Sammy,

TOMATOES: With tomato diseases and soil, there are so many variables that your questions are a little hard to answer, but I'll do my best.

I grow my tomatoes in the same beds (and also in the same containers) every year, and have for the 11 years we've been here. I do enrich the soil by adding compost and other organic matter as needed, and I always mulch heavily with various products, including grass clippings, hay, straw and chopped/shredded leaves. The mulch adds more organic matter to the soil as it breaks down, so that organic matter is being added year-round as the mulch decomposes. I put some organic Espoma Tomato Tone fertilizer in each planting hole as I set out tomato plants, and usually a handful of bone meal too.

How much do my plants struggle with foliar disease given that I grow tomatoes in the same soil every year? Well, first of all not as much as you might expect, and it seems almost entirely dependent on the weather conditions. In a wet and rainy year where humidity levels stay high and the plants have dew on them virtually every day, I'll usually see early blight beginning in late June or early July. If the rain is really heavy in April or May, I may or may not see some bacterial speck or bacterial spot although they're usually a minor issue if they are an issue at all. About 1 in 4 or 5 years (and 2009 was one of them) my plants will have issues with Septoria Leaf Spot.

In a dry and droughty year, which is probably at least 2 out of 3 years here in southcentral OK, I might or might not see a little Early Blight in June or July, but that's about it as long as I keep the plants mulched well (including mulched pathways) and water only with soaker hoses or drip irrigation.

For what it is worth, none of the other gardeners who live and garden near me in Love County rotate their tomato plantings either, and most of them don't add organic matter to the soil or mulch like I do, relying on chemical fertilizers instead. They seem to get enough tomatoes to make them happy, although I rarely see any of them getting the higher production that I get from my plants. Because they don't mulch and most of them water using sprinklers, those plantings usually exhaust themselves or become diseased and are pretty much done by August, although some of their plants remained productive into the fall this year.

If you have other types of disease issues like some of the wilt diseases or Tomato Yellow Leaf Curl or Tomato Spotted Wilt Virus, then crop rotation might be more important, but I rarely see those here so it is hard for me to comment.

It is my opinion, Sammy, that you could continue to use the soil in your containers and just keep adding amendments, particularly compost and perhaps also one of the rock powders and perhaps some bone meal. Mulching the containers with 2-4" of organic matter will help reduce soil splash which often transfers diseases. Mulching the ground around the containers also helps reduce soil splash. Water with a hand-held hose or a drip irrigation line to keep water off your plant foliage.

For people who grow in the ground, the Earl's Hole method (linked below) of soil replenishment works just fine. As far as I know, Earl continues to grow his plants in the same area every year and gets some of the highest yields of fruit per plant that I've ever heard of, and I think that is due to his use of the Earl's Hole Method. You could adapt portions of his method and just add the needed ingredients to the existing soil in your containers.

Some people who grow in containers like to spread out a tarp or a piece of heavy duty plastic, pour all their soil onto it, and add their amendements to that soil and then refill the pots. That is a lot of work, and I usually don't do it that way. I just add my amendments to my containers and stir them in by hand a week or two before I transplant the tomatoes into them.

To tell you the truth, I ignore those people on other forums who insist you must put all-new soil in containers or rotate your in-ground plantings every year. I haven't found that to be true at all in our climate here in southern OK nor in northcentral Texas when I lived there. Perhaps in some parts of the country, the soil replacement or rotation are absolutely essential, but not here for me. People in every region have different gardening issues and much of it is related to their soil or climate conditions, so what some people find necessary in some places are not necessary in other places.

COMPOST: One way to compost leaves is to just poke a lot of holes in the bags to facilitate air flow, wet down the leaves good before you close up the bag, and then seal the bags of shredded leaves using twist ties or twine or whatever. Pile the bags in an out-of-the-way place like behind a garage or shed or someplace else where they won't be an eyesore, and leave them there. By spring, the leaves will be partially decompsed and can be mixed into the soil or used as mulch on top of the soil.

You can make an attractive compost bin for your compost pile in many ways, using wood, lattice, etc. If you use lattice and want to keep squirrels out of it, line the lattice compost bin with 1/4" hardware cloth. Out here in the country on larger parcels of property, it is easier to place compost piles and bins in out-of-the-way locations where you don't see them from the house. So, a lot of people here pick up old pallets and build compost bins from them and that works fine. I use round woven-wire fencing formed into cylinders 4 or 5' across and just fill them up over the growing season. If you use this method, you can plant morning glories, hyacinth beans, black-eyed susan vines or moon flower seeds in the spring and they grow all over the cage and hide it during the growing season.

