Are you out there, Bencjedi? Would love to hear a report on how your worm cast fertilization observations turned out. I'm kind of assuming that your worm castings included little worms and eggs, right? If we use 'soil' rather than 'mix', it gets too heavy because there are no worms for aeration. The 'mix' to me means dead soil, and not best for the plants to thrive. I'm following with interest the Australian 'wicking worm beds' where a worm feeding station is incorporated into the planter. You can check it out at http://www.easygrowvegetables.com/html/easygrow.html I sure would love to have some of you folks try the worm stations in your EarthTainer systems and let us know how it affected plant growth.

>> GT, did you ever repeat the test? Yes, twice. And within a point more or less, I got the same results. >> I reread what you were doing up in the thread, and if your irrigation alkalinity was really 15ppm (i.e., rain or distilled water), then a tablespoon of vinegar would've essentially turned your gallon of water into...a gallon of vinegar. Deadly of course for your planties. Ummmm... I do not know what to tell you, except (1) I do not understand how I'd get a gallon of vinegar (is the vinegar effect SOOOOOO strong on distilled water?), but more importantly (2) that I am just a dummy who had read somewhere online that adding vinegar was beneficial to house plants, and so I was doing that because Internet is never wrong. :-) My plants survived "the vinegar era" just fine - despite the vinegar or because of it, I guess we'll never know. They actually got even better during that time, but that may be because Foliage Pro and a grow light and I think a better soil mix were all introduced roughly at the same time. There is another wrinkle that I do not feel comfortable with. The muni report says pH is 6.7 to 9.2 with 7.2 average, but my result was 5.5. Yes, the report is from 2012, and they measure water in the reservoirs (I think), but I measure it off the tap and after about a week of off-gassing. Still, the difference is suspicious and leads me to wonder how reliable those little pH strips are. In fact, if I understand this correctly, both my inconsistency with the muni water report and your question howcome I did not kill my plants can both be explained by inaccurately lower readings of my pH testing strips. For now (since those tests), with the info I have, I turned off the vinegar spigot.

Hman, You're right, I do thin more than commercial guidelines. I think perhaps the difference may be related to vigor. A lot of my shoots are 3' long as the norm (although not this season with the drought). Someone with just 18" of shoot extension would leave two fruit on that shoot (by commercial guidelines). However with my shoots being much longer, I'd leave five fruit on a 3' shoot (by commercial guidelines). Multiplied by lots of shoots, it becomes too much weight for the tree to bear. So I have to thin a bit more aggressively to compensate for the increased vigor, I think. I believe it's also a little windier here so that it takes less weight to break branches than in most parts of the county. I noticed I had a large broken branch yesterday on one of the trees, but I've been catching a lot of possums lately, so it could have been a possum that broke it down. I do think I sometimes over thin on some trees, but I still try to follow the 12" rule because I have a somewhat laissez-faire attitude about yield. I know I have some mature trees that produce two bushel of fruit when they should really be producing three, or younger trees producing 25 lbs. of fruit when they should be producing 50 lbs., but at this point I don't get too excited about the lost opportunity. Maybe I'll go broke with that attitude. I'm sure I've still got a lot to learn about growing peaches commercially. I recommend thinning to 12" on this forum not only because I do so, but also because the tendency for most people harvesting their first fruit is to under thin. Even if they over thin a bit, as I sometimes do, I think a lot of people will be happier with their first harvest of nice large fruits vs. making a mistake the other way and have a tree full of peaches that are little bitty. But you're right, I think a lot of trees can tolerate one fruit for every 8" of branch space or so, under lower wind and vigor conditions.

Yo Ken, if your still around your up on this one. Far as Composites go I am with the Larry/whoever We are for the most part. Composites are really no longer using recycled material because there is just not enough of it so most of the raw stuff is virgin,the energy used to make composite is an enviro no no, when its time to remove the project composite is not real big on bio degrade its tricky to burn shreading it would be silly. Bottom line composites are not so enviro freindly. Info like that might suggest its not all that good to clean it either, with anything. I dont agree>> composites will out last Ipe, left to go silver/gray Ipe is as close to no maintance as a person can get. With the softer composites like Choice/MoistureShield even trex= tjunk I have found a coat or two of TWP 116 seals up the decking,locks in the color and keeps mold,mildew,stains from causing major problems. Of course not needing to do this is the reason the Wallet goes for composite in the first place. I my own self dont like composites at all for the reasons stated in several posts here and on other sites. Welcome aboard Larry!!! Sorry I dident understand your intent at the begining . John