Do, do keep your photos of your yard now - and brag later! Before and after... Plectranthus ciliatus is a South African plant which does awfully well under trees. Awfully. In a lot of our areas it settles down and suppresses native plants with much efficiency. Frost whacks it back but it does recover to go on its way. Zones 9-11 usually, but will probably do its best in a zone 8 microclimate. OK for a patch but you'd have to be desperate to bulk plant it, IMO. I've not been clear, and I apologise. Humus is ancient compost. When all the bacteria, fungi, bugs, worms and weather have finished with the banana skin you popped into your compost bin humus is what is left - and a thin layer it is, too. That's why gardeners keep adding more of it. Mulch is the top layer. It can be 'hard mulch' such as gravel or shells. There are some plants which do brilliantly with that kind of mulch - lavender, for example. There's reflected heat for the top and cool feet for the roots. It is also surprisingly good at retaining moisture. Softer mulch such as bark cambium or nuggets. Single season mulches such as a layer of newpaper topped with grass clippings or shredded small (ie no fatter than quarter inch diameter) twigs and green leaves. Always put mulches on when the ground is wet. Know that having the mulch can 'slow down your season' because the soil stays cooler. That can be either a drawback - or a plus if your hot weather comes in with a rush and saddens any flowers you have out. In the 'middle' of these two - humus and mulch - is compost. And it varies a lot. You can put it on when you can still tell what some of the ingredients were - and use it as mulch. Or you can wait for a couple of years and use it when it has a nice earthy smell, feels delightful to put your hands in, and you'd never know what it was made of. Making compost is a bit like making bread dough. If you can do one - you've a good chance of success with the other. It's all about ingredients and activators, warmth and moisture. It is NOT tricky. Nature does it all the time. Look at what happens to fall leaves... What you the gardener are trying to do is to increase the thickness of the humus-rich layer on the top - and the depth to which roots can go - plus the worms. My own personal view as a clay soil gardener is to minimise the amount of digging/rototilling that's done from year to year. The worms set up their runs and burrows and start shifting food particles down to where the roots can make use of the food - and we come and remake the bed! Dig over when you take out plants at the end of a season, add more compost on top and fork it through the top 6-12 inches (it will happen!), then mostly leave it alone - and stay OFF the beds as much as possible. When fall comes - stash some plastic totes in the vehicle - ignore the stares - and scrounge as many fallen leaves as you legally can. You can either put them directly on bare soil, or into the compost heap. Or, best of all, hold them in a plastic container, add some water so they're damp, and let them rot in their container in a quiet patch in the garden for a couple of years or so to turn into precious leaf mould (aka humus). It's great for adding to containers for growing plants that like a touch of 'soil' in the mix to do well.

I think you just fertilized your plants four times at one go. The fish meal/kelp AND the Miracle Gro done both as root feeding AND foliar feeding might have been a bit much. I'd stick with one or the other of those two types of fertilizer, or alternate them. Foliar feeding and root feeding with the fish meal/kelp is probably ok, but not with the Miracle Gro. I'd suggest going longer between fertilizing rather than shorter, 3 or even 4 weeks should be plenty. Over fertilizing during bloom set can reduce yields. Also, too much nitrogen makes the plants grow a lot of foliage, but not much else. Note that fish meal/kelp is around 4/3/3, and most chemical fertilizers used for tomatoes are 5/10/10 or 10/10/10. The balance of what you're using (18/18/21) isn't off so much as the strength is. That ratio of fertilizer can burn foliage, so if you're going to foliar feed it could cause trouble. You can continue to use the fertilizer, just cut the strength, that is, mix it with twice as much water as the directions say. You'll end up with 9/9/10 (roughly). I'd just root feed with the Miracle Gro. Stop using the Daconil immediately! It's intended for turf grass and ornamentals, not food plants! If you water from below (like drip irrigation or hose watering) you shouldn't have any trouble with fungi. I have never treated any tomato plant with an antifungicide in 25 years of my own gardening and another 20 watching my Dad do it. The aspirin spray shouldn't hurt anything, although I don't know that it'll do much, either, no matter what the University of RI says! Still it's cheap - maybe I'll try it on my eggplants and tomatoes this year. Mulching is a great idea and will help to stabilize conditions for the plants, keep them from drying out, keep roots from getting too cold or too hot. Hope that helps. Sojourner

Maybe I misunderstand your post, but it seems what you are getting are commonly called "volunteers," plants that grow from seeds from a previous crop. Usually, it results from a ripe tomato falling on the ground. Amending or not amending the soil will have little effect on volunteers showing up next year. I get lots of them each year and I treat them like a weed - pull them up when I see them. An interesting note, though. This year is the first time I did not get "any" volunteers in the garden, and that includes tomatoes, potatoes, green beans. Just a hypothesis, but last fall was also the first time I sowed winter wheat as a cover crop. I cut the foliage in early May, then tilled the roots in a week later. I'm wondering if, while they were decomposing, they generated enough heat to kill any left over seeds? Or if while it was growing, it choked out any plants that may have been trying to sprout? Either way, spending about 65¢ to amend 100 sq. ft. is very inexpensive. Mike

The vast majority of reading I have done recommends either a no-dig amendment method or tilling/digging and amending to about 10-12 inches. I looked through all my garden books and can't find anything recommending digging to three feet of depth! My soil has some clay content, so when I have built a new bed, I have generally chosen to hand dig and mix in my favorite bagged compost to improve the soil. The one time I rented a tiller, I found it didn't work as well as my trusty shovel and hand mixing. (In fact, the perennials in that particular bed have been the slowest growing!) However, I then tried layering with cardboard and mulch last fall for yet another bed, and frankly, that bed has been an absolute delight - hardly any effort and the soil is lovely, well draining, and easy to plant in. I will definitely use no-dig methods if I have time to wait patiently for my next new bed! For a rock garden, with plants that need even better drainage, I understand why you might add gravel, grit, or sand along with the compost, but regardless of what you amend the soil with, I can't fathom digging to three feet - I have planted trees without digging that deep. I think, maybe, the guys that installed my deck might have buried the concrete supports that deep, but other than that, I can't think of a reason to disturb the soil to that level.