It is easy to use a large trash container or extra-large rubber storage container as a compost bin. Just drill lots and lots of air holes in whichever container you use, and leave the lid off when it rains so that the contents of the container receive adequate moisture. You don't have to leave the lids off all the time but they need moisture from rainfall or the waterhose from time to time. If you're concerned small rodents will get into the containers, line them with hardware cloth. I'd drill holes (and lots of them) in the bottom and sides of the containers to facilitate air flow and also good drainage so excess moisture doesn't remain in the container.

APHIDS: I'm clueless on this one. I don't know enough about how they overwinter to help you on this one. Have you seen lady bugs eating the aphids? In general, lady bugs feast on aphids and I have a healthy population of lady bugs so I rarely see aphids at all. Sometimes aphids appear on container plants I overwinter in the garage, but if I am patient, lady bugs show up 7-10 days later and take care of them.

If the aphids are in your compost pile, it ought to get hot enough to kill them, but I can't quote any research that says that it will. We have hackberry trees in our woodland but the wooly hackberry aphids haven't made it here yet, so I have absolutely no experience with them and don't know how similar or different their behavior is compare to that of more common aphids.

Good luck and keep asking questions.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Earl's Hole Method of Tomato Bed Soil Replenishment

Sammy first if you have had good results I wouldn't change anything if much. I've learned many times when I have that things get worse. I only started using containters to grow tomatoes two years ago. I read the methods used by several that grow many plants every year in containers. Most don't use "top soil' but either a good potting mix or their own mix. Some just add admendments and then others change about half the mix every year. I dumped mine in a wheel barrow last year and added 50% new. I then used the old leftover in new containers mixed with 50% new. When I get the number I want my plan is to just add admendments every year unless I have a disease problem in a container I feel is soil related. And like Dawn said you can mix it in the top or you can dump the container and mix things well. A personal opinion. I do add composted manure to mine every year along with my own mix. The one thing I have learned is not to set them on concrete if plastic or metal as they get very hot on the roots. Jay

Jay,

That's a great point about not setting them on concrete if the containers are plastic or metal because the roots heat up, and I mostly follow that guideline myself, except....

When I transplant my 4 or 6 or 8 early tomato plants into containers in mid-February, I do place them on a concrete slab so they can soak up as much heat as possible during the winter and spring months. Later on, though, say in late May or early June, I drag those big pots off that concrete before the temperatures get too high.

I also put my containers where they get some shade during the day because I have better production when I do that. As long as the plants get 6-8 hours of sunlight, they produce fine and seem to produce more tomatoes than they did back when I left them in full sun all day long.

I use the concrete slab in the same way to keep peppers warm while they are hardening off.

In the summer months, I don't leave many potted plants on the slab, but it is a useful 'tool' during the winter and it probably is the heat from the concrete slab that enables the early tomato plants to produce ripe fruit by April most years.

Dawn

I have used the same soil in containers without a problem. This year I dumped a lot of mine but I just dumped them into a raised bed so I am still using the same soil.

However, years ago before I knew much about gardening (and still don't know enough) I had two strawberry pots. Those clay kind that have many planting pockets on them. I don't remember what I fed them with but it wasn't organic and it had so much salt build-up in one year that it would seep through the pot and form on the outside. My opinion is that having to dump your soil has more to do with how you are feeding your soil than it does what you are growing in it and how long it's been there. Because that pot was clay and a dark color, it required a lot of water. The salts from that fertilizer had to go somewhere, so it came through the pot or went to the bottom. If I had used good soil to begin with and then only used compost or natural fertilizer, I doubt that I would have had that problem.

Which reminds me...I still have those two pots and they have been setting empty for years. Is there anything you can grow successfully in those. I thought about filling mine with hens and chicks.

It looks like I need to take some notes again. Thanks for the responses.

I will say that my combination of top soil and compost is for my roses, and they are all in the ground. I had regular bagged potting soil for my tomatoes and the other veggies in smaller containers. We put plenty of mulch on the top, and have many many holes in the containers. It worked wonders - thanks to all your advice. One of the best pieces of advice I got was to use the concrete wires for support. That saved us so much time. But next year we need to make it taller, or figure out what to do with the vines that come over the top.

I'll be back once I digest what you have written.

Sammy