. But for some reason my buds often die in winter.

Ok, I guess I can flip the cooktop and the prep sink. I had hoped to do my prep from the other end of the island, so I'd be facing the LR/DR area, but I'd rather not have the conflict between the cooktop and the frig. When I posted the layout before, there was a great suggestion to move the clean up sink to where the beverage/bar area is, but spouse insists on having it there. The island is huge, so there's no reason to squish things together. Designer wants me to put the clean up sink in the island at the opposite side from the cooktop (facing away from the pool), but then the sink will be in full sight of the dining room table (I'm a messy cook). He also has suggested putting the clean up sink where I now have the undercounter stools, but I don't think the island is wide enough to give me enough room on either side of the sink