1) The only time foliar fertilizing should be necessary is when the nutrients you're attempting to provide are already in the soil, but the plant is growing so fast it cannot assimilate the nutrients fast enough ...... which is going to be 'never' in container culture (practically speaking). If you need foliar application of fertilizers, it's because your nutritional supplementation is inappropriate. Roots are by FAR the most efficient pathway for nutrients into the plant with very few exceptions, and those exceptions are unlikely to be something we would commonly grow. If you need foliar applications of nutrients, energy would be better spent trying to figure out what is wrong with your supplementation program.

Why would foliar feeding promote disease - at least why above and beyond what wetting foliage with plain water would?

2) These questions require soo much qualification - E.g., you can fertilize with a full strength dosage every time you irrigate if you want to - if you run enough solution through the soil to flush all the old salts out so they don't accumulate.

All plants use VERY close to the same ratio of nutrients, and they use the same amount of nutrients per unit of biomass, but all plants do not grow at the same rate. To complicate the issue, all plants, regardless of their growth rate do not tolerate the same levels of EC/TDS of/in the soil solution. So the answer can only be given on a per plant basis. Some herbs tolerate very high fertility levels and some do not. The same is true of other plants.

3) True in many cases, but over-watering and drought stress can cause the same reaction.

4) Left to their own devices, tomatoes will use roughly the same ratio of N:other nutrients throughout the entire growth cycle. Often, we wish to limit N to limit vegetative growth as a sink so the plant will direct more energy to producing fruits.

5) The best way to implement lime into a well-balanced, well-draining soil is by mixing the dried form into damp soil when you make it, then wait 2 weeks before planting in it.

6) What is and isn't acceptable is a very individual decision. What I might think is great, another person might turn his nose up at, and the reciprocal is certainly true as well. If I was writing what you did, I would have given some thought to listing the ingredients in order of volume, so I would have said "A mixture of pine bark fines, potting mix, and perlite is a perfectly acceptable mixture for most container plants in the correct proportions, preferably with a very heavy leaning toward the pine bark fines", but YMMV.

Al