First, I would advise you to head over to the container forum since you are growing in containers. You will find more good info there than you can read in a full weekend.

Moving on, organic fertilizers are generally not well thought of for containers. The reason for this is straightforward. Organic nutrient sources offer no immediately available nutrients to plants. They require biological processing before any nutrients are made available to plants. In the ground this process works just fine and can be of great benefit to the soil, but in containers it does not since the growing media is typically a media without soil and thus without soil organisms and the rate at which moisture and temperature fluctuate is much greater than in the soil making it darned hard for soil critters to establish and get to work.

In containers it is preferable for many to use water soluble synthetic nutrient sources as these are immediately available to plants and have no biological processing requirement. Miracle Grow (the blue powder mixed with water) is a common choice though there are certainly others.

I think you can stick to the same schedule as outdoors. I use rabbit droppings, which work really well and don't need to be composted.

The advice given to me specifically for containers was to fertilize weekly, weakly. So, that is what I do. I use the fert. at about 1/5 or even more diluted weekly.

Ania

The Bountiful Container is a great book on growing vegetables in pots. They recommend that you add slow release fertilizer to the soil at planting time and then use liquid fertilizer every other week. Half strength every week is acceptable too. I have had excellent results using their method. I believe justaguy is correct about organic fertilizer in pots, although I kind of think that fish emulsion is the exception to the rule. It is a great fertilizer for seedlings, and they green up very fast. Of course, it is primarily nitrogen.

It's my experience that vegetable plants need ALOT more fertilizer both in pots and in the ground than flowers. And certainly, pots need alot more than ground plantings, since potting mixes have very little, if any nutrients in them.

I mix potting soil with half vermicompost. My pepper plants have about 10 peppers on them already. No fertilization needed

Thank-you everyone for your great advice.

I've purchased the book Bountiful Container and will look forward to reading it when it arrives.

I think I will stick with the kelp and fish emulsions a little while longer and see how they do. I am pretty stuck on doing things organically. If no success then I'll flex my organic rule a bit.

Again, thank-you everyone.