Comments in another thread got me thinking... When I grew up, my mom's approach to gardening was 'buy plants, stick them in the dirt, wait for veggies'. We apparently had great soil there because her plants always did well despite being completely untended to and without any soil amending or fertilizers or even hand-watering (okay, she may have watered a little during August droughts).

My first attempt as an adult at a real garden was pre-empted by a lot of research, but little cash and a rental property (so limited bed locations). I came upon the SFG method and decided it would be the best way to make use of the flower beds I was converting to veggie gardens but I didn't have the funds for a fully filled raised bed. So I just amended my existing (crap) soil with composted manure, peat, and vermiculite and my beds have done quite well for the most part these last 2 years.

All I've been doing for fertilizer is adding a few bags of compost (composted manure or mushroom compost) to each bed in the Spring when I clean up the beds for planting. Am I missing something in regards to fertilizing? I see talk about different fertilizers each spring and throughout the growing season. I just bought some Dynamite Select for my containers (using the 5-1-1 mix instead of random garden dirt this year), and now I'm wondering if my Spring manure amendment is enough for my in-ground beds or if I should be doing more throughout the growing season.