Question: how much space do you have? If the answer is quite a bit, then Steve Solomon is probably your next step. His books are arguably the finest resources for those trying to run a dry garden. The key is giving each plant enough space to grow their roots and find their own water. As for the alluminum sulfate, I would hesitate to use this stuff without a) a proper soil test (that would be a professional test, not a Home Depot ph kit) and b) awareness that exposing yourself to increased levels of alluminum may be detrimental to your long-term health. You are better off with elemental sulfur. It acts more slowly, but is much safer. Raised beds are the way to go. And unless there is good reason to use the tiller (i.e. breaking up sod or large tangles of weeds), you may consider doing the "old fashioned" way using hand tools. Again, depends on the area involved. Soil additives really depends on your soil test results. Without a specific profile, adding anything to the soil could do much more harm then good. For instance, I had purchased all the ingredients for a complete organic fertilizer prior to my soil test. The results indicated high organic matter (14.5%), magnesium deficiency and a ph of 7.8. Suffice it to say that had I added the compost, lime and bone meal that I had planned on adding, I would have done some serious damage to the soil balance. In other words, get a soil test, now. Best of luck, Michael Here is a link that might be useful: Steve Solomon: Gardening When It Counts

Well growing in containers is definitely advantageous because you can use high quality soil, control the nutrients easily, and they're mobile, so it's obvious which one would result in maximum output, so why test it?. The way I interpreted his objective was that he is doing a container vs. garden test to determine the effect of soil temperature on growth rate. Due to his short season, soil temperatures will most likely affect the garden plants, but pots are more exposed to sun, warming the soil, allowing for more growth. Using garden soil in the pots would tell him whether or not the difference is directly due to soil temperature because the medium is the same, but by using nutrient enriched potting soil, you don't know if the results are from the extra nutrients or warmer soil temp. You don't rule out a possible cause of the low yield, you just introduce more variables. To confirm the nutrient enriched container results, he would now have to grow in a nutrient enriched garden. If that results in smaller peppers than the container ones, the cause would seem to be soil temperature. He said he was testing garden growth vs. container growth, and the results from what I suggested would be a true ground vs. container comparison, while using potting mix would be a ground vs container and growth medium comparison. It just seems to me that introducing potting soil into the experiment results in more variables to account for, when the original question was simply garden or container.

Augiedog: Sounds like a good plan. In my post from last summer I talked about growing two tomatoes in a 25-gallon smart pot vs. one of the same kind (goosecreek) in a 20-gallon smart pot. At that point, I thought the single plant was doing better. But by the end of the summer, the plant that produced the most tomatoes over the whole season was one of the two in the 25-gallon pot. The other one in that pot was a bit of a dud, but still the pot with two tomatoes produced significantly more tomatoes. Since I only have space and a budget for about six large pots, I plan to grow two plants in each one. I think that genetic variation in heirloom tomatoes caused the wide difference in productivity, not pot size. I also wanted to mention that the soil mix I used was 5 parts pine bark fines, one part compost and one part Turface. We had temperatures in the nineties for about half the time in July and August. I was able to go three days between waterings. The Turface and compost seemed to help with water retention. Please report on the results of your experiments.

I'm a little more reserved this year with starting seeds, especially my tomatoes. Usually they are flowering before I can get them into the garden, so I've only started them a few days ago. I have pepper plants sprouting. I saved seeds from some long red sweet peppers I got at Sam's Club a few weeks ago and they were so delicious. I hope the seeds reproduce true to the original. I plan on getting my 16' x 20' greenhouse set up as soon as I get the lawn in the area raked and all the downed branches picked up. Today it's raining, so no outside work could be done. As soon as it's dry and nice out again, I plan to start some cool season veggies like spinach, lettuce and beets. I devote most of my garden to tomato plants, using wire cages for support. I end up every year with a tomato jungle, and lots of tomatoes to eat and make into juice. A few years ago I tried growing tomatoes hanging downward in large pots and had tomatoes to eat already on July 7th, my granddaughter's birthday. I may do some of those again this year, but it's hard to find places to hang the pots because my trees are so much bigger and not much sunshine gets through except where the garden is. Looks like this week will stay cool and wet here along Lake Michigan. Hope it warms up after Easter